Good Friday 2014: Liturgy of the Lord's Passion

The following pictures were taken during today's Liturgy of the Lord's Passion, at the Priory of the Holy Spirit, Oxford.

Chanting the Passion narrative from the Gospel according to St John

Unveiling the Holy Cross

The choir

 During the Veneration of the Holy Cross, the choir sang O Vos Omnes (Victoria), Drop, drop slow tears (Gibbons), Caligaverunt oculi mei (Victoria) and Adoramus te (Palestrina). The schola also sang Christus factus est, by Anerio, and the Cantors sang the 'Reproaches' sequence, whose first verse and refrain, in English translation, are as follows.

My people, what have I done to you? How have I offended you? Answer me! 

I led you out of Egypt, from slavery to freedom, but you led your Saviour to the cross. 

Holy is God! Holy and strong! Holy immortal One, have mercy on us.

Laying the high altar for Holy Communion

'Behold the wood of the Cross, on which was hung our salvation. Come, let us adore.'

The Easter Vigil will be celebrated tomorrow night at 10pm.

Tenebrae: Good Friday

Although the name of the 'Tenebrae' service (Matins and Lauds during the Triduum) derives from the extinguishing of the candles, leaving the church in darkness (tenebrae in Latin), it is also the name of one of the chants used. Tenebrae factae sunt, meaning 'darkness fell', uses texts from the Gospel accounts of the Crucifixion (Matthew 27:45-46; John 19:30; Luke 23:46).

This recording was made during this morning's service in the church at the Priory of the Holy Spirit, Oxford. The text is given in Latin and English below.


Tenebrae factae sunt, dum crucifixissent Jesum: 
et circa horam nonam exclamavit Jesus voce magna: 
Deus meus, Deus meus, ut quid me dereliquisti?
Et inclinato capite, emisit spiritum.

Cum ergo accepisset acetum, dixit:
Consummatum est.

Et inclinato capite, emisit spiritum.

Darkness fell when they crucified Jesus:
and about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice:
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
And bowing his head he gave up the ghost.

And when he had received the vinegar, he said:
It is finished.

And he bowed his head and gave up the ghost.

Tuesday of Holy Week: Brighton Rock, sin and the point of no return

Poster for the original (and best) film adaptation of Brighton Rock

William Holman Hunt - The Light of the World - Keble College

Readings: Isaiah 49:1-6; Psalm 70:1-6,15,17; John 13:21-33,36-38

In Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock, Pinkie Brown, the anti-hero, is keenly aware that the pattern of his life is leading him to damnation. He is constantly worried that come the hour of his death the opportunity of repentance will be denied to him. He becomes bitter against the world and against God considering that he must, in fact, have been pre-destined to hell. He is unable to see that it is his choices, his free will that is leading him along this path.

In the book there are three standout moments where a chink of light pierces into his life, offering the chance for a real conversion. The first comes when he reflects on his relationship with Rose - the bride he has taken to prevent her from testifying against him in court - he discovers, to his surprise, that he remembers it "without repulsion" and the possibility of affection for Rose occurs to him; "somewhere, like a beggar outside a shuttered house, tenderness stirred, but he was bound in a habit of hate".

The second occasion is in a bar, where Pinkie, never normally affectionate nor caring for anyone but himself, feels almost protective of Rose in response to the comments of wealthy men in the bar: "Tenderness came up to the very window and looked in". Yet once more he refuses to repent of his old ways and start afresh.

The third and final time is shortly afterwards as he drives away from the bar, Pinkie becomes aware of "an enormous emotion", likened to "something trying to get in; the pressure of gigantic wings against the glass. Dona nobis pacem...If the glass broke, if the beast - whatever it was - got in, God knows what it would do.” But once again the habits of hate and scorn are too hard to break. Jesus is knocking at the door, but as in William Holman Hunt’s famous painting, the handle is always on our side, he will never force his way into our lives.

