One of the most haunting verses of devotional poetry I ever encountered was in Hans Urs von Balthasar’s The Way of the Cross. In the final station, Jesus’ corpse has been taken down from the cross, the body is swathed according to custom, and laid in a tomb … and von Balthasar suggests that a great and festive liturgy of forgetting begins.
So already his unquiet image haunts heads and hearts.
Already the spirit is freed.
Already the Easter question takes shape …
But silently.
For tomorrow is only Holy Saturday.
The day when God is dead,
and the Church holds her breath.
That strange day that separates life and death
in order to join them in a marriage beyond all human thought.
We wait for justice a lot! It seems to us that we hold our breath many more days of the year than this one solemn and holy-Saturday. Our world seems to endlessly churn out events in which we question the existence of a god or we feel ensnared or helpless or lost.
Portiuncula Guild offers the following images and prayers as a rumination for the coming days. These four images were created by profoundly insightful local artists. We bring together as a tiny Triduum exhibition. Our simple aim is to juxtapose these images with the prayer of the church and give us an opportunity to think about the causes, situational factors, and consequences of so many negative emotional experiences that surround us at this moment.
During these holiest of days … art and prayer and politics collide in narratives of the passion, death and resurrection. Tyrants and priests, apostles and unbelievers, history and current events, faithfulness and betrayal, partisans and zealots all become characters or themes in a great cosmic drama set within a regional struggle for political power, religious belief and economic control.
If the Easter question can take shape amid that narrative … maybe, just maybe we too can hold our breath … and wait … and believe that in our current situation there is the possibility of resurrection and new life.
So already his unquiet image haunts heads and hearts.
Already the spirit is freed.
Already the Easter question takes shape …
But silently.
For tomorrow is only Holy Saturday.
The day when God is dead,
and the Church holds her breath.
That strange day that separates life and death
in order to join them in a marriage beyond all human thought.
We wait for justice a lot! It seems to us that we hold our breath many more days of the year than this one solemn and holy-Saturday. Our world seems to endlessly churn out events in which we question the existence of a god or we feel ensnared or helpless or lost.
Portiuncula Guild offers the following images and prayers as a rumination for the coming days. These four images were created by profoundly insightful local artists. We bring together as a tiny Triduum exhibition. Our simple aim is to juxtapose these images with the prayer of the church and give us an opportunity to think about the causes, situational factors, and consequences of so many negative emotional experiences that surround us at this moment.
During these holiest of days … art and prayer and politics collide in narratives of the passion, death and resurrection. Tyrants and priests, apostles and unbelievers, history and current events, faithfulness and betrayal, partisans and zealots all become characters or themes in a great cosmic drama set within a regional struggle for political power, religious belief and economic control.
If the Easter question can take shape amid that narrative … maybe, just maybe we too can hold our breath … and wait … and believe that in our current situation there is the possibility of resurrection and new life.
Holy Thursday
| Trump's Last Supper … and Nobody Came Shelley Koopmann oil on panel | "What does it mean to sit at this table if not to approach it with humility? What does it mean to observe carefully what is set before you if not to meditate devoutly on so great a gift? What does it mean to stretch out one’s hand, knowing that one must provide the same kind of meal oneself … as Christ laid down his life for us, so we in our turn ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters? This is what the blessed martyrs did with such burning love. If we are to give true meaning to our celebration of their memorials, to our approaching the Lord’s table in the very banquet at which they were fed, we must, like them, provide “the same kind of meal.” St. Augustine, The Perfection of Love |
Good Friday
 | The Weight of Wool Bobby Fuller mixed media Our transgressions and our sins weigh upon us, and we waste away because of them; how then can we live? Say to them, As I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from their ways and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways … if the wicked restore the pledge, give back what they have taken by robbery, and walk in the statutes of life, committing no iniquity, they shall surely live, they shall not die. None of the sins that they have committed shall be remembered against them; they have done what is lawful and right, they shall surely live. Ezekiel 33: 10-16 |
Easter Vigil
| Easter Vigil Red Shoes Helen Hubler oil on canvas This is the night when first you saved our forebears, you freed the people of Israel from their slavery and led them with dry feet through the sea. This is the night when the pillar of fire destroyed the darkness of sin! This is the night when Christians everywhere, washed clean of sin and freed from all defilement, are restored to grace and grow together in holiness. Easter Proclamation, UMC Book of Worship |  |
Easter Monday
 | Pilate Washes His Hands Annis McCabe plaster maquette for the first station "We sense a need for ritual cleansing … in our nation, our neighborhoods, and our selves. Like Pilate, a leading politician in an earlier empire, we’ve washed our hands of the affair one too many times. But this is not the only story we have. We have inherited this story of compulsive washing, as well as a compassionate one where Jesus takes a towel and washes the feet of his friends who will betray him … but what might move us from “washing our hands of the whole affair” to the cold water of discipleship and the rough edges of dishtowels? A reminder of our baptism." Heather Murray Elkins - The Holy Stuff of Life |
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