Looking back at Holy Week

The pace of life around here has been hopping more than usual. Our upcoming move has something to do with that – there’s been paperwork to fill out, closets to clean out, a walk through with the housing officer who pointed out small repairs we have to patch, school arrangements to be made, online real estate to stare at, eyes glazing over, along with the mental fixation on “what needs to be done next.”

Holy Week offered a distraction from the minutiae of moving, but had its own activity. Wednesday we had three events at our house: Bible Study, a mother-daughter book club meeting, and the military spouses’ book club.  At least all three required only one day of cleaning and then maintenance.   

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The book club met to talk about Anna Karenina. It was a rowdy bunch – the group stayed till 10, talking and laughing and keeping my kids awake. The kids didn’t complain though. They love when ladies who don’t eat much come over with all their snacks and treats and leave the leftovers for them.  I tried to make Russian food, but everything I made had a flaw, except maybe the cabbage soup a la Russe, which was pretty yummy.  The pavlova, which took two attempts, tasted good but cracked when I tried to take it off the pan and melted under the fruit. The pirozhkis were a bit dry. And the cranberry/pickled beet relish was just weird.

Worst of all, I may have poisoned everyone. I tried to make this walnut honey dessert that never hardened even though I thought I was watching the temp on my candy thermometer. I ended up mixing it with poppy seeds and using it as a filling in crescent rolls. Russian right? The next day as I was washing the candy thermometer I realized the bulb was broken, and the mercury was stuck at 200 degrees. The box I kept it in had little beads of mercury rolling around in it. TOXINS!  I opened all the windows and threw everything out and prayed no one came down with mercury poisoning. At least the Chablis and champagne, choices inspired by Oblonsky’s picks at the club dinner with Levin, washed everything down smoothly.

At the meeting, we actually talked about the book  -  but more about adultery. I was surprised how many  of the women did not sympathize with Anna, but saw her as completely manipulative and mad. One lady tried to suggest maybe she had syphilis from Vronsky, but I can’t see support for that in the text. Vronsky was a flirt, but did he sleep around?   I felt a little sympathy for Anna, like Dolly does on her way to the country house.  We talked little about Levin’s conversion, although with the consummation of Anna’s passion in the first eighth of the book, the book seems to be more about her descent into madness and Levin’s learning to love and believe than the actual infidelity.  Wish I had referred to the text more during our meeting.

Before everyone came over, I spent a long time reading about Tolstoy himself. I read his Confessions years ago, but didn’t realize the parallels between his story and Levin’s, even though Tolstoy’s radical years come after the publication of Anna K. Apparently Tolstoy also wrote a letter to the Hindus in India that greatly influenced Gandhi.  It’s interesting that he was interested in their revolt when he is critical of the attention given to the Serbian war at the end of Anna K. Levin’s inability to come up with an answer to the multiplicity of faiths is prescient to Tolstoy’s own amalgamation of belief systems.  

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I was struck with my own feeling of inadequacy about expressing my faith Wednesday morning during Bible Study – We read the Easter Gospel, and one of the study questions was what would I say to convince someone to believe?  Why would I want to say anything? After reference to Scripture and history, how can you share faith? All I could come up with is that faith is a gift.

And at Adoration on Holy Thursday, I felt that. I felt the presence that seemed absent earlier in Lent. A product of my desire to feel it? I don’t know, and to a certain extent, even with more reflection, all I can really come up with to convince someone that Jesus exists is that love exists and that love that is sacrificial is true love. As my feet cramped up from kneeling, I realized how much I’ve missed adoration.  God has seemed distant, but it is I who has absented myself.  I have been too busy with entertainments to seek him in solitude.

In the small chapel, surrounded by my family, my neighbors, the rest of the congregation, the priest, the altar servers, the incense, on our knees facing the altar, the Monstrance, it was obvious that Love was there.

