Three Meetings for Triduum company

My recent visit with Father Tom Collins was a chance to bring him the prayers and best wishes of the Women's team, expressed with great love throughout the Team Day at Blessings Lodge this past Saturday.

I’ve been thinking all Lent of the image of the Samaritan woman at the well.  I like to think of her as the patron saint of the embittered, those rolled over by life who have lost all heart for it. Think of that unexpected meeting – Jesus seeks her faith – and she who had learned to keep life and others at a distance becomes the one running into town with words that lead others to seek Him out! The dark shadows of pain and disappointment give way to joy and light. A resolutely self-referential world gives way to the yearning to bring joy and hope to others. What a meeting! Antiquity gives her a name – Photina (luminous, shining). Not only is the image of living water front and center, but so is light, pointing toward the enlightenment of baptism. The Russian Orthodox have named her Svetlana (the translation of Photina) and consider her the Church’s first missionary, honored as “equal to the Apostles”. Imagine that day!

I always love thinking about the meeting that Easter Sunday night, with the Apostles hidden and cowering in the upper room, with the door locked for fear that they would be identified with Him, and be found, and experience a similar fate. An understatement to say that this was not their finest hour! Yet the Glorified One enters, wounds still there but somehow glorified. What would your response have been? And what does He say? What would you have said, if you were He? He says, “Peace”, and from that moment everything changes. The world turns. Nothing is the same. Imagine that meeting!

Eastern Orthodox iconography imagines the Resurrection differently than does western art. The emphasis is on what is called, “The Harrowing of Hell”. Go on line and look at the images of Resurrection in the Eastern tradition ….. Christ is customarily surrounded by the wreckage of a city that looks to have been bombed mercilessly …. For he has put a big hurtin’ on Hades, busted up the place of Hell, opened it up to light, killed the reign of Death … and is portrayed as welcoming to light all those consigned to darkness who had awaiting his coming. The physicality of it, even within the rich mystical traditions of the East, is remarkable. What a meeting of Resurrection!

May your own meetings with Him Crucified and Risen draw you ever closer to Him.

De Colores,

Father Jay