Triduum

Thursday evening began the Easter Triduum, the final three days of Holy Week, and of Lent, leading up to the holiest day of the Christian calendar. During Triduum, we attempt to understand what Christ has already showed us. Most Christians have an easy understanding of Easter: God showed his power over death, and promised the same power to us as a gift. What is not easy to understand, in fact what is the great Christian mystery, is why all that other stuff had to happen beforehand. Why did the road to our salvation involve the Cross? God being God, could he not have saved us in an easier way? My own understanding of how God works is that he does things the way they must be done. Other seemingly easier ways could not work, could not accomplish the task. In our thirst for God, we thirst for knowledge of Him. We want to know the "why" of His ways. Christ himself, in his prayers in the garden of Gethsemane prior to His Passion (Mark 14:32-36), demonstrated the difficulty that all humans have in understanding and accepting what must be.

Using Christ in the garden as our model, we pray for understanding, but must be prepared to accept what we can't understand. Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6). To partake in that promised gift that is His Life, we must accept His Way and His Truth. Holy Thursday is also called Maundy Thursday from the Latin Bible's description of the mandate Christ gave his Apostles as he washed their feet at the Last Supper (John 13:34): "love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another." That "new commandment" is an encapsulation of His Truth. Over the course of the next day, Jesus gave the strongest demonstration of how we should love one another, of what is the Way: Take up your cross. Love unto death.

Pope Benedict's first encyclical letter was entitled "Deus Caritas Est". God is love. In his message on the Easter Triduum, he explains how this great love is demonstrated in the acts we remember this weekend.

[Hat Tip Jimmy Akin.]