[Sundaycommunity] column from Joan Chittister today

[Dwyer Sullivan]

Thank you, Elizabeth - a very meaningful and powerful message for us formed
in pre-Vatican !!.
Peace, Dwyer

On Thu, 8 Apr 2021 at 10:09, Elizabeth Whelan via Sundaycommunity <
sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca> wrote:

> Sharing these inspired and inspiring words of Joan Chittister.
> Elizabeth
>
>
> COVID-19 and Holy Week stretch us again, for the better
> Apr 8, 2021
> by Joan Chittister <https://www.ncronline.org/authors/joan-chittister>
> https://www.ncronline.org/news/coronavirus/where-i-stand/covid-19-and-holy-week-stretch-us-again-better
>
> [image: A worshipper wears a face mask to prevent the spread of COVID-19
> on Holy Thursday in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem's Old
> City April 1. This year, Joan Chittister celebrated Palm Sunday in a
> monastery still under a form of COVID-19 lockdown]
> A worshipper wears a face mask to prevent the spread of COVID-19 on Holy
> Thursday in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem's Old City April
> 1. This year, Joan Chittister celebrated Palm Sunday in a monastery still
> under a form of COVID-19 lockdown. She called it "the most beautiful,
> impacting Palm Sunday I had ever seen." (CNS/Ammar Awad, Reuters)
> Sunday, March 28, was Passion Sunday — Palm Sunday we call it now, in this
> era. Whatever generation you are, however you name it, this Sunday marks
> the opening of Holy Week. It is a liturgical narrative of the acme of the
> life of Jesus and his journey from the Galilee to the cross.
> It reminded us of that life of mystery and mystique. How Jesus got from a
> place of total adulation to total rejection — to the passion — was very
> hard to explain. But that was all right. We simply listened to the readings
> and went from one event to another till the long week ended in alleluias
> and jubilation.
> COVID-19 changed that now. And the question is: "to what effect?"
> Well, here at the monastery, at least, this introduction to Easter was the
> most beautiful, impacting Palm Sunday I had ever seen. Somehow or other, I
> had been made a part of it rather than a mere observer, listener, passerby.
> Our monastery, of course, is still in a reduced form of COVID-19 lockdown
> — meaning no one other than the sisters themselves are in chapel now for
> the Hours of Liturgical Prayer. Under normal conditions, oblates, friends,
> even guests from across the country, would be with us for it. The week
> would be a picture of the Christian community — priest, religious, laity —
> on pilgrimage to the bedrock of the church and the core of the Christian
> faith. It would be something we watch and hear and remember from years past.
> But even alone in the monastery chapel here and now, the concentration on
> one small segment of the Gospel took on special meaning. It was not a
> reiteration of a set of rubrics we had witnessed over and over from one
> year to another. Suddenly, this story became our story. It was the story of
> our own lives as Christians in the world rather than simply Christians in
> the church. It is, I realized in a different way this year, an important
> distinction.
> Even more significant, if your spiritual life was formed before the Second
> Vatican Council in 1962, before the shrinking of the culture of Catholic
> schools, daily Mass, Friday Stations of the Cross during Lent and CCD
> classes — which were all thriving parts of the spiritual psyche — it could
> seem like another world now. And in a sense, it is.
> The impact of all those differences is not only life-changing as far as
> the way the faith is lived. It is, in fact, a new way to see what it means
> to live the faith at all. If you are a pre-Vatican II Catholic, you were
> hardly more than 14 years old by the time you had been schooled to see Holy
> Week as a kind of memorial service embedded in the Mass. All of the
> readings, all of the hymns, all of the prayers are in your DNA. It's what
> we did. All the time. Every year. Over and over again. It was right and
> eternal and wrapped up and finished. But not now. And definitely not this
> year. Not in our own monastery chapel.
> Then, it was a system repeated over and over again. Now it is a moment to
> compare myself and my life in my time to the life of Jesus in his own time.
> This year, we were not simply repeating the rubrics of the church. We were
> embedding ourselves, our lives now in this country at this time in a story
> that was itself eternal, yes, but not simply replicated. Lived.
> The Jewish narrative of Passover reminds the Jewish community that YHWH
> has saved them and will go on saving them. So, too, the Christian narrative
> that is the basis of Palm Sunday's liturgy remembers that Jesus paid the
> ultimate price for choosing the needs of the people over the dictums of the
> authorities. Jesus lived on in the hearts and minds of the people who knew
> that the higher value is love for one another rather than institutional
> laws.
> It was that narrative that turned Palm Sunday at the monastery into the
> parallel between the life and suffering of Jesus then and the lives and
> sufferings of people today who are also being forgotten and ignored by
> today's authorities.
> Remembering that Jesus was a threat to the systems of first century