There are parallels in today’s dramatic gospel which takes up the scene shortly after Jesus has washed his disciples’ feet and is foretelling his betrayal. When asked who will betray Him, Jesus says that it is the one to whom he will give the morsel when he has dipped it. This action far from making it inevitable that Judas will betray our Lord, shows Judas the path that he is taking. If in his greed or his frustrations with the reality of the Messiah, he is unthinkingly accepting money without thinking of the nature of the betrayal, here, in this intimate act of friendship and confidence – the dipping of bread and feeding to a friend – is his chance to open himself up to love once more. Yet Judas, like Pinkie, is unable to summon the courage to turn to the light; the darkness has become too familiar, too comfortable. Perhaps as he approached the chief priests to take their money, he paused one moment to consider once more what he was doing, yet felt he was just too far along now?

This is certainly something to which I can relate: times where it simply seems easier to carry through with wrong-headed decisions. Occasions where it is difficult to muster the strength to face the loss of face which comes with saying I was wrong and instead continued deceit seems simpler. It is easy to think that we have passed the point of no return and that we are committed to our sinful choices now. Yet this is the trap of the devil. Christ is constantly calling us to repentance; His mercy is never further from us than a turn of the heart.

We often use the phrase “the point of no return”, but when it comes to our sin, no matter how grave, this phrase has no place in the Catholic lexicon. We are not like the fallen angels, whilst we still breathe it is never too late to repent. Judas repented after his betrayal; he goes to give the money back. What compounds the tragedy of his actions, however, is that he no longer believes in forgiveness. As Pope Benedict wrote in volume two of his Jesus of Nazareth trilogy: “His remorse turns into despair. Now he sees only himself and his darkness; he no longer sees the light of Jesus, which can illumine and overcome the darkness. He shows us the wrong type of remorse: the type that is unable to hope, that sees only its own darkness, the type that is destructive . . . . Genuine remorse is marked by the certainty of hope, born of faith, in the superior power of the light that was made flesh in Jesus.”

Pope Francis leading by example as he makes his confession in St Peter's

So this Holy Week, let us reflect, repent and rejoice in God’s forgiveness through the sacrament of reconciliation. Let us follow the advice of Pope Francis: "Everyone say to himself: ‘When was the last time I went to confession?’ And if it has been a long time, don’t lose another day! Go, the priest will be good. And Jesus, (will be) there, and Jesus is better than the priests - Jesus receives you. He will receive you with so much love! Be courageous, and go to confession!”

Monday of Holy Week

Readings: Is 42:1-7; Ps 27; J 12:1-11

We have started Holy Week, the last days leading us to the most important Christian mysteries. The readings of this week allow us to undesrtand better the significance of these days. In today's Gospel we hear that Jesus, six days before Passover, came to Bethany where lived his friends - Mary, Martha and Lazarus. It was their last meeting. Jesus had a dinner with them. Martha served and Lazarus was reclining at table with him. But in this Gospel the most important and meaningful thing is Mary's action: "Mary took a litre of costly perfumed oil made from genuine aromatic nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and dried them with her hair; the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil" (John 12:3).

In ancient Israel anointing was a profoundly symbolic ritual act. Among thosewho were anointed in a special way, because of their role, were prophets, priests and kings. Mary anointed the feet of Jesus, these part of human body which are related to action. This is the beginning, a ritual initialization of what will happen in this Holy Week. Jesus himself announces these events saying that "this is for the day of his burial" (cf John 12:7), because according to Jewish tradition only the dead had their feet anointed. But this anointing is something more. It is a recognition in Jesus the Messiah. Jesus realized meaning and significance Mary's gestures. Thinking about his death and burial, he appreciates her act of anointing him as an anticipation of this honour and dignity, which his body inseparably linked with the mystery of his person, will have even after death. In this Holy Week Jesus reveal himself not only as the Messiah, but also as Priest, Prophet and King.

