Friday, April 14, 2006
Consummatum est!
Good Friday was a religious nonevent in my childhood home. Our Catholic gramma-in-residence went to Mass but otherwise kept to herself on the matter. The most strictly traditionalist Catholic families in my town hung black drapes, & some R.C. kids reported a day of enforced silence, no TV, & a Lenten supper of the meanest ingredients & proportions of edible to inedible.. All observant Catholics took the day most seriously, & still do. Of course, these sacrifices, minor compared to being nailed to a cross, were made good on Sunday with a feast of ham & chocolate bunnies, & much much more in Italian homes. But Good Friday was the only totally dreary day on the Catholic religious calendar. (I didn't know any conservative Lutherans.)
Most protestant churches of that era in the 1950s deliberately avoided anything resembling latinate Roman Catholic or even "High church" Episcopalian practices. At my Methodist church, Holy Communion was reduced to a metaphorical exercise twice-removed from Catholicism. Not only was there no mysterious transubstantiation of wine & unleavened wafer into Christ's blood & body, we got little individual shot glasses of purple grape juice & tiny cubes of white bread. Hardly anyone treated it as something of central importance in congregational life comparable to, say, the annual smorgasbord, which drew a sellout crowd. This has all changed considerably over the years - some Methodists even do Ash Wednesday forehead smudging now. I give much of the credit for this relaxing of sectarian border defenses to the late great Pope John XXIII, a genuinely ecumenical soul who handed important parts of the church back to the people in the pews, made it clear that he loved everyone including American Methodists, & whose priceless legacy is under grievous threat from reactionaries inside & outside his Church. It may not be a coincidence that our only Catholic President was elected while Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli occupied the Big Chair at the Vatican.
So if you honor Good Friday as a necessarily sad day, you'll understand when I observe that while today in New Jersey also features an overcast sky & April showers, both the meteorological & spiritual forecasts for Sunday expect abundant sunshine with temps in the middle sixties.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
Most protestant churches of that era in the 1950s deliberately avoided anything resembling latinate Roman Catholic or even "High church" Episcopalian practices. At my Methodist church, Holy Communion was reduced to a metaphorical exercise twice-removed from Catholicism. Not only was there no mysterious transubstantiation of wine & unleavened wafer into Christ's blood & body, we got little individual shot glasses of purple grape juice & tiny cubes of white bread. Hardly anyone treated it as something of central importance in congregational life comparable to, say, the annual smorgasbord, which drew a sellout crowd. This has all changed considerably over the years - some Methodists even do Ash Wednesday forehead smudging now. I give much of the credit for this relaxing of sectarian border defenses to the late great Pope John XXIII, a genuinely ecumenical soul who handed important parts of the church back to the people in the pews, made it clear that he loved everyone including American Methodists, & whose priceless legacy is under grievous threat from reactionaries inside & outside his Church. It may not be a coincidence that our only Catholic President was elected while Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli occupied the Big Chair at the Vatican.
So if you honor Good Friday as a necessarily sad day, you'll understand when I observe that while today in New Jersey also features an overcast sky & April showers, both the meteorological & spiritual forecasts for Sunday expect abundant sunshine with temps in the middle sixties.
