It’s almost the end of another Maundy Thursday. My social media is all over the place tonight. People touting the importance of Maundy Thursday – the washing of feet! the institution of the Eucharist! the institution of the priesthood! And then, then there is the report from Maryland this week. The kind of report that just keeps coming – priests and victims and coverups. The kind that reminds me of stories not mine to tell. The kind of report that reminds me of my own traumas, too.
Fifteen years ago, in a season of deep brokenness, after I came home from Malta, in the midst of relationships coming to an end that I’d never expected to end, I penned a poem that contained the following lines:
goodbye
hard words to say
not the cry for unity
that I’d desired
no John 17 goodness
left in me
just Abba, Father,
my heart hurts
“Would you hold me?”
a rosary twined around
my wrist
fingers caressing
the tiny, broken
body of Christ
if it be your will
let this cup pass
from me
but not my will
yours be done
in this
in everything
a cup to be drunk
(and I will drink)
a cup of suffering
and a desperate
cry for hope
~~~
It has been fifteen years since those words poured from my pen. I can still see the chair I sat in as I wrote. I wasn’t Catholic yet, but had brought a rosary home from the Vatican – one I’d chosen for its simple beauty, and in that season of wordless prayers and broken relationships, I sat often, wordlessly, caressing the tiny crucifix, and begging Christ’s intercession.
And now, all those years later, I find myself returning to that line “no John 17 goodness/left in me”. It’s Christ’s prayer in the garden, his cry for the unity of his body left on earth. There are stories that are not mine to tell, reasons why I struggle to see that unity as even a remote possibility tonight.
On a Maundy Thursday evening, 10 years ago this month, I had my feet washed and kissed by a priest, and a few days later, I was confirmed at the Easter Vigil into the Roman Catholic Church. After that confirmation several people greeted me with the words “Welcome Home!”
I wanted to slap them for their trite comments and lack of understanding of what this cost and would and does cost me.
I felt I’d just left home – I grew up in a home where Jesus was honored deeply, where I was encouraged to pursue faith in Christ, where I was, for lack of a better word, discipled. And after all of that, Jesus had led me to meet him in his body and blood, and I chose to follow that leading into a church that believed what my heart already knew – that Jesus was present in the Eucharist. I left a sure thing, a family, a community, to follow Jesus into my own personal wilderness with him.
A lot of hearts broke at my confirmation service, including mine. The cost has been high and I feel it most strongly each year at Christmas and during the Triduum. The high holy days of faith, and I’ll attend services alone. My family has a number of people in professional ministry, so we’ll gather as a family to celebrate Easter dinner tomorrow night when they’re available, rather than Sunday when they’re not – and I’ll navigate again the complex narrative of celebration of resurrection on a day when Catholics fast and abstain. I’ll join them for dinner, but it’ll be my only whole meal for the day, and I’ll skip the meat. And my heart will break as I realize all over again the way the unity that Christ prayed for is lacking on earth – is lacking in my life.
It’s Maundy Thursday again, and my heart is breaking. It’s Maundy Thursday and the cry for unity is strong. It’s Maundy Thursday and the abuses are enormous, the pressure great.
It’s Maundy Thursday and I just don’t know if I have any John 17 goodness left in me, so tonight, as I fall asleep, I’ll twine a rosary between my fingers. I’ll caress the tiny, shattered body of Christ, and I’ll pray for this cup to pass, but only if it’s His will, not mine.
Lisa From Canada 