Thursday of the 5th Week of Lent: The true Temple

In today’s Gospel we find Jesus preaching in the Temple. Now not only was the Temple the heart of the Jewish religion of the period, it was also understood in the Jewish imagination to be the centre of the universe because it was the place where God had made his home on Earth. We can think of the Temple, then, as the point in which the moral, judicial, and liturgical dimensions of the Law of Moses intersect. The moral and judicial precepts instructed Israel on how to live in holiness and justice. The liturgical precepts offered Israel a way of undoing the sin and disobedience of humanity from our first parents onwards through the sacrifices, prayers, and thanksgiving of the Temple liturgy. Through the God-given precepts of the Law of Moses, then, Israel is made able to live with God and the point of contact between God and humanity is the Temple.

The Cross held aloft

Yet this undoing of sin that the Temple liturgy represents is incomplete. Whilst the Law of Moses draws those who keep it into a certain kind of life with God, neither this Law nor the Temple liturgy was able to overcome humanity’s fundamental alienation from God which is manifested in death. Now as John makes clear to his readers in his Gospel, this is because the Temple itself is only a sign or a figure of the true reconciliation between God and Man that will take place in the person of Jesus, the Word of God made flesh (John 1:14). Jesus is the true Temple, his humanity is the true place of grace, the true place of contact between God and humanity (John 2:19-21). 

In our Gospel reading, Jesus the true Temple declares, whilst standing in the Temple in Jerusalem which is itself a figure or a metaphor of his Incarnation, ‘whoever keeps my word will never see death’ (John 8:51). Those who keep the Word-made-flesh - those who hold on to Jesus - will live forever in friendship with God and friendship with the rest of humanity, because Jesus is God. The Law of Moses did not bring fullness of life because it was not a full share in the eternal and infinite life of God. In contrast, those who keep the Word made flesh enter into the true Temple and themselves become part of that Temple, members of Christ, ‘living stones build up into a spiritual house’ (1 Peter 2:5) which will stand for ever and ever.

Wednesday of the Fifth Week of Lent: Strange Gods and Modern Idols

Readings: Daniel 3:14-20,24-25,28; Canticle Daniel 3:52-56; John 8:31-42

In today’s first reading we can admire the fidelity and integrity of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, who refuse to submit to King Nebuchadnezzar’s command that they worship the golden statue that he had erected. Clearly their example is one that we should follow if confronted with the same circumstances, even when threatened with being burned to death as they were. We may think of the Christians who are being persecuted for our Faith each day, and perhaps this Lent we might think how we can help them more. Giving to charities like Aid to the Church in Need is one straightforward way in which we can show some solidarity with our fellow Christians. We might also do well to learn more about the grievous persecution of so many Christians in a world which seemingly holds out tolerance as its chief value. Titles such as John Allen’s The Global War on Christians and Rupert Shortt’s Christianophobia: A Faith Under Attack draw much-needed attention to the inconvenient truth which much of the secular press ignores. However, what at first sight we don’t really need to concern ourselves with is worship of a golden statue because that sort of thing does not happen in the 21^stcentury.

This casual dismissal of idolatry as a present concern is exactly what Elizabeth Scalia warns against in her excellent book Strange Gods: Unmasking the Idols of Everyday Life. She forcefully argues that whilst our present day idols are much less obvious, alarmingly, they are much “less distant and more ingrained in us”. The golden statue acted as a reflector of the ego of King Nebuchadnezzar, similarly the golden calf of the Jews in Exodus, and today’s modern idols do much the same.

Scalia writes that our modern idols begin with ideas and that “from there we shape them in the psyche, grow them in the ego, and then engage with them intimately, throughout our lives, in our families, our culture, our entertainments, and our political discourse. We create idols out of norms of behaviour, our material possessions, and social status. We even create them out of faith.”

