HOLY WEEK: THE LIBERATION OF LUZ

Luz was a natural leader. Every year she got thirty to forty women to come on retreat from Holy Thursday to the Easter Vigil. She and I had a lot in common. She was two months older than I. She loved baseball; she had read John R. Tunnis' baseball novels as a girl in southern Texas. She loved ritual prayer, music and dance. She treasured her faith.

We had little in common. She said to me, "Juanito, you don't know about it. In Texas a Mexican, even if American, is lower than dirt." Luz finished high school and married. In three years she had three children. Most days she spent a few hours picking crops as well as tending the children and the house. Her husband drank and beat her. One time she was so brutally beaten that she almost lost her left eye. Another time her husband beat her so badly that her brothers threatened to kill him. Luz finally ran away with her children and escaped to the north. Other women helped her. She eventually finished her B.A. and RN.

Luz never lost faith. She was deeply devoted to Christ crucified. She said that she had united her pain with Christ's own agony and that had sustained her during her darkest moments. She had the courage to live out the passover of the Lord in her own flesh.

Holy Week is a special time for us Christians. We begin the week by making memory of the glorious entry of Jesus into the holy city, Jerusalem. On Passion Sunday we are given palms and we proclaim the passion of Jesus fully. Once Lent ends on Holy Thursday, we enter into the triduum celebration of the glorious passover of the Lord.

The Paschal or Easter Triduum is not about the supper meal on one night, then the cross death on the next afternoon, and an empty tomb and resurrection on the Easter Vigil and day. The triduum is about the glorious passover of the Lord manifested distinctly on each day. The unity of these days is expressed in three distinct, yet inter-connected liturgies.

On Holy Thursday evening we hear John's gospel account of the footwashing Jesus did at the last supper. Those whose feet were washed participate in the liberating power of His cross death on Good Friday and the liberating power of His resurrection on the Easter Vigil night. This is the historical reality our liturgical ritual is rooted in. The past is not acted out as if it were a dramatic play. We are not repeating a two thousand year old passion play.

Instead we are ritually praying how the Lord's glorious passover is liberating us. We are branches united with the vine who is the risen, though once crucified Lord. We are his body, an assembly whose service is foot washing, whose polity intends to be egalitarian, whose pain unites with the cross kissed and literally adhered to, and whose liberation hope shines brilliantly at the open door of the empty tomb.

The Triduum is about God's Spirit effecting liberation in us today. The Triduum is about the Lord's liberating cross and resurrection of the Lord enfleshed in us today. The Triduum is Christ's light banishing personal and social darkness in us today.