Br. Robert Leo Sevensky, OHC
As my brothers can attest, I am something of a liturgy wonk. I find reading about the development of public worship in our Christian tradition to be both fascinating and, for the most part, edifying. And this should come as no surprise. After all, I'm the kid who at the age of 12 or 13 bought four leather-bound volumes of the Roman Breviary at the local Salvation Army thrift store for 25 cents a volume. Even at that age, I could recognize a bargain. The only challenge was that the books were in Latin. So I started to study the language bit by bit. It's a long story, but I was able to swap the four volumes for the one-volume Monastic Diurnal in English. It was a swap, I’m afraid, that I'm not exactly proud of. Of course, reading about liturgies is quite different from taking part in them, though I rarely passed up a chance to attend one. And now with live stream and YouTube, one can explore an exotic array of liturgical expressions. And I confess I've done it and still do.
I was surprised then when I recently discovered a rather arcane ritual that takes place on Maundy Thursday at Durham Cathedral in the north of England. The ritual, known as the Judas cup ceremony and described in the Cathedral service leaflet, has its origins in the 14th century. It was abolished at the time of the Reformation but was reinstated a generation or so ago. The Dean and members of the cathedral chapter gather around a small table. The Dean then takes a sip of wine from the cup, one of those shallow cups without handles, and then addresses the individual members of the chapter saying to them, “One of you will betray me.” Each member replies with “Surely not I” as they too take a sip of wine from the cup mirroring the scene from the Last Supper. The description continues: “Research from theologian Prof. Douglas Davies notes how the cup used in the 14th century featured the face of Judas at the bottom of the bowl, so when monks drank from it, they could see their own faces reflected into that of the traitor.”
This ceremony, this ritual of the Judas cup, speaks directly to the ambiguity and the power of this night, especially when juxtaposed with our drinking from another cup, the cup of salvation, at the bottom of which is the image of our saving Lord. For when we look into both these cups, we see something about ourselves, truths that are perhaps diametrically opposed and from which we shrink back from acknowledging, but which nonetheless capture the tension of our human condition.
First there is the image of Judas the traitor. Judas, a member of Jesus’ inner cohort. Judas, the treasurer and money manager. Judas, who for all we know had his own history of abuse, disappointments, and woes. And at some level, each of us sees ourselves in that Judas cup. If we live long enough--and it doesn't have to be very long-- we come to know ourselves as betrayers: betrayers of others, even (perhaps especially) those close to us. Betrayers of ourselves when we fail to live up to or to act in harmony with what we know to be our better selves, our treasured values, our own well-being. And then of course there is the betrayal of God wherein we, at one level or another, reject God's love and the path it opens for us, most often because we're too afraid of its demands, too afraid of what it might call forth in us. Yes, the Judas cup. We know it all too well.
But there's that other cup. I'll call it the Jesus cup. It is the cup given to us by him on this night in which he was betrayed, a cup to stare into as we drink. And the promise made with that cup lies at its bottom. It is the very image given us at the bottom of the cup. It is the image of Jesus who is himself the perfect image of God and who reminds us that we too share that cup with him, we who are made in the image and likeness of God…just as Judas was. There is a teaching in Buddhism which talks about discovering one's true face. I wonder if this cup isn't our Christian correlate. Staring into the cup of Jesus, which is the cup of suffering as well as of joy, we catch a glimpse of our own true face which we and our human society have been working to distort and mar. The good news is that we and they have not been totally successful. Our face may remain wizened by age and experience, but it is redeemed and preserved by a great love, the same love that led Jesus to the cross. It is that cross that leads Jesus to the grave and to the overcoming of death that we celebrate and participate in over these Three Great Days.
I used to worry about how we should properly celebrate these days. And being a liturgy wonk, I used to have the right answers. At first, of course, it was 16th century Tridentine Roman ritual. Or maybe it was 4th century Jerusalem. Or perhaps it was in those exotic processions that are held to this day in Mediterranean and Hispanic cultures where hooded marchers carry larger than life-sized statues of our Lord and his Sorrowful Mother. Or was it in my youth when we buried of a statue of the dead Jesus in a symbolic tomb on Good Friday at 3:00? Or crouching under the burial shroud as in the Eastern Byzantine tradition? But whatever the way we observe these days, I think the lesson is the same: This is not something we do. This is something God does.
Many years ago, I was on a private directed retreat and was assigned to meditate on the gospel passage of the taking down from the cross. I was encouraged to become imaginatively engaged with the passage, and as I did, I found myself increasingly anxious. There was Mary at the foot of the cross with some disciples, struggling to get the body down from the cross. People were running around helter-skelter. And there was Mary holding the body of her son. And as is my wont, I started to say: “What should I do? What should I do? I don't know what I should do.” And Mary looked up at me and said: “Why don't you just stand there and watch? Why don't you just stand there and watch?” I've taken this advice to heart, though not, I fear, often enough. But I think it's good advice for us all as we enter this time, these days, this journey, this mystical accompaniment. Our first and primary duty is to stand there and watch. To bear witness. To see and hear and touch and taste. We don't have to manufacture a religious experience. If God wants to gift us with that, God will do so. I've learned over the years to trust that liturgy, in all its diversity and power, can carry us to where we need to go.
We're entering a strange time right now, entering what is often called liturgical time, Kairos time, God's time. It is time not measured by the clock but measured via all the actions and emotions of these days. In a sense, we now leave the calendar at April 17, in the year of our Lord 2025, that is today, and we won't pick it up again until Easter Sunday morning, April 20, 2025, when we celebrate with another series of liturgical observances the festival of our deliverance and freedom as beloved children of God.
Some of you may remember the television series The Twilight Zone. It started airing about 1960 and went for five seasons. It's considered one of the groundbreaking science fiction/alternative fiction dramas of our age. The genius behind it was a man named Rod Serling. At the beginning of each episode Mr. Serling would offer an introduction. It changed over the years, but one of my favorite forms of it is the following:
There is fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone.
The Twilight Zone is not perhaps a perfect description of these three days, this Sacred Triduum, but it comes close. For in these days, we are cast into light as well as darkness, we are suspended between our fears and our hopes and our deepest knowing, and we are invited and encouraged to dwell there imaginatively, with loving curiosity and open hearts and minds. And by the end of this Triduum, in ways large or subtle, God will bring you and me out of the twilight and into the dawn of another Easter morning. Yes: fire, sunrise, flowers, and feasting. That’s the way it happens. And thank God that it does happen. So let us begin, my friends, let us be on our way. The Lord awaits our arrival.
