A Fifth Sunday of Lent Thought to Start the Week Off Right
It's the 5th Sunday of Lent. The tradition in the Roman rite - a tradition now mostly abandoned - is to cover the statues in church with purple cloth. All these images, except the crucifix on the altar and the Stations of the Cross, remain hidden until they are unveiled at the Easter Vigil.
A church I attend at times during the work week has continued this tradition. Will they continue it this year? I hope so. You who've experienced this "hiding" of the statues likely know why I'm hoping. It has to do with the way we're encouraged to enter more deeply into the Passion of Our Lord as we approach Good Friday.
With that in mind, the traditional calendar calls this 5th Sunday of Lent "Passion Sunday." Today we'll dig even deeper into the purpose of Passion Sunday and the purple covering. The Inner Life of the Soul explains:
"Men find it exceedingly hard to realize the invisible is of more account than the visible; that man's failure is God's success; and that One Whom we cannot see is Supreme Master of all things seen. Christ came to teach us these great truths. He loved men with a love beyond our power to think, but He loved God infinitely more. Out of this fact, that the men whom He loved had offended that Supreme Being, most holy and most majestic, came the solemn steadfastness of His purpose to repair the outraged majesty of God."
To help us better appreciate this love for men, and greater love for God, on the part of Jesus Christ, consider this bit of theology: Our Lord did not need to undergo the gruesome suffering He did in order to save us. The least drop of his blood would have sufficed. And yet He chose the intense Agony in the Garden, the abuse He endured during His trial before the Sanhedrin, the awful scourging, the carrying of His Cross to Calvary, and, finally, the extreme torture of crucifixion. He chose to suffer before our very eyes in a way that no man ever has or ever will. Such a decision was motivated by His infinite love for us and for His offended Heavenly Father.
What is our reaction to this? Are we determined to change our lives in response to His love? The covering of the statues helps us here. The visual loss of these objects of devotion leaves us alone to search our souls for an answer. The Inner Life of the Soul provides an example of those who answered this question in a particular way:
"There are some souls, wholly devoted to their Maker, who are possessed by an intense gift of realizing the unseen. What God has said is more vital and clear to them than the loving words of their mother in their childhood, or the sweetest flatteries that human lips can utter. They go gladly into the darkness, in an absorbing fascination for that hidden Deity, Who has won them to Him by the cords of an infinite love."
Such devotion may not be reserved only to saints. Instead, such devotion may provide the means to become a saint. And isn't this what we all want? Do we feel the pull of His Infinite Love for us? Or do we instead remain stuck in our worldly, self-centered lives?
"Such men understand these things so clearly that they cannot comprehend how other men are blind; how other men care for things that are seen, things that can cheat and fade and die, when the Divine and Immortal is so near."
Passion Sunday with its covered statues, presses upon us. There's a sense of immediacy and urgency in that tradition. But even if our local churches no longer afford us the benefit of this venerable custom, we may yet press ourselves turn our hearts and minds to Our Lord's Passion in these final days of Lent in order to effect that change that brings us closer to Him.
"Oh! let us think, instead, whether God is not bidding us, in these two weeks, to shape our ordinary lives more like the mystics; not to heed visible things so much, but to live apart from them; to shut our eyes, and still more firmly shut our ears, and think then what lies hid behind the purple.
Bereft of our wonderful Catholic tradtion, we are not bereft of the love that Our Blessed Lord demonstrated to us on His Cross.
"When we see the crucifix, we do not always feel its meaning. In the shadow and darkness of these fourteen days, let us draw very close to the Sacred Heart, and let us take the time from other things to do it. This we know, that hidden beneath the purple, is all that really makes life worth living; the veiled Beauty that ravishes angels and saints in heaven, and makes earth heaven to those who consent to sacrifice to Him all they love the best."
Whether or not you are blessed to attend a church that continues the wonderfully rich tradition of statues covered in purple, all of us can unite ourselves to the spirit of that tradtion on this 5th Sunday of Lent.
