The Triduum, the three days, in which one liturgy is celebrated, is the most powerful liturgy of the liturgical year. Every aspect of human life is celebrated, from birth to death to resurrection, and joined to that of Jesus’ own Paschal journey. From the sharing in the Divine Covenant at the institution of the Last Supper on Holy Thursday, the triumphal death of Jesus on the cross, in which the cross no longer symbolizes defeat, but rather victory, to the resurrection, the ultimate healing and sealing of humanity’s relationship with God in Jesus Christ. This year as I celebrated these three days in the entirety of the parish of St. Wenceslaus, I experienced most profoundly the Communion of the Saints.
As I stood by the baptismal font during the singing of John Becker’s beautiful musical setting of the Litany of the Saints, I saw in my mind’s eye all my loved ones who have died, standing with me around the font. My dad was there, my sister, Mary Ruth, my Grandpa and Grandma Wojnar, Uncle Joe and Aunt Ruth Cunningham, Uncle Bob and Aunt Babe Jernstrom. My Uncle Joe Wojnar and my Uncle Ed Wojnar were there. Aunt Rose and Uncle Leo, Aunt Bell and Uncle Bill, my cousin-in-law Bob Murphy were there. Dr. Maurie Jones, Helen and Bernie Kerber, Blanche and Ivo Schutrop, Archbishop Roach and Bishop Welsh, the men and women from my diaconal class, Bill Beckfeld, By Rudolphi, Tom Semlak, Tom and Lucy Coleman, Helen Ehrmantraut, and others I knew and to whom I had served and ministered were all standing there with me as if they had never left. I felt so overwhelmed and choked up by their presence, I had trouble singing “pray for us” to the Litany, my “pray for us” reduced quite often to a whisper.
I realized in a very striking way that the presence of the saints in my life were not there just because they had been invoked by the living. The saints in my life were there with me on Holy Thursday, and Good Friday, and for that matter every day of my life from they moment they left this life and moved into the fullness of human life.
Intellectually I have known this for a long time. I remember my sister, Mary Ruth, on her death bed greeting all of our dead relatives in the room and turning to my mother and I saying, “They are playing my song, but I am not ready to hear it yet.” I remember a parishioner, comatose on the cusp of death, suddenly opening her eyes as I began the prayer for the dead, “Go forth, Christian Soul to the God who love you …”, looking directly at me, and passed me to the divine life that awaited her. Then, dying the moment the “Amen” at the end of the prayer was said by those gathered around her bed.
The power of Easter is to remind us that life does not end when our physical bodies wear out and quit working. Human life is not defined by weak hearts, aching joints, sickness, weakness, failing organs and failing minds. Rather that death is the entry into a far better life, a life yet to be experienced. As St. Paul reminds us in his Second Letter to the Corinthians, “For this momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to what is seen but to what is unseen; for what is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal. For we know that if our earthly dwelling, a tent, should be destroyed, we have a building from God, a dwelling not made with hands, eternal in heaven.” We recall, as we all gather around the baptismal font, with our communion of saints living and ever living, that this all began at our baptism, as the water was poured and we entered in death into the tomb with Jesus only to rise with him in the Resurrection on the third day.
