Holy Saturday 2025: " O night, my finest invention ..."

 If we read the last pages of Charles Peguy's The Portal of the Mystery of Hope we might, at a first glance, feel that he is ending his poem about "the little girl hope" with a reflection on the death and burial of Jesus. However, if we start our reading a few pages earlier, we encounter the beginning of a reflection on the theme of night that becomes, at the end, to focus on one night alone.

He starts with night as a part of God's creation - remember that it is the voice of God who speaks through the narrator of the play that is The Portal .. :

Nights follow each other and are linked together and for the child, 

nights are continuous and form the very basis of his being.

He falls back on them. They are the very basis of his life.
They are his being itself. Night is the place, night is the being 

wherein the child bathes, wherein his is nourished, wherein he is 

created, wherein he is made....

 

Night is the place, night is the being wherein he rests, wherein he 

retires, wherein he collects himself.

Wherein he comes home. And leaves again refreshed. Night is my most 

beautiful creation...

Night is for my children and for my young

Hope what it is in reality. Children are the ones who see and who 

know. My young hope is the one who sees and who knows. 

What being is.

And a couple of pages later there is an announcement of night as the place of hope :

O night, my finest invention, my most noble creation of all.

My most beautiful creature. Creature of the greatest Hope.
You give the most substance to Hope.

You are the instrument, you are the very substance and the 

dwelling-place of Hope.

And also, (and thus), you are ultimately the creature of the greatest 

Charity.

Because it's you who gently rock the whole of Creation
Into a restoring Sleep.

 And in the last two pages, the hymn to that one night that was like no other:

But above all, Night, you remind me of that night.
And I will remember it eternally.
The ninth hour had sounded. It was in the country of my people of 

Israel.

It was all over. The enormous adventure.
From the sixth hour to the ninth hour there had been darkness 

covering the entire countryside.

Everything was finished. Let's not talk about it anymore. It hurts me to 

think about it.

My son's incredible descent among men.
Into their midst....

Those three years that he was a sort of preacher among men.
A priest.
Those three days when he fell victim to men.
Among men.
Those three nights when he was dead in the midst of men
Dead among the dead....

It was then, o night, that you arrived.

O my daughter, my most precious among them all, and it is still before 

my eyes and it will remain before my eyes for all eternity.

It was then, o Night, that you came and, in a great shroud, you buried
The Centurion and his Romans,
The Virgin and the holy women,
And that mountain, and that valley, upon which the evening was 

descending,

And my people of Israel and sinners and, with them, he who was 

dying, he who had died for them.

And the men sent by Joseph of Arimathea who were already a

approaching

Bearing the white shroud.

The Church celebrates that night which gives substance to Hope in the Easter Vigil, where the Exultet sings its praise with the repeated invocation - "This is the night" - and its praise of the "night that shall be as bright as day",  the "truly blessed night", the night that is "your night of grace".

Pope Francis' Chrism Mass homily 2021

 The text of Pope Francis' homily at the Chrism Mass this morning (Holy Thursday) can be found at the website of the Holy See: Homily of His Holiness Pope Francis. 

Though I usually encourage a reading of the whole, rather than just focussing on a particular passage, there is a section of this homily that particularly appeals to me. Pope Francis refers to St Ignatius Loyola's Spiritual Exercises - "excuse the family advertising", he adds in passing - where there is a meditation on the Nativity of the Lord. 

There [St Ignatius] invites us “to see and consider what Saint Joseph and Our Lady did in setting out on their journey so that the Lord could be born in extreme poverty and after many labours – experiencing hunger, thirst, heat and cold, injuries and indignities – die on the Cross, and all this for me”. He then invites us, “in reflecting on this, to draw some spiritual profit” (Spiritual Exercises, 116). The joy of the Lord’s birth; the pain of the Cross; persecution.

In a first thought reflecting on this meditation, Pope Francis says:

All this makes us realize that the mystery of the cross is present “from the beginning”. It makes us understand that the cross is not an afterthought, something that happened by chance in the Lord’s life. It is true that all who crucify others throughout history would have the cross appear as collateral damage, but that is not the case: the cross does not appear by chance. The great and small crosses of humanity, the crosses of each of us, do not appear by chance. 

