"Fools for Christ"

April 7, 2009 Year of St. Paul

Dear Friends united in love and service of Jesus Christ and His Church:

She and her husband so enjoy spending the winter in Naples, Florida, she told me.

No surprise there!

One of the “big events” of “the season” down there, she goes on to tell me, is the “Passion Play” at the local mega-church. It’s a three hour affair, well-done, excellent music, authentic gospel-script and costumes, and a wonderfully effective aid to meditation upon the suffering and death of Jesus.

Trouble is, it’s next-to-impossible to get in. They only do four plays each Holy Week, because it is so expensive, and time-and-energy consuming. The waiting list is almost as long as the one for Packer season tickets!

Last year, she reports, they finally got two coveted tickets! Better yet, they were actually for the 12-3 p.m. presentation on Good Friday itself! How appropriate! Were they ever excited.

Then it dawned on them . . . if they went to the passion play, they would not be able to go to the liturgy of the Lord’s Passion on Good Friday at their parish.

They even checked the neighboring parishes. No luck . . . all were in the afternoon.

What to do? The passion play at the mega-church, with all the bells, whistles, costumes, rehearsed lines, good casts, moving songs, live animals, hard-to-get-into . . . or, the Good Friday liturgy at the parish?

They discussed it a lot. Finally he concluded, “Honey, I trust your judgment. Which one you think we should go to?”

The ball is in her court. She ponders awhile. “Well, we can either go to the play, and see how the passion happened a long time ago . . . or we can pray at the liturgy where the crucifixion is actually happening right now. I’d go with door # 2.”

Good choice.

Good theology, too, by the way. For we Catholics believe that the sacred liturgy is not just a nostalgic visit to an event that is over and done with, but an actual spiritual immersion into the eternal dying and rising of the Son of God.

The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is still going on, and one of the more effective ways we become part of that saving mystery is in the liturgy -- the official prayer and worship -- of the Church.

So, when the old African American spiritual hauntingly asks, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?”, we at the liturgy can reply, “yes!”

See you at Mass!

A blessed Holy Week and Easter!

Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan

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