We spent the next three days surrounded by our Chapel community: Friday morning we hiked up Mt. Jumullong-Manglo, praying the stations of the cross. During the hike, my husband more than once told me to talk more quietly, to be more prayerful, but my heart was happy to see everyone there, to be with the crowd, and I couldn’t help talking in between stations. Even laughing. Helping carry babies. Snapping pictures. A beautiful morning.

That night we reconvened after rehydrating back at the chapel.  I love Good Friday. I was quiet at that service, but my focus was interrupted by the arrival of our new friends, a young JO couple who is just the kind of young Catholic couple that it makes you rejoice for the church to see: they are both reverent and happy, they both did a year of service overseas after college, which is how they met, they are earnest and interested and excited about homemaking. But they haven’t yet conceived a baby in 6 months of marriage. But in they walked with a new born, after we had hiked with them that morning. They had signed up for foster care and received their first charge straight from the hospital. The baby’s mother is incarcerated, and the baby was beautiful and tiny.  I wanted that baby!  So all during the service, I prayed for that baby, and other motherless children and homeless children and for openness to adoption or foster care in my own heart.  We didn’t linger after veneration, but headed to the back of the church to greet the baby and hold her. My kids asked all the way home for a baby.

Saturday was a day of preparation. We had a going away party to go to at the beach, but managed to get nearly everything ready for our own Easter party the next day.  While rapidly cooking and cleaning, I reminded myself that when a bunch of people are at your house, no one can really see the floor. 

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We finished up in time to get ready for the Vigil Mass at 7. A new spouse had asked me to be her sponsor, an honor I was moved to receive.  But I have to admit, I didn’t do very much for her.  Since there were only 3 candidates, they met with Father in a small group while I was teaching CCD.  None of the sponsors went to the meetings, and only one week were there scrutinies for the catechumens, and the sponsors weren’t asked to stand. At other churches we’ve been to, sponsors have been much more involved in the RCIA program, so I felt kind of lame. But I picked out a nice rosary, my husband painted a cross, and I bought George Weigel’s Letters to a Young Catholic, which I really liked.  Now to remind myself to continue to pray for and connect with my neophyte friend, even though we are moving away.

Is there anyone who doesn’t love the Easter Vigil? The darkness, the candlelight, the exsultet, the litany.  We didn’t get all the readings at our parish, but the service still felt momentous. The only thing I missed: a great Alleluia and a triumphant recessional.  Our choir doesn’t do triumphant. They like music that would be good at Lifeteen masses.

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Easter Sunday dawned beautiful.  Despite the late night, the kids were up early to hunt their Easter baskets and down some chocolate eggs before getting ready for Mass.  We decided to go again on Easter Sunday because our oldest had been away at a Linguafest in Okinawa and didn’t get home until Saturday night.  In the past I have been more generous with Easter gifts in an effort to make Easter as big of  a deal to the kids as Christmas. Gifts are perhaps not the right answer, and this year, with our impending move, and our limited shopping options, I did not overload the baskets. I even skimped a bit on candy.  But no one seemed to mind, and later in the afternoon we had our giant Easter egg hunt with dozens of overloaded plastic eggs. The money eggs were a bigger hit than the candy.

At the party, no one could see the floor. Bodies were everywhere. Food was everywhere else.  I hope everyone had fun. As hostess, it’s hard to tell. I try to move from group to group to visit a little with everyone, but then I don’t have meaningful conversations, and as soon as someone starts in on a long talk, I feel trapped because I’m worried someone else has no one to talk to. 

So at the end of the day, I felt that traditional post party depression.  We took a walk in the evening with the family, a peaceful close to a long day, high in emotion.   I question whether having a big party is spiritually wise – should we be more prayerful on this day?  But I want the day to stand apart, to be a celebration, to share the joy of the resurrection, the joy of coming out of the desert, of being redeemed.  As long as the party doesn’t make me more stressed than celebratory, I feel like hospitality is a form of evangelization.  This year I came close to being stressed, until Easter morning itself, when everything seemed to come together.