Marie texted me this evening to ask if she could bring a friend home for Easter. I texted right back: Sure!
And then I kept texting: Have you advised her re: the weirdness level?
Because the thing is, our Easter is pretty weird. I love it and I wouldn't want to change anything about it, but I have to acknowledge that it's got a very distinctive flavor. As far as I knew this friend had been an atheist dipping a toe into theism, and it seemed like Easter weekend at our house might feel like A Lot.
There is the annual reading of this old old homily about the harrowing of hell. I can't get through it without choking up, but I try every year anyway. There are the egg-dying traditions, with their inside jokes that sprouted from inside jokes that grew out of other inside jokes. There is a whole list of Essential Eggs. (Is it even really Easter if you don't have a map-of-the-world egg? My kids might have some thoughts about that one.) There is a lot of food prep, because Lent is over and dernit we are going to feast on Sunday.
And then there is the Vigil, which is A Lot all by itself. Church with a bonus bonfire, and blazing candles, and an 8-minute a capella solo chant about the glory of God (that digresses into singing about the beauty of bees for a bit there), and umpty-eleven readings with psalms sung in between them all. We pour water on people and give them white garments to wear and bedaub their faces with oil while calling them by funky names like "Joan of Arc." We chant together in Latin; we kneel down before what looks like bread; we sing all the verses of all the hymns.
Marie tells me all will be well, even the part on Sunday where people have to move furniture and open duct covers to find their Easter baskets. (I might not put our guest's basket in the ductwork, because I am gracious and hostessy like that.) Marie tells me that her friend has begun attending Mass, and so (this is Marie's logic here, not mine) why wouldn't she want to come to the most beautiful Mass of the year?
Recently I was reading a post from a mom with young kids, in which she said she would absolutely not be attending any of the Triduum services this year, and I remembered the years in which I felt beleaguered if I went and regretful if I didn't. Hang in there, all you moms of littles. My adult children vary in their views on the Church, a state of affairs about which I can be philosophical only some of the time. But they will all go cheerfully to Triduum services, where they will all sit still and be quiet. The 2003 version of me did not believe that day would ever come, but here it is.
And, it turns out, they will invite their friends to come too.
Recent Comments