By JAMES MONTI
The story has been told countless times for a century. As sunset descended upon London on Monday, August 3, 1914, just a day before England’s entry into World War I, two friends were gazing out the window of the British Foreign office contemplating the tranquil scene of the lamps in Saint James Park being set alight.
One of these two men, the British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, wistfully remarked, “The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our life-time” (Sir Edward Grey, Twenty-Five Years: 1892-1916, volume 2, London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1925, p. 20).
It was in the midst of the deepening confrontation between our Lord and the Pharisees that would culminate in His sacred Passion that He said to His disciples, “We must work the works of him who sent me, while it is day; night comes, when no one can work” (John 9:4).
For two thousand years, the onset of darkness has remained a powerful metaphor. Within the ambit of Holy Week we see it in the dramatic successive extinction of candlelight during the Office of Tenebrae. During the three days of Holy Thursday to Holy Saturday that Tenebrae commemorates, there comes also the extinction of a familiar sound.
As the Gloria is sung at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday, there is a festive yet strangely ominous eruption of bell-ringing. For when the Gloria is finished, the bells all fall silent, including the bell of consecration, the sacring bell. In fifteenth and sixteenth-century Spain, it was the custom when placing the Blessed Sacrament in the Repository at the end of the Eucharistic procession of Holy Thursday to place inside the urn-like tabernacle of the Repository also the sacring bell, to “bury” it there, as it where, a potent gesture symbolizing the cessation of Mass for the three days to come.
The Easter Triduum, it seems, has come early this year. In a twelfth-century English homily the Triduum was called the “still days,” the world coming to a standstill to contemplate the Passion and death of Christ. A great stillness and silence has descended upon much of our country, and most painfully upon our churches. For many of us, the sacring bell has fallen silent, and we do not know when we will hear it again.
Here in the New York area, the world has very much come to a virtual standstill. Deserted roads and parking lots, closed shops and empty commuter trains have become a surreal commonplace. Much of what has been unfolding has seemed like a modern realization, at least a modest one, of what the Lamentations of Jeremiah describe: “How lonely sits the city that was full of people! / . . . The roads to Zion mourn . . . / all her gates are desolate . . . / . . . we could not walk in our streets” (Lam. 1:1, 4; 4:18).
Then there are the strange scenes in the supermarkets. Seemingly overnight, shelves and even entire aisles that had been fully stocked have suddenly been stripped bare. For all that can be said about the irrationality of “panic-buying,” there is a certain pathos about it, revealing a very human and childlike dread of the unknown. This too has its counterpart in the words of Jeremiah: “They cry to their mothers, / ‘Where is bread and wine?’ / …the children beg for food, / but no one gives to them” (Lam. 2:12; 4:4).
There is reason for grave concern. As I write this, the number of coronavirus cases in the suburban county where I live has reached nearly 3,000, and in New York City to the south, the number is almost 15,000 and climbing. But most sobering of all is the tragedy of Italy, where the death toll from this plague has surpassed 5,500, with nearly 800 dying in a single day. One hospital chapel was filled with the caskets of the deceased.
“Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come . . . before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened . . . in the day when the keepers of the house tremble . . . and the grinders cease because they are few . . . and the doors of the street are shut; when the sound of the grinding is low, and one rises up at the voice of a bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low . . . before the silver cord is snapped, or the golden bowl is broken, or the pitcher is broken at the fountain . . . and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it” (Eccles. 12:1-4,6-7).
Little more than a month ago, at the Mass of Ash Wednesday, we heard the words from the Prophet Joel telling of God summoning His people to repentance, and Israel’s responding supplication for divine mercy:
“. . . Return to the Lord, your God. / For gracious and merciful is he . . . / and relenting in punishment. / Perhaps he will again relent . . . /. . . let the priests and the ministers of the Lord, weep, / And say, ‘Spare, O Lord, your people. . . ”
“Then the Lord was stirred to concern for his land and took pity on his people” (Lectionary for Mass, ©1997 ICEL).
