From Confusion and Anxiety to Glory

Today’s portion of St. John’s account of the Last Supper begins with the unsettling assertion that

“Jesus was deeply troubled and testified, ‘Amen, amen, I say to you, one of you will betray Me.’”  It ends with Christ’s even more focused prediction not simply of His betrayal by one of the Twelve but also of a three-fold denial by Peter, the head of the Apostles:  “Amen, amen, I say to you, the cock will not crow before you deny Me three times.”  Between these two assertions, there is unspeakable confusion, attempts to find presumably preventative or at least ameliorative answers, and assertions that the problem will somehow be checked by the strength of one’s own resources.  From our vantage point, we see in this event that there are obviously many forms of denial taking place on the evening of Holy Thursday!

In this penultimate Lenten blog post, I look back on all of the forty-plus meditations in which I have in one way or another detailed the feelings of being “deeply troubled” by my own body “betraying me,” so to speak, in the failure of my jaw’s physical integrity.  This trial led in time to my having to prepare for surgery, undergo the TMJ operation, and then begin a new period of recovery to health.  I have also alluded at many points to the confusion I felt at not knowing all the crucial factors which brought me to this strangely slow-motion-yet-abrupt ending of normal life and my anxious, temporary-yet-drawn-out bafflement at how I was to move forward.

When we recall the most common artistic depictions of the Last Supper (as, for example, that of Leonardo da Vinci), we instinctively imagine figures with a certain static quality, seemingly frozen in place despite the troubled looks, the contorted gestures, and even the one hand guiltily dipping the morsel of bread into the dish with Jesus.  Likewise, the post-meal representation of the washing of the feet---Christ’s engagement of tending intimately and individually to the members of His Own Body---also often lacks the dynamic quality of the Apostles’ experience of the confounding unknown they were living.  It is even more disconcerting to consider them living these feelings with Jesus present rather than simply apart from Him in His seeming absence. 

It is well worth pondering in these final days of Lent, on the cusp of the Sacred Paschal Triduum, exactly how much of our confusion and anxiety the Lord Jesus invites us to bring with us into our observance of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday---and even into Easter Sunday and beyond.  The first followers of Christ make it abundantly clear that we are to bring everything with us---complete, unreserved emotional honesty and the most penetrating rational inquiry.  Such, and only such, is real faith seeking true understanding.  So often I have found that people expect, and even sincerely desire, that Christian life in general---and Priestly life in particular---have the reliably flat character of a two-dimensional reproduction of an all too familiar Last Supper tableau. 

I cannot count the number of people who have told me they were shocked that I could have been experiencing an almost two year medical ordeal and still have gone about my ordinary Priestly duties as if life was good and there were new reasons for joy to be found.  What other real choice is there for any of us in our Christian life of faith?  I have learned from my parishioners---many of whom have suffered far worse and far more for far longer---that short-term trading of prayers for comfort and miracles on demand are not in the evangelical offing for those who seek to follow the Master---the prophet Isaiah’s Man of Sorrows, “acquainted with grief” (Is 53:3).  As one of my professors once remarked:  It is impossible to finesse one’s way around Calvary!

But our Divine Savior does infallibly promise us light, even in what we think is deepest darkness.  Immediately after Judas’ departure into the “night,” Jesus proclaims:  “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him.  If God is glorified in Him, God will also glorify Him in Himself, and He will glorify Him at once.”  I have witnessed this glory super-abundantly over the extended span of the “at once” that is God’s time---in the cascading love that has been given and received, multiplied and shared precisely in my having to pass with Christ through this malady.   

So now when I approach Holy Mass and look out at the congregation, I marvel so much more deeply at the rich complexity of the lives the Crucified and Risen One draws to be close with Him---embracing their confusion and anxiety (as well as their joys and hopes) in a boundless mercy which dares to accompany them redemptively to the end.  To put it another way, I see the Divine Artist as having no intention whatsoever to reproduce the Last Supper of the Upper Room according to our reductive imaginings; rather, He sacramentally insists on re-presenting the Eucharistic Banquet of Calvary to Heaven---on making the Sacred Mystery present in all of its dimensionality working through all of our dimensionality---according to the expansive fullness of His Glory.  And that is what brings joy to our sorrow and light to our darkness.