Haunted by Passiontide
Every one of our lives is a drama – a story involving powerful antagonists in pitched struggle. The antagonists are sin and grace; Christ and Satan; self-love and self-oblation. These dramatis personae are further complicated by the singular dispositions, personality, background, and place of each man compounding the conflict. All of which is the proscenium for the staging of a man’s salvation. But there is a drama surpassing all of these: the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass where Christ appears upon the battlefield of Golgotha to slay Lucifer. That Divine Victory is re-presented each time a priest ascends the steps of the altar to offer the Holy Sacrifice.
The historical antecedents for this Grand Triumph are set forth before our eyes in Passiontide. They leap before us in the ancient liturgy of the Church, where she unveils the accumulated liturgical symbols that the centuries have fashioned, leaving us in thrall. This is a drama of such magnitude that the very word drama itself takes its name. Beginning on this Passion Sunday, Mother Church surfeits our senses and rouses our souls to a pitch no human drama can match. From now until Easter Sunday she deploys the most striking symbols in her sacred arsenal.
Today man understands how symbols seize the soul without a word being uttered. Upon entering the Church we are seemingly accosted as we notice every image draped in purple shrouds. An eerie sense of foreboding envelopes us. A deafening absence leaves us unsettled. Each veiled statue seem to be covering itself against the impending horror of the Savior’s Passion. Beholding the scene leaves the soul on the edge of shrieking, almost too much to bear.
Indeed, there is much bearing. Emotions swirl as the sublimity of the symbols sink deeper into the soul. A sense of isolation permeates, a disturbing sense of being left completely alone. The sharp drama of shrouds reminds of our sins which also cover our souls in darkness. Too often we have preferred that darkness to the blazing light of Christ’s grace. More dreadful is the reality that the darkness is always my choice. Those calculated separations from Christ are calculated decisions to love sin more than the Redeemer. The icy state of sin is traded for the sweet warmth of Christ’s grace. The shocked soul wonders how such lunacy could invade his soul. The purpled images relentlessly speak this unrelenting truth like pincers jabbing the flesh.
Isolation is followed by a crushing loneliness. For every Catholic there is a great sweetness to know that we are crowded by the Communion of Saints, each one of them available to us at the instant of a whispered prayer. These are men and women “in full,” and their fullness is always at our fingertips. This “cloud of witnesses” spurs us to imitate their heroic love, their grand sacrifices, their daunting Charity. Today, Mother Church hides them from us. It is almost as if she needs to heighten the wages of sin, showing the excruciating solitude it brings in its trail. Heaven seems almost to be taken aback at the approaching Divine Holocaust. It seems as though she shivers in shock.
Peering at the muted statues calls to mind the haunting words of Saint John of the Cross in his Spiritual Canticle:
“Outside of God, everything is narrow.”
Indeed. And the hushed statues bespeak that sense of disturbing narrowness. We are forced to consider how our sins lead us down a black hole breathing the fetid air of our own self-interest. It is darkness having no room for any other – a loneliness of aching proportions. Such wisdom in the church’s ensemble of sacred symbols. With typical Roman restraint, spare symbols, such as a purple drape covering the once spirited voice of those images, leaves the soul prone. The symbols speak in slight whispers, yet leave the soul deafened by its truth. The loneliness? Because sin creates a kind of entombment, a walled city of our own making.
Finally, each shrouded statue leads us to sorrow. Like the unrelenting ticking of a clock, we count the many follies of sin. Clinging to the old habits and attachments that are the wellsprings of sin. We ignore them, but ignore them at our eternal peril. All the neglect we have accumulated at the invitation of grace sent to us from the hand of a Merciful Redeemer. Cardinal Newman’s words in his sermon The Calls of Grace indict us,
“God’s opportunities do not wait; they come and they go.
The word of life waits not – if it is not appropriated by you, the devil will appropriate it.
He delays not, but has his eyes wide always and is ready to pounce down and carry
off the gift which you delay to use.”
And then, Father Garrigou-Lagrange,
“the daily resistance to grace in small points is as harmful as hail on a
tree in bloom which promised much fruit;
the flowers are destroyed and the fruit will not form.”
To all this there is added all the hesitations, excuses, and broken resolutions to change, with no change.
Each purple shroud is an accusing finger that what is approaching for the Savior is my doing. And the silence of those shrouded images is only broken by the solemn words of the Improperia: “My people, my people, how have I offended thee. Answer me. I led you out of the land of Egypt, and you have led me to the gibbet of the Cross.”
Originally Published in Latin Mass Magazine - Winter-Spring 2022
Father John A. Perricone is Professor of Philosophy at Saint Francis College (Brooklyn, NY). He received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Fordham University (Bronx, New York). Numerous talks by Father Perricone can be found on our website www.KeepTheFaith.org. Father Perricone offers the Traditional Mass each Sunday at 9:00 am at Our Lady of Sorrows Church, Jersey City.
[ Image credit: Cross and Altar Veiled in Purple at Our Lady of Sorrows Church, Jersey City, NJ, Copyright Jon Stulich Photo 2022 ]