One fascinating example of seeing our reflection in the idols we construct is found by Scalia in the great polarisation at the US 2008 elections. There were those who self-identified as “urbane, sophisticated, polished, and well-educated” that saw themselves in Barack Obama. At the other end of the spectrum were those who identified as “plain-speaking, hard-working, up from the middle classes” who saw themselves in Sarah Palin. In each case the idolisers were hyper-sensitive to any criticism of their preferred politician. Beyond any sane degree to be found in reality, they had allowed that candidate to represent them entirely and any criticism of the idol was thus viewed as personal to them.

Closer to home we might do well to think about how we speak about Pope Francis and Pope Benedict. There are vocal parties in the Church; some of whom hung on every word from Pope Benedict and now wish to underplay the role of the papacy, and there are those who had no time for anything that Pope Benedict sought to do, but who are now fawning over Pope Francis’s every gesture. We must be careful that we do not start ascribing greatness to people on the grounds that they happened to agree with us and creating a false dichotomy between the two Popes in the process. Perhaps our ascribing greatness should be more dependent on the degree to which either is able to encourage us to act with less self-interest and more faith in the manner of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego?

Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Lent: Snakes on the Plain

Readings: Numbers 21:4-9; John 8:21-30.

Few would accuse David R. Ellis of mis-selling his 2006 film Snakes on a Plane: the combination of snakes, an enclosed space and vulnerable human beings is certain to produce an action thriller. From behind the safety of the 'fourth wall' of the screen, of course, we can chuckle at the ridiculous ways the passengers respond to the serpentine threat (dare I suggest the film was also intended as something of a dark comedy?)... but if a snake were to transgress that boundary we can be sure that all laughter would cease and we too would inevitably be caught up in the panic. Indeed, it's easy to sense the panic of the Israelites in today's first reading, trapped as they are on a plain and surrounded by venomous serpents, how could they not be filled with gratitude for God's provision of an antidote, the fiery bronze serpent crafted by Moses and lifted up as a sign of salvation and hope? 

Thankfully, we're fairly unlikely to find ourselves surrounded by venomous snakes of the literal variety. Nonetheless, we too are surrounded by the chaos wrought by the first serpent, the tempter of Genesis 3, through whose enticements suffering, sin and death first entered the world. If we could take a step outside the 'fourth wall' and view the cycle of sin and suffering from God's perspective, I imagine that at times we'd look as chaotic as the panic-stricken passengers of Snakes on a Plane. But try as we might to avoid getting contaminated by sin (like the passenger "Three Gs", who refuses even to touch another person without sanitising his hands), we are inevitably bound up in a world scourged and damaged by our sins and those of our fellow sojourners. Whereas the passengers try to simply hide themselves from the threat (Flynn announces "We need to put a barrier between us and the snakes!"), what is really needed is not only an anti-venom but an ultimate defeat. Salvation must break in from outside the cycles of sin, but it must also break out from inside: what is needed is the incarnation, God's entry into human history without contamination by sin, opening the life of God to man and the life of man to God. 

Indeed, as St. John stresses in today's gospel, God - who stands over and against all the chaotic structures of sin and human disorder - has intervened to lift up for humanity a definitive sign of salvation: his own crucified son, a sign that both points forward to the life of the world to come, and makes that life possible by opening up for us a route out of self-destruction. Whereas the Israelites cast their eyes on the serpent made of molten precious metal, we look to a crucified man as the sign of our hope: the crucified God-man, lifted up before our eyes on the cross, rejected and despised, devalued and discarded. 

Jesus's description of his death as a 'lifting up' simultaneously connects the crucifixion to the Israelite's sign of salvation whilst pointing forward to Christ's 'lifting up' at the resurrection and the consummation wrought by the 'lifting up' of the ascension. Whereas the serpent is repeatedly lifted up, Christ is lifted on the cross but once, a single and unrepeatable offering that is re-presented each time the priest 'lifts up' Our Lord in the celebration of Holy Mass, an oblation that makes possible the many resurrections of the world to come. "The Glory of God is a man fully alive", as St. Irenaeus said. But the paradox of faith is that in order to have our eyes opened to that reality, we have to first fix our eyes on a man fully deceased.