Father Sebastian White, o.p.
April is the cruelest month,” wrote T. S. Eliot in the oft-quoted opening line of the poem The Waste Land. Being more of a dilettante than a scholar when it comes to English literature, I will not attempt a complete analysis of that long and at times impenetrable work—which, it is generally agreed, expresses the near-despair that was felt after the first World War in Europe by those who would come to be known as “the Lost Generation.” (In any event, I prefer Four Quartets—even longer and plenty cryptic, but written after Eliot’s conversion to Christianity and containing a lot of rich theological imagery.)
The beginning of The Waste Land is memorable though—hauntingly so. With “the burial of the dead,” it appears hope is buried too. Despite the indications of life that arise in springtime, the narrator feels, we inhabit a “dead land.” In comparison, a wintry numbness seems preferable: “Winter kept us warm, covering/ Earth in forgetful snow.” Now we see nothing but “a heap of broken images.”
The remembrance of mercy
This year, as is often the case, April is the month when we enter into Holy Week, remembering the Passion of our Lord in all its detail. In doing so, the Church effectively reminds us that it is precisely because a fierce war has been waged (and won) that hope springs eternal, that life springs eternal.
If there is some truth, then, in saying April is the cruelest month—and the slaughter of the meek and innocent Lamb of God is cruel if anything ever was—from another perspective April is the sweetest month. “Sweetest wood and sweetest iron, sweetest weight is hung on thee” we sing on Holy Thursday in Aquinas’ beautiful hymn, Pange Lingua Gloriosi. And as we’ll hear in the first reading on Good Friday: Because he surrendered himself to death, he shall take away the sins of many, and win pardon for their offenses.
Seventeen centuries ago, Saint Athanasius captured why this most cruel event was glorious as well. His words remain as fresh as ever:
All bend their knees at this Holy Name, and acknowledge that the Incarnation and cruel death of the Son of God, instead of derogating from, do rather lead to the glory of God the Father. For it is indeed to the glory of the Father, that humanity, created and afterwards lost, should be found again; and should be snatched from death and given life once more, and should become the very temple of God. For this would not have happened unless he, who is in the form of God, had taken upon himself the form of a servant, and had been pleased to humble himself to suffer the cruel death of the cross.
After the fall, the entire human race was the lost generation: lost in sin, lost to the happiness attained only in friendship with God. In Jesus, however, the words of the merciful father in the story of the prodigal son can apply to each of us: let us celebrate with a feast, because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found. In Jesus, we have become the found generation.
We must never forget, then, what was accomplished for us on a certain Friday two thousand years ago: cruelty was overcome by love, and the burial of a dead Man was the burial of death itself.
The presence of mercy
Yet, for all of this emphasis on recollection, the Church also teaches that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, “Christian liturgy not only recalls the events that saved us but actualizes them, makes them present” (CCC 1104). Consequently, as Cardinal John O’Connor once explained, Holy Week is “not a stage show, not simply a memorial of something that took place two thousand years ago. Our divine Lord spiritually and mysteriously is present once again in the power generated by his sufferings.”
This means that even today the sacrificial love of Christ that was consummated on Calvary is poured out upon us. The historical event of his Passion occurred in a particular place at a particular time, but the interior oblation of his heart lives eternally. Year in and year out—day in and day out, in fact—we unite ourselves to the saving Passion of the Lord in the liturgy of the Church. And as we endure our own “passions”—the sufferings and trials that each of us faces—we know that he is with us. Importantly, we can also entrust to Jesus the circumstances of our own death, whenever it will come, hoping to share in his resurrection.
We call this Friday good
One of the other famous lines from The Waste Land is “I will show you fear in a handful of dust,” an allusion to the traditional funerary practice of tossing a handful of dirt into the grave as a casket is being lowered. The words we heard on Ash Wednesday also come to mind: “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”
Put simply, a handful of dust evokes the fragility and impermanence of human life, which is fearful indeed without the light of faith and the promise of the resurrection. The antidote to fear in a handful of dust is found in the open hand of the Savior: a pierced hand, a hand full of love, full of life.
Since I mentioned earlier the Four Quartets, allow me to conclude by quoting some of its most moving lines: “The dripping blood our only drink,/ The bloody flesh our only food…/ in spite of that, we call this Friday good.”
Yes, this Friday is good indeed, for the waste land of a world broken by sin is now a fruitful garden, bearing the Tree of Life.
