“My people are like such, living from passion; the ideal revolutionary too is pure passion...”- Ferréz in Ninguém é inocente em São Paulo

After completing my three months of language school, I moved out officially into the peripheries of São Paulo in December, specifically to Most Holy Trinity Parish in Perus. During this time, and as my Portuguese has continued to improve, I have been able to be more involved in Pastoral work, such as the Pastoral Health Care of Children, Ministerial Formations for parishioners, Youth Group/Spiritan Missionary Youth (Juventude Espiritana Missionaria, JEM), Eucharistic celebrations, etc. It all has been interesting, but its crescendo, for me, arrived during Holy Week.

To say that the peripheries have gone through a lot over these past few years is an understatement. Between the Pandemic, the Bolsonaro’s Government, unemployment, and, more recently, floods, the difficulties seem to mount on top of each other. Yet, in the midst of all of this, we began our Holy Week celebrations, the first real Holy Week celebrations since the pandemic first arrived in Brazil, celebrations which had much time, heart, and spirituality poured into them. It is the meaning of these that I wish to reflect on, even if in a somewhat disorganized fashion.

Our Holy Week was a packed one: Palm Sunday, Office of Our Lady, Office of Our Lady of Sorrows, Tenebrae, Holy Thursday, a public, live Way of the Cross, Adoration of the Cross, Meetings of Our Lady of Sorrows and Our Lord Deceased, and, of course, the Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday masses. And these liturgies were profound and spiritually deep (even if imperfect at times). But simple ritual and aesthetic do not bring about nourishment in themselves, no matter the context. Although wonderful smelling and able to create an atmosphere of prayer, incense cannot bring out the excess and spiritual ascent which is found in the Spirit’s taking hold of our souls in liturgy and sending us thereafter. In other words, one can perform a kenosis without theosis, which is just a dressed up form of secularization, an abandonment of Jesus in the tomb… And, on the other hand, a theosis without a kenosis to the context is nothing short of an oppressive attempt at self-divinization. 

Four particular events stood out to me: Tenebrae, the Way of the Cross (and Good Friday in general), the Vigil, and a moment in between Masses on Easter Sunday. First, during the Tenebrae, as the 14 other candles were extinguished after each of the 14 psalms, the Church darkens further and further until one remains… and that one, for us, remained directly under the cross, leaving but a faint image impressed. “A light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it,” (Jn 1:5), but that light illumined a symbol of torture, condemnation. It is this light that forces us to question what light we as Church shine: a light that communicates a vague, humanist agenda with some social works, or the Divine alterity of Crucified God who reaches out to us from the beyond, spreading his arms to grasp all of creation to redeem it (Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Letters 13.28). If the former, the Church may be worth respecting, but hardly worth participating in and is replaceable by government programs (which can later be used to exploit the people). If the latter, then something worthy of considerable attention is actually happening…

Second, during the live Way of Cross, the Church community processed through the town together. Yes, like many countries in the world today, those who participate in parish and attend services regularly comprise a fraction of those who identify as Catholic. But, both the publicity and passion of those following Christ to be crucified stood out. It is this Way of the Cross, a visible and public sign of one’s willing to go with Him to the darkest point of the Gospel narrative, crashes a notion of a private, interior-only faith. In this sense, liturgy is a political phenomenon, a constitution of those who desire citizenship with the Kingdom while being in their respective, temporal context. This type of zealotry has often been looked down by western liberal perspectives as inappropriate and bothersome, but only with a zealous attitude can walk behind Him beaten and humiliated and continue to honestly profess their discipleship. A faith reduced to a matter of vague moral intention, an unknowable interiority, or unseen privacy that never demonstrates external expression is simply fraudulent (Mt 7:16-20, Jn 13:35). There is, rather, a heart set on fire by the Spirit, a passion that learns to direct itself following Him who we now follow in this Way of the Cross. And, thus, thereafter, we find the audacity to adore and venerate announcing: Behold the Wood of the Cross, upon which Salvation hung! To reduce the play of the Cross in Christianity, to ignore the Christ’s passion, is to smother the passion needed for discipleship. 

Third, in the vigil, this passion came to its fullest fruition. Following the general patristic perspective, we are valorized by our acts of fasting and charity. But, only in prayer and liturgy, our logikē latreia (Rom 12:1), can this valorization be redemptive and salvific. Passion and carrying our cross build us as disciples, and the Resurrection takes the offering for the new creation, which is later consecrated in the Pentecost event. Maximus the Confessor, in his Mystagogia, conceives the liturgy as a small part of the broader salvific liturgy that begins in the very act of creation, of which humanity as a microcosm of creation is summoned to be its priests. It is, thus, that our lights reach to the heavens and communicate our faith in this resurrection and Divine will of salvation started from that moment of beh-resheet (Gen 1:1a) that unites us to the whole cosmos as we sing in the Exsultet: supernis luminaribus misceatur! By Mary’s Magdalene’s proclamation of Christ’s certain resurrection (Jn 20:18), the New Creation announces its becoming and the liturgy can reach a culmination that announces its procession. It is the ultimate realization of the human person not as a winner in the system of neoliberal capitalism, but a revolutionary realization of the person being divinized and sanctified through their status as Homo Liturgicus.

Finally, on Easter Sunday, after some three hours of sleep, I awoke to meet a beautiful sunrise that itself preached the resurrection. This was to be the finishing moment of what was a grand event. After one mass and a brief dialogue with the community, I was walking with Fr. Niall Colgan, C.S.Sp. to another community. The quiet emptiness of the Tomb in this Easter Sunday’s readings matched the quiet and cool morning. It was strange, that such a rocking and revolution of cosmos had occurred and, yet, life seemed to go on. The dogs continued to scavenge, a rooster sat quietly after his morning call, a handful of people met in an evangelical church, and others passed, only sometimes noting our presence. It seems to be that, with the finding of the empty tomb, we are sent from theodrama to ambiguity. What this Holy Week has given is a renewed, spiritual depth, a cosmic union which drives forward to the eschaton. But, nourished by such an encounter, we go back to the world and its crises, we go back to find grace and preach this resurrection, that necropolitics has lost authoritative legitimacy. 

Because something more than the secular is going on, that drives us to passion, brings us into a deep union with the Godhead and the cosmos, and then brings us forth recreated anew, we go forth. It shall perhaps the same drama that will be repeated time and time again, but, driven by souls lit aflame, following Him on the Way, proclaiming the Lumen Christi, we keep going, we dare to take one more step. While a liturgy will never resolve social issues in themselves, it is difficult to find the strength to continue in true faith in this world without it. Indeed, what we have found is a reason to go on living with our candles lit beneath the stars, to which our next cry shall rise up, and shall begin the drama of salvation once more.