Scarcely could we have imagined then that just a few weeks later we would find ourselves staggering under what surely seems a chastisement for us and the whole world, pleading like the people of Israel, “Spare, O Lord, your people.”
In 1678 the Irish bishop of Ferns Luke Waddinge penned a meditation upon the Christmastide deprivation of Mass that his countrymen were suffering as the English Protestant regime cracked down on Ireland’s Catholics, expelling almost all their priests. What he has to say about Christmas without Holy Mass we could equally say of our Lent without the Mass:
“As Jeremy [Jeremiah] sadly sat with tears for to lament / The temple desolate, her gold and glory spent; / So we do grieve and mourn to see no priest at Mass, / No lights on altars burn, this day of Christmas.
“No Mass heard this great day, no matins sung last night, / No bells to call to pray, no lamps, no taper light, / No chalice, no rich robes, no church, no chapel dress, / No vestments, precious copes, no holy water blessed” (“This is Our Christmas Day,” in Bishop Luke Waddinge, A Small Garland of Pious and Godly Songs, 1684).
Yet this Lent that has been transformed into a prolonged Good Friday offers us in a particularly intense manner the opportunity to realize just how much the Mass means to us. Like the cessation of Mass during the Easter Triduum, this absence, this glimpse of what a world without Christ would be, makes us hunger and thirst for our Lord and His Holy Sacrifice all the more: “As a hart longs for flowing streams, / so longs my soul for thee, O God… / When shall I come and behold the face of God?” (Psalm 42:1-2).
There is also in this time of trial and “monastic silence” the opportunity to deepen our bond with our Lord in the Tabernacle, to become acclimated to silent prayer before the Blessed Sacrament.
There has been one totally unexpected bit of “fallout” from this pandemic. Amid the stillness and silence, outside my window there has been the recurrent sound of little children squealing with joy as they enjoy the all-day company of their parents who have been compelled to stay home from work. Over the past week I have seen lots of young families, many with baby carriages, going for walks together.
We can hope and pray that as the weeks go on and these children grow accustomed to the happiness of having their “working mothers” home with them, these women will “fall in love” with being with their children 24/7 and become “stay-at-home” Moms.
While I was visiting the Blessed Sacrament on Sunday afternoon, a young Dad and his little girl came in to say the rosary together. The two of them genuflected with great reverence before entering the front pew. When they had finished their rosary, the girl, a child no older than five, eagerly led her father from one shrine to another in the church, with particular prayers she wanted to say at each. One could not help but be deeply moved that God would implant so much faith and ardent love in such a tiny soul.
The Hermitage Of Our Homes
Just two days earlier, while I was in the same church, a young African priest entered from the sacristy, dressed in his full clericals, and reverently genuflecting before the Tabernacle, opened it to place several Hosts in a pyx. Genuflecting again, he quickly left.
I could tell from his demeanor that there was a keen sense of urgency in his mission; I thought to myself that he must have been on his way to someone “in extremis.” Even with the epidemic, he was unafraid to continue carrying out his duties as an “alter Christus.”
These two simple incidents were a compelling reminder that even with the cessation of public Masses, the Church will endure. Her faithful priests will continue to offer the Holy Sacrifice on our behalf, albeit hidden from our eyes as was Moses when he entered the Tent of Meeting on behalf of the children of Israel. They will continue to go to the ill and the dying to bring them the sacraments. And faithful Catholic parents will continue to raise their children in the faith.
Easter, it seems, will be coming late this year, just as Good Friday has come early. But in the meantime, let us prepare ourselves for a particularly introspective Holy Week in the days ahead, a Holy Week we may well have to spend largely in the hermitage of our own homes, yet trusting that in God’s good time the ringing of the sacring bell will return to our churches.
“Remember, O Lord, what has befallen us” (Lam. 5:1).
“It is good that one should wait quietly / for the salvation of the Lord . . . Let him sit alone in silence, / when he has laid it on him” (Lam. 3:26, 28).
“. . . His mercies never come to an end; / they are new every morning” (Lam. 3:22).
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