"Fearful Yet Overjoyed": Triduum Offerings from TAC
Essays, poetry, and a podcast episode with Bishop John Stowe.
Looking ahead to this Sunday’s reading for the Easter feast of the Resurrection, one phrase leaps out at me. Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of James and Joseph, have just spoken with the angel who confirms that Jesus the crucified has been raised and commends them to go tell the news to the disciples. As they run from the tomb to Galilee, the evangelist describes them as “fearful yet overjoyed” (Matt 28:8)—a formulation that runs a whole gamut of emotions across the link of that little word yet.
“Fearful yet overjoyed” feels like an apt way to characterize our present state this Triduum. We look toward the resurrection, that ultimate manifestation of promise and renewal, across so much that is pained and fear inducing in our world. We watch as our leaders wage another catastrophic war abroad without even the pretense of consulting the American people, with ever-shifting motives and a propaganda campaign that abstracts the suffering of human life to the simulacrum of a video game—all of it backed by Crusade-like language founded on a heretical reading of the gospels. We watch the construction of a $350 million ballroom for pageantry and spectacle while people who will never be invited inside go without healthcare or housing. We watch as data centers and warehouses built on speculation pollute our air and water and devour precious open space—and, more scandalously, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement purchases and retrofits these same warehouses to hold human beings as if they were so much overstocked merchandise rather than individuals made in the image and likeness of God.
What unites all this is a deathly drive toward dehumanization, the exact opposite of the incarnate and resurrected Christ. It is seeing everything—people, resources, the land itself—as if it had no future, only a present to serve our immediate needs and impulses. Christ, in his earthly ministry and paschal mystery, breaks through this paradigm and shows us something beyond: the joy on the other side of fear that Thomas Merton called “the root of war.” It is the joy of service and self-gift that we see in the washing of the disciples’ feet on Holy Thursday, the joy that must hide itself in the agony of Gethsemane yet is still somehow latent in the accession to the Father’s will.
To help move us into this spirit of Easter joy, we’ve published this week a suite of Triduum-themed pieces: O’Neill D’Cruz, whose essays I’ve likened to “retreats in writing,” invites us to read the account of the Last Supper as a parable and experience more deeply the connection Jesus establishes between blessing and deed. Our podcast co-facilitator Barbara Mariconda reflects on carrying each other’s crosses and how we can’t heal in someone else what is still wounded in ourselves, while Gerard Garrigan, OSB, offers a related Good Friday–themed poem. We are also excited to share the latest episode of our podcast with Bishop John Stowe of the Diocese of Lexington, Kentucky, alongside his recent reflection from a prayer service at ICE headquarters on March 24. Bishop Stowe currently serves as bishop-president for Pax Christi USA, and both his reflection and the insights shared on our podcast challenge us to become peacemakers formed for and rooted in the virtue of solidarity. I would also point readers to the Holy Week pastoral letter issued by Bishop John Michael Botean of the Romanian Catholic Eparchy of St. George’s in Canton, Ohio, which makes a stirring appeal to the conscience to resist war and follow the way of Christ’s peace.
Several years ago, a correspondent signed an email to me with the closing salutation “Practice resurrection.” I still think of this often, especially this time of the liturgical year. It is not enough to call upon Easter hope and joy; we have to enter into it, to turn its promise back onto our broken world and let it shape our prayer and action. Like the two Marys in the gospel story, fear and joy must meet in an encounter with the resurrected Christ, whose first words to us remain: “Do not be afraid” (Matt 28:10).
Triduum blessings to all of our readers—we look forward to returning next week with more new offerings, both written and recorded.
Michael Centore
Editor, Tomorrow’s American Catholic