But it is Pope Francis' second thought that caught my attention most:

A second thought: true, there is an aspect of the cross that is an integral part of our human condition, our limits and our frailty. Yet it is also true that something happens on the Cross that does not have to do with our human weakness but is the bite of the serpent, who, seeing the crucified Lord defenceless, bites him in an attempt to poison and undo all his work. A bite that tries to scandalize – and this is an era of scandals – a bite that seeks to disable and render futile and meaningless all service and loving sacrifice for others. It is the venom of the evil one who keeps insisting: save yourself.

It is in this harsh and painful “bite” that seeks to bring death, that God’s triumph is ultimately seen. Saint Maximus the Confessor tells us that in the crucified Jesus a reversal took place. In biting the flesh of the Lord, the devil did not poison him, for in him he encountered only infinite meekness and obedience to the will of the Father. Instead, caught by the hook of the cross, he devoured the flesh of the Lord, which proved poisonous to him, whereas for us it was to be the antidote that neutralizes the power of the evil one. 

The Easter Triduum: the washing of the feet

The washing of the feet at the Mass of the Lord's Supper has become a bit of minefield. There seem to me to be two areas of discussion which have the effect of taking away from this rite its authentic meaning.

The first area of discussion is rubrical, and has to do with the fact that the rubric expects that it will be men - male gender - who will be chosen to have their feet washed. As soon as the question is asked about the possibility of women being among those having their feet washed, a new agenda of male/female equality is imposed onto the rite, when the rite itself can make no sense of such an agenda. This is so even if the parish priest declines the request, and takes the subsequent flak. One priest's response to this is to choose this year to omit the rite of the washing of the feet .

The second area of discussion (which, in the realities of parish life, often occurs along with the first) is to see in the Mass of the Lord's Supper an indiscriminate celebration of ministries of all kinds in the Church. The Mass of the Lord's Supper then becomes the occasion for the renewal of commitment or calling of lay ministers of Holy Communion, readers, and so on. This question is raised in this discussion, particularly in my own comment, though the discussion focusses mainly on the role of extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion. This is all based on seeing the rite of the washing of the feet as a symbol of "service" in the Church, "service" being understood in a wide and all-embracing way. There are certainly times when it is appropriate to place the celebration of a blessing or induction for a particular ministry into a liturgical celebration such as Mass. But usually this will be a celebration of Mass on an occasion when the Mass does not have an exceptional character of its own. The Mass of the Lord's Supper does have a quite exceptional character of its own, which I think militates against such an addition of para-liturgical celebrations - such additions or insertions just "don't belong".

The key to getting this right seems to me to be the rubric in the Missal that refers to the homily during the Mass of the Lord's Supper:

The homily should explain the principal mysteries which are commemorated in this Mass; the institution of the Eucharist, the institution of the priesthood, and Christ's commandment to brotherly love.

1. As a celebration of the institution of the ordained priesthood, it is not appropriate to see in the Mass of the Lord's Supper a celebration of other (lay) ministries. It is an utter derogation from the meaning of this liturgical celebration properly understood. This removes the second area of discussion mentioned above.

2. The commandment to brotherly love needs to be seen as a celebration of Jesus's love shown towards the Twelve; the love of Jesus (its Head) towards the Church (his Body, represented in the Apostles); and the love of Jesus towards the Church that is continued today and expressed in the service of the priest towards his people. The integrity of this representation needs men to be chosen to have their feet washed, so that the service of Jesus to the figures of the Church is correctly represented. This removes the first area of discussion mentioned above.

To summarise, from memory, the homily that I heard yesterday evening.

Jesus loves those who were his own "to the end". He wants to give himself to them, definitively and for ever. So he hands himself over to them in his Body and Blood that are the Eucharist; and he hands himself over to them in the Church, represented by the Apostles. Jesus still loves us "to the end" in the Church. He needs priests, the Church needs priests, for this to occur in the Sacraments, and most especially in the Eucharist. This is the service of the priest to his parish - in celebrating the Sacraments and most especially the Eucharist. The washing of feet by the priest represents this service of the priest to the parish.

The sense of "Christ's commandment of brotherly love" referred to in the rubric on the homily is therefore profoundly related to the priesthood as the visible sign and existential realisation of that love. And this is the correct sense of the rite of the washing of feet.