If there is another Sunday, or indeed any day of the year, that has so many different names signifying so many different aspects of the day, I don’t know what it is.
It is finished →
Four weeks ago, when I wrote the first of these “From the Chapel” posts, all of the office workers at OSV had transitioned to working from home, and Mass had come to an end in our chapel. Ten days later, when we decided to close the rest of the facility temporarily, Msgr. Campion removed the host from the tabernacle, and I extinguished the sanctuary light. The chapel has been dark, and the tabernacle empty, ever since.
Today, on Good Friday, Catholic churches around the world have joined our little chapel. In a normal year, the absence of his presence, indicated by the lack of that flickering flame, cuts deep. This year, it is almost unbearably heartbreaking.
Hitting the wall →
Marathon runners talk about “hitting the wall.” It’s that point in the race — often around the 18-mile mark, but sometimes later — when the energy reserves in your body have been depleted, and you’re relying on the calories that you’re taking in as you run to get you all the way to mile 26.2. Most marathon training programs include nutritional advice to help you maximize those energy stores, and the tradition of carb-loading with a pasta dinner the night before the big race is, at its root, an attempt to give you what you need to power through the wall.
Having run four marathons, I can testify that hitting the wall isn’t a lot of fun. But the worst part about it is not the physical effects but the mental and spiritual challenge that it poses. After months of training, you’ve come to rely on yourself — and suddenly you realize that your ability to make it to the end of the race is no longer something you can control on your own.
Christ in our midst →
At the Easter Vigil, after weeks of Lenten Masses without the Gloria, the priest intones the opening words: “Gloria in excelsis Deo.” Then, as the choir and the rest of the congregation join in, every bell in the church is rung, and, if the church has a bell tower, those bells are tolled, too. The return of the Gloria is a glorious thing (no pun intended), and the ringing of the bells invites all who can hear them, both inside and outside the Church (in both senses of both words), to join in the joy of Christ’s resurrection.
About two weeks ago, I wrote that “In times like these — but not only in times like these — we need more bells in our lives,” to remind us both of our mortality (“It tolls for thee”) but also of our hope in the Resurrection.