Celebrations of new beginnings, successful accomplishments, or significant milestones remind us, too, of all we have experienced in life: hope, trust, irony, difficulties, sometimes tragedy, paradox, disciplined renovation of heart, conversion, and new-found life. The more deeply these experiences have touched us, it seems, the more heartfelt our celebrations become.
Our celebrations of the Eucharistic liturgy will also be more heartfelt the more deeply the Christ event has touched our lives. The season of Lent is a great opportunity for Christians to enter this experience in an unparalleled way, becoming part of the deepest mystery of human existence: life, suffering, death and new life.
We accompany Jesus as we share in the trust and hope he brought to people. We stay with Him as He encounters irony, difficulties and tragedy. Like Him, we accept the recognition and support of friends and family, but feel also the blows of rejection, injustice, insults and hopelessness, sometimes crying out with Him: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? We learn from Jesus the paradox of self-emptying trust: that the only way out of difficulties and tragedies is fidelity to the goodness of God, even if this sometimes makes the trials more hurtful.
The lesson is that our Eucharistic faith and Christian hope do not make us into nothing-can-touch-me, impenetrable people, immune to devastation and suffering. Rather, our faith and hope are about being able to survey and experience the cross directly in all its crushing desolation and inhuman forms, and still be driven to seek a truth beyond all the suffering, humiliation and experiences of being forsaken in this life.
The message of our Eucharistic celebration is simple: the scandal of the cross leads to resurrection and new life. Especially in this Lenten (and then Easter) Season, let us help each other to enter the Eucharistic liturgy deeply, so that the life, passion and resurrection of Jesus may touch our hearts and transform our minds. In all things, let us stand grateful and assured of God’s love for us.
Antal and Christine are a married couple, employed by the Diocese of Calgary. Antal is the Director of Social Justice and Christine is the Director of Liturgy and Adult Formation.
