Holy Week

Famed comparative mythology guru, the late Joseph Campbell tells of the story of a social philosopher asking a Shinto Priest in Japan how the philosopher could not discern the Shinto ideology and theology after witnessing all the ceremonies and visiting all the shrines. The priest thought deeply and replied: “We do not have an ideology, or a theology. We dance.”

Born in the cultural milieu of the Graeco-Roman Empire, Christianity has been indelibly expressed in the art form of the theatre. Annually, the dramaturgy reaches its apex in this most important festival in the Christian Church, the Holy Week. This involves Jesus’ plebian journey on a donkey into Jerusalem, leading to his show of righteous indignation before the moneychangers in the temple grounds for defacing the house of worship. Illegally healing and teaching paradigm-shifting wisdom the rest of the week, he gathers his disciples on Maundy Thursday (Jesus mandatum, commands his disciples to “Love one another”) for their last meal. The Eucharist would be instituted for regular observance. They retire to Gethsemane where Jesus prays that the destiny that awaits him “pass over me.” Jesus’ arrest and midnight mock trial ensues. The Roman spectacle of public flogging and crucifying of a political rebel follows. The finality of consummatum est, “it is finished” is uttered. The completion is deemed “good,” thus, the name Good Friday. The body is taken down for burial and the sounds of silence permeate the Great Sabbath of Saturday, which is focused on the forgiveness of sin. The faithful would labor quietly to spring clean. Freshness and newness welcomes Easter (from the Anglo-Saxon spring goddess Eostre) Sunday, finding the powerful witness of the empty tomb and the affirming liturgical greeting, “Praise the Lord, Christ is Risen,” responded to in faith with great affirmation: “He is risen, indeed.” This is not history. It is high drama, saying: “If the Lord is risen, so am I!”

The history of the Christian Church is remarkable for its schisms as much as for its unity. Emperor Constantine split of the Empire to Rome West and Constantinople (Byzantium then, Istanbul today) would later result in the emergence of the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church. The ill-advised sacking of Constantinople and the looting of temples and shrines by the marauding Crusaders on their way to the Holy Land in 1204 C.E. sealed the division already set in place previously with the mutual excommunication in 1024 C.E. It took holding the Vatican II Ecumenical Council of the 1960s before this schism was rectified.

Today, the division within the seamless garb of Christ is rent down the middle between those, who literally adhere to canonical texts, religious dogmas and doctrines, and those who view the accretion of Christian tradition as appropriate metaphors in their assigned times. The former has become less applicable to the self-understanding of the faithful circa 3rd millennium C.E. than other explications reflecting the secular, scientific, and urban images of the times. The tradition itself warns against making its own icons, images, signs, and symbols to replace the immediate access to “profound reality,” or to partake of “life in the realm of spirit.” The impetus for reform has precisely been to counter rigid dogma and calcified doctrine.

Before ditching the baby with the bathwater, however, reformers of Christendom should revisit the wisdom behind the Christian liturgical year calendar. Prior to Holy Week is Lent, 40 days (Jesus? temptation in the desert) of fasting to divest oneself of the accretions of possessions and obsessions, tangible or intangible, that hinder the freedom of one’s spiritual life. The faithful are reminded that, “to dust you came, to dust you shall return.” Our mortality, our finitude is the gift of life. Received as a gift, it judges our illusions of false security and delusions of certitude. Fifty days after Easter is Pentecost when the spirit of freedom (Holy Spirit) descends on the gathered faithful to become the life-liberating and grace-dispensing instrument in the world.

The liturgical cycle offers a total understanding of life. Jesus’ life was deemed so complete that Good Friday on Holy Week is also celebrated as the day Jesus was conceived, to be born nine months later in December on Christmas Day. At the core of this understanding are two pillars. One, life is incarnate, given freely as a gift, taken freely on divine demand. It is good. Second, before life’s demands, life is best lived when spent on behalf of others. This is an invitation to the way life is, not a moral ought. Birth means dependence on others for sustenance. When grown, one takes care of the succeeding generation that they too must live. The first is the commandment to love God (YHWH, the only reality that is) with one’s all. The second is the command “to love your neighbor as yourself.” The Good Book says they are the same. The Christ message is a call to live one’s life in the above manner.

Were a Shinto priest to ask me what Christian Holy Week is about, I might answer: We rehearse the drama that life is good. It can be lived fully and completely (eternally). We invite participation (discipleship) in a human procession, a journey of the spirit that flowers human liberation and blooms social expressions of freedom. But for brevity, I’d say: “We play.”

In the ying-yang symbol of the East is the pivot point where peace resides while chaos swirl about. This image of the swirling radical radius emanating from the calm conserving center is the crossed logs of my Golgotha. What image holds your life’s journey?

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Vergara is a Social Studies 6th grade teacher at San Vicente Elementary School