> Israel, it is obvious that Christianity today, thanks to Pope Leo XIII's
> encyclical *Rerum Novarum*
> <http://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html>
>  and the social teachings of the church that follow it, also threatens
> the social system as we know it. We know that the needs of too many are
> also being overlooked now. And here. We want the obvious problems to be
> recognized as a Christian imperative.
> And so, Palm Sunday liturgy at the monastery became a whole new awareness
> beyond the rubrics and outside of the Mass. It was embedded in the Gospel
> we use as a guide to determine the way we live our own lives now. Now it's
> about us and the needy and Jesus — not about the Catholic organization and
> the system and Jesus. We have to make it real.
> So, the community liturgy called out the situation of immigrants who walk
> thousands of miles for safety but are then being left unattended at the
> gates of our country. We noted that poor families in the United States of
> America can no longer afford to eat
> <https://www.feedingamerica.org/sites/default/files/2021-03/National%20Projections%20Brief_3.9.2021_0.pdf>
>  three times a day — and cited that in the liturgy. We followed Jesus and
> the disciples as they ate their last supper together — and ourselves tasted
> the pain of it and the story under the story that it made us see.
> We remembered that the apostles slept unconscious of what was happening to
> the world around them, as we ourselves so often do. We know that people
> have become homeless, been evicted even
> <https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/cdc-banned-evictions-those-affected-covid-why-are-tenants-being-n1251439>,
> for failing to pay rent or meet mortgages in the United States, the
> wealthiest country in the world. We mourned the fact that this country
> prefers a minimum wage to a living wage
> <https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/21/15-minimum-wage-wont-cover-living-costs-for-many-americans.html>
>  for people who must then work two jobs to maintain families hanging by a
> financial thread.
> These — and more — are also being crucified in this day and age as the
> wealth gap widens and moving from the lower class to the working class and
> the middle class becomes more and more difficult. Let alone to any degree
> of genuine financial independence and security at all.
> But what is also being demonstrated here is the difference between
> religion and faith. Between the role of the church as an institution and
> the place of the faith in the life of the seeker. The institution clearly
> can only carry us so far into faith. The rest of our souls we must attend
> to ourselves.
> At the end of the day, it is not the presence of clergy that determines
> the impact of the Gospel. It is not the canonicity of the rituals that
> define their spiritual value. It is not the present translation or the
> traditional format of ancient prayers that govern our lives as Christians
> in the world.
> And it is definitely not a return to medieval vestments, European birettas
> and cassocks or collars to declare the ontological predominance of priests
> — favored by some younger priests, these days, we're told — that will make
> the church, church. Going back to a period where priests were better
> educated than the laity and so the last word on everything did not before
> and will clearly not now certify the quality and character of our
> Catholicity.
> In fact, a by-product of COVID-19 — the lockdowns — make some astounding
> spiritual truths clear: No priest has celebrated a Mass in our monastery or
> led any rubric of the church there for over a year. Yet, the power of the
> prayer, the beauty of its pace and depth, the personal impact of the six
> scenes of Palm Sunday and the profound engrossment of every person there
> felt sharper, clearer, more personal than ever before. Or to put it another
> way, what the "tradition" imparted to us, came alive in our own age, our
> own way.
> It seems that the church — clerical, lay, elderly and young — who for far
> too long considered themselves spiritual children in need of parental
> direction, are all growing up. Faith, we are learning the hard way, is not
> assured by a repetition of old forms.
> The reality, I repeat, is this: The institution can only carry us so far.
> The rest of the journey is up to us to make out of its everlasting truths,
> not the mere repetition of old patterns done in old ways. We need to
> understand that now it's about us and the needy and Jesus — not about the
> Catholic organization and the system and Jesus. We have to make it real.
> Amma Syncletica <https://stgertrudes.org/meet-mystic-amma-syncletica/>,
> the fourth century Desert Mother said: "In the beginning there is struggle.
> ... But after that there is indescribable joy. It is just like building a
> fire: at first it is smoky and your eyes water, but later you get the
> desired result."
> From where I stand, the lockdowns of COVID-19 didn't deprive us of
> anything in the realm of faith. Instead, they are simply requiring us to
> dig deeper for spirituality ourselves — which is what we have always been
> meant to do but have allowed the institution to do for us.
>
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