"...Christ calls us then to live closer to Him, away from human love and sympathy, under the purple."
A church I attend at times during the work week has continued this tradition. Will they continue it this year? I hope so. You who've experienced this "hiding" of the statues likely know why I'm hoping. It has to do with the way we're encouraged to enter more deeply into the Passion of Our Lord as we approach Good Friday.
With that in mind, the traditional calendar calls this 5th Sunday of Lent "Passion Sunday." Today we'll dig even deeper into the purpose of Passion Sunday and the purple covering. The Inner Life of the Soul explains:
"Men find it exceedingly hard to realize the invisible is of more account than the visible; that man's failure is God's success; and that One Whom we cannot see is Supreme Master of all things seen. Christ came to teach us these great truths. He loved men with a love beyond our power to think, but He loved God infinitely more. Out of this fact, that the men whom He loved had offended that Supreme Being, most holy and most majestic, came the solemn steadfastness of His purpose to repair the outraged majesty of God."
To help us better appreciate this love for men, and greater love for God, on the part of Jesus Christ, consider this bit of theology: Our Lord did not need to undergo the gruesome suffering He did in order to save us. The least drop of his blood would have sufficed. And yet He chose the intense Agony in the Garden, the abuse He endured during His trial before the Sanhedrin, the awful scourging, the carrying of His Cross to Calvary, and, finally, the extreme torture of crucifixion. He chose to suffer before our very eyes in a way that no man ever has or ever will. Such a decision was motivated by His infinite love for us and for His offended Heavenly Father.
What is our reaction to this? Are we determined to change our lives in response to His love? The covering of the statues helps us here. The visual loss of these objects of devotion leaves us alone to search our souls for an answer. The Inner Life of the Soul provides an example of those who answered this question in a particular way:
"There are some souls, wholly devoted to their Maker, who are possessed by an intense gift of realizing the unseen. What God has said is more vital and clear to them than the loving words of their mother in their childhood, or the sweetest flatteries that human lips can utter. They go gladly into the darkness, in an absorbing fascination for that hidden Deity, Who has won them to Him by the cords of an infinite love."
Such devotion may not be reserved only to saints. Instead, such devotion may provide the means to become a saint. And isn't this what we all want? Do we feel the pull of His Infinite Love for us? Or do we instead remain stuck in our worldly, self-centered lives?
"Such men understand these things so clearly that they cannot comprehend how other men are blind; how other men care for things that are seen, things that can cheat and fade and die, when the Divine and Immortal is so near."
Passion Sunday with its covered statues, presses upon us. There's a sense of immediacy and urgency in that tradition. But even if our local churches no longer afford us the benefit of this venerable custom, we may yet press ourselves turn our hearts and minds to Our Lord's Passion in these final days of Lent in order to effect that change that brings us closer to Him.
"Oh! let us think, instead, whether God is not bidding us, in these two weeks, to shape our ordinary lives more like the mystics; not to heed visible things so much, but to live apart from them; to shut our eyes, and still more firmly shut our ears, and think then what lies hid behind the purple.
Bereft of our wonderful Catholic tradtion, we are not bereft of the love that Our Blessed Lord demonstrated to us on His Cross.
"When we see the crucifix, we do not always feel its meaning. In the shadow and darkness of these fourteen days, let us draw very close to the Sacred Heart, and let us take the time from other things to do it. This we know, that hidden beneath the purple, is all that really makes life worth living; the veiled Beauty that ravishes angels and saints in heaven, and makes earth heaven to those who consent to sacrifice to Him all they love the best."
Whether or not you are blessed to attend a church that continues the wonderfully rich tradition of statues covered in purple, all of us can unite ourselves to the spirit of that tradtion on this 5th Sunday of Lent.
"...Christ calls us then to live closer to Him, away from human love and sympathy, under the purple."
We adore Thee O Christ and we bless Thee,
Because by Thy Holy Cross Thou hast redeemed the world.
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