Mothers Group Reflection #21: Living the Paschal Mystery All Year Long

I don’t know about you, but as hard as Lent can be, it is my absolute favorite time of the year. I love everything about it. The hunger for God that is encouraged by the sacrifices that we give. The sense of community created by all the events of the season, such as weekly soup suppers, Stations of the Cross, and who can forget Holy Week! We come together in a unique way and walk this journey together, building up to the beautiful Holy Week services, as we walk with Jesus through the Passion narratives. Together we relive the story of a redeemer who loved us so much He became one of us in order to teach us how to really love, and to sacrifice Himself in our place so that we can be with Him always. What love story on earth could possibly compare?

There is a beautiful, but it seems, relatively unknown tradition still within the Catholic Church that I discovered several years back. Many of you may be aware of it already, but as I am not hearing about it as a general rule, it seems worth mentioning. I don’t know about you, but I always feel let down after Easter Sunday, when life suddenly slows a lot. Although we have Divine Mercy Sunday and Pentecost and the joy of the easter weeks, I feel a lot like a kid the day after Christmas. 364 shopping days until next Christmas. 364 days left until my favorite day of the year! Ugh!

It seems there is a provision for this though. As beautiful as Easter is, we were meant to live this Paschal mystery all year long. Each Sunday is a celebration of the resurrection! Each Sunday is a day to join together to remember this sacrifice and the defeat of sin and death and to REJOICE! Yet, there is something else...each week we can walk that road again and remember the events leading up to that day as well. It helps us to remember that while Jesus was victorious over sin and death, we are still living in a world where suffering a death are part of reality. We live in hope for that glorious day when every tear will be wiped away, while trusting Jesus to give us the strength to get through the difficult process of sanctification.

It used to be that Catholics did not eat meat on Fridays as a general rule, as an act of penance for sin throughout the entire year, to draw our hearts closer to God. This seems to have gone away in large part, as I understand it, because it isn’t really that big a sacrifice for us in this culture and time, but also because we do not have the same associations with meat anymore, such as it being something specially used on feast days. However, what does not seem to be commonly known is that the practice of the Friday act of penance did not go away. Although we are not required to abstain from meat in particular, we are asked to remember this weekly day of penance and find some suitable practice of penance on Fridays, as we recall the death of Jesus on the cross. This is meant as an encouragement to our faith life, as a weekly call to conversion on our journey with Christ, as we unite our sufferings with His. I encourage you to read the rest of the article associated with this quote if you have not done so already. It explains in much more detail the changes in the Catholic Church regarding this tradition:

“Gratefully remembering this, Catholic peoples from time immemorial have set apart Friday for special penitential observance by which they gladly suffer with Christ that they may one day be glorified with Him. This is the heart of the tradition of abstinence from meat on Friday where that tradition has been observed in the holy Catholic Church.”

http://www.usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/liturgical-year/lent/us-bishops-pastoral-statement-on-penance-and-abstinence.cfm

You can also find a brief description of the practice of penance in the life of the Christian in the Catechism:

“The seasons and days of penance in the course of the liturgical year (Lent, and each Friday in memory of the death of the Lord) are intense moments of the Church's penitential practice. These times are particularly appropriate for spiritual exercises, penitential liturgies, pilgrimages as signs of penance, voluntary self-denial such as fasting and almsgiving, and fraternal sharing (charitable and missionary works)." CCC 1438

I was first introduced to this idea on a silent retreat several years ago. It was an Ignatian retreat from Thursday to Sunday based around the idea of the Paschal mystery, which is just another way of saying “Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection.” It took place during Lent, and I didn’t even realize that the entire retreat had been organized around this idea, that we were walking the road to Calvary from the Last Supper to the Easter celebration, as the retreat progressed. But I will never forget on Saturday evening, as a new Catholic, when it suddenly dawned on me what was happening and the exact thought going through my mind was, “Tomorrow will be Easter!!” For some reason, unknown to me at the time, I had packed an extra outfit in case I decided to dress up for Sunday Mass (which was not usually done on retreat since the whole point was rest). I rose that morning with an indescribable joy in my heart as I looked forward to that celebration. Of course, it wasn’t actually Easter, but that was exactly the point. Every Sunday can have that joy when we are really prepared to celebrate it that way. Of course, this didn't happen by accident but because of the preparation for that Sunday Mass. The time we took to review our lives, recall and confess our sins, to prepare for the readings on Sunday, and to reorient our lives toward Christ from whatever had led us off track during the preceding week, etc.

This practice is a great opportunity for us to continue to recall our Lord’s passion and to stay close to the mysteries of His death, burial and resurrection, and to not just relegate it to Holy Week. And there are many great ways of doing this. Maybe for you that can be something as simple as fasting from some indulgence or adding more prayer that day for others and especially for our Church. Maybe it could be an act of charity or service for others. This can be a time to join with our families in recalling Christ’s sacrifice and in creating a sense of solidarity with others.

Fasting has long been a part of our tradition, dating back to Jewish times and was even mentioned by Jesus Himself, as something we will continue to do to this day, in Luke 5:35, “The days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.”

If you are not incorporating this practice already, I hope you will find as much joy in it as I do, as together, we walk the weekly journey in remembrance of Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection and then share that joy with others.

Thoughts for further reflection:

How can you continue to live the Paschal mystery each week in your own life? What sacrifice could you give on Fridays as you recall Jesus’ suffering and death for ours sins?