“Behold a broken world we pray where want and war increase.”
At no other time have the opening lines of this hymn been so profound in meaning. (CBW 538)
I write this blog a few weeks ahead of April 14. I don’t know what the world situation will be on that day, but the particularity of today is concrete: bombings, death, homelessness, displaced children, beauty demolished, apologies being sought. With such a reality how might we approach the church’s liturgy and sing in the Pange Lingua: “Hail the Blood which, shed for sinners, did a broken world restore”, a broken world restore.”
We feast on unleavened bread and wine transformed to be for us total embodiment in Christ. We feast sometimes with wavering hope, wanting oh so much to be confident, that our broken world will be restored in the here and now. In the same liturgy we ritualize the humbling act of foot washing, knowing that we too are called to serve, called to engage in making our broken world whole again. But when O God . . . when? Lament and sorrow are so real. Is not the self-giving of Christ the vessel in which to hold the present moment? The One who is Love itself holding the world in the tragedy of the moment.
The Holy Thursday liturgy is the grounding place to move into the darkness of Good Friday and the silence of Holy Saturday. It invites us to be for others just as Christ: washing feet, sharing the gifts of the earth, seeking a better world where all races, genders, creeds are one. The liturgy teaches us ways of being, that weave the world community together.
“ It invites us to be for others just as Christ: washing feet, sharing the gifts of the earth, seeking a better world where all races, genders, creeds are one. The liturgy teaches us ways of being, that weave the world community together.”
Nations are welcoming, clothing, feeding those fleeing from the violence. Other nations are financing care. In the midst of the tragedy, I heard a Ukrainian woman challenge us not to forget the millions who are fleeing other violent, oppressive regimes. The human heart beats with every breath: love one another.
The hymn I first quoted ends this way:
Bring Lord, your better world to birth, . . . . Where peace with God, and peace on earth and peace eternal reign. (Hymn text by Timothy Dudley Smith, Catholic Book of Worship III #538)
At the end of the Holy Thursday liturgy, we pray together in deep silence, so too in this moment . . .
-Sister Loretta Manzara, csj