This day.
This day is pretty awesome. It's so awesome that I absolutely, no questions asked, had to write something in the blogosphere TODAY. Now. March 25th, 2016. Alas, I have only a few minutes, and these few minutes can't POSSIBLY be enough time to type out the words and thoughts that are exploding in my brain right now... a few minutes to explain why this day is SO AWESOME??? Darn. I know I'm not going to be able to get it all out, and it's going to be crazy babble, but...
It's not awesome because it's by birthday. I mean, it is my birthday. And it's a pretty cool one... It's usually the Feast of the Annunciation, a day which means so very much to me and which I cherish as a feast day. Mary's Fiat... that "yes" that, in one instant of perfect love and acceptance, began to undo the chains of Adam and Eve's fall... that set in motion the events that would immediately follow for our ultimate Redemption... that the Word became flesh, dwelt among us, took our human nature as His own so that HE could pay the perfect price for our own fall, our own sin... Oh, yes, I love that feast. I love that it is nine months before Christmas (and that my name means "Christmas," though my parents had decided upon my name long before I was born!)
But what's awesome about today is that we actually get to celebrate Good Friday this year, on this very day that is traditionally held as THE date of Good Friday. That very first one. In fact, the very early Church purposely chose March 25th as the date of the Annunciation JUST because it was also the traditional date of Our Lord's Paschal Sacrifice. Jesus' life had come full circle. It was His beginning in the world, and His end.
Alpha and Omega.
And so, the early Church held this day as one of the very holiest - a day of eternal fiats, of the complete gift of self of that young Jewish girl that would usher in the complete immolation of her Divine Son, Our Paschal Victim. And indeed, the Paschal symbolism was strongly held, not just because of the feast's correlation with annual Jewish Passover, but also due to the influence of traditions that held March 25th as being the "date" of nearly every major event in Salvation History: the creation of the world, the fall of Adam and Eve, the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, the freeing of the Israelites from the slavery of Egypt after the very first Passover, and so on.
And of course, my favorite author knew exactly what he was doing when he chose the traditional date of the Incarnation and the Crucifixion as the day that Frodo destroyed the Ring. :)
Basically, it's the most special date ever. :)
But!!!!!!! Today, as I was contemplating a beautiful poem by John Donne, which I will share at the end of this post, I was thinking about how powerful it is that this Year of Mercy should be one of the rare, special years during which Good Friday actually falls on March 25th. It didn't seem like a coincidence, somehow. It seemed... meant to be... this symbolism. This Trinitarian union and perfection of Divine Love, set in motion and brought to completion in the world on this day - yet patiently waiting to be welcomed into our own hearts, ravishing us with His Love, His Mercy, His sublime tenderness... to lift us up out of our darkness to be one with Him.
And then I remembered another Good Friday, the last one of Saint John Paul II's earthly life. It, too, fell on March 25th. The following Saturday, on the eve of the Feast of Divine Mercy - that great feast then newly-ushered into the Church's liturgical year by that glorious saint himself - he crossed the threshold from this life into the waiting arms of his Mother... the Mother of Mercy. His life of "Totus Tuus," his own fiat, came to completion in such a year, on such a day of mercy.
So it's pretty amazing and downright BEAUTIFUL that this year, this next time we have been blessed with this "feast and fast," as Donne puts it, it comes to us in the JUBILEE YEAR OF MERCY!!! Every DAY this year is like a Divine Mercy Sunday! This year of jubilee is the fruition of John Paul's vision (truly, the Holy Spirit's vision through him and through his successors) and I know the Holy Spirit has brought all of this together, somehow, in His perfect plan, to happen RIGHT NOW. These feasts won't coincide again for over 140 years... Somehow, all of this was meant to be.
THIS is the year of the favor of the Lord! Embrace it! Live it! He humbled Himself to become man for YOU, He suffered for YOU, He died for YOU, He rose for YOU, and He opened the gates of Heaven for YOU! You are loved, you are cherished, you are precious, and He is waiting for YOU to let Him embrace you and fill you with all His mercy and love!
Upon the Annunciation and
Passion Falling upon One Day.
1608
Passion Falling upon One Day.
1608
Tamely, frail body, abstain today; today
My soul eats twice, Christ hither and away.
She sees Him man, so like God made in this,
That of them both a circle emblem is,
Whose first and last concur; this doubtful day
Of feast or fast, Christ came and went away;
She sees Him nothing twice at once, who’s all;
She sees a Cedar plant itself and fall,
Her Maker put to making, and the head
Of life at once not yet alive yet dead;
She sees at once the virgin mother stay
Reclused at home, public at Golgotha;
Sad and rejoiced she’s seen at once, and seen
At almost fifty and at scarce fifteen;
At once a Son is promised her, and gone;
Gabriel gives Christ to her, He her to John;
Not fully a mother, she’s in orbity,
At once receiver and the legacy;
All this, and all between, this day hath shown,
The abridgement of Christ’s story, which makes one
(As in plain maps, the furthest west is east)
Of the Angels’ Ave and Consummatum est.
How well the Church, God’s court of faculties,
Deals in some times and seldom joining these!
As by the self-fixed Pole we never do
Direct our course, but the next star thereto,
Which shows where the other is and which we say
(Because it strays not far) doth never stray,
So God by His Church, nearest to Him, we know
And stand firm, if we by her motion go;
His Spirit, as His fiery pillar doth
Lead, and His Church, as cloud, to one end both.
This Church, by letting these days join, hath shown
Death and conception in mankind is one:
Or ‘twas in Him the same humility
That He would be a man and leave to be:
Or as creation He had made, as God,
With the last judgment but one period,
His imitating Spouse would join in one
Manhood’s extremes: He shall come, He is gone:
Or as though the least of His pains, deeds, or words,
Would busy a life, she all this day affords;
This treasure then, in gross, my soul uplay,
And in my life retail it every day.
My soul eats twice, Christ hither and away.
She sees Him man, so like God made in this,
That of them both a circle emblem is,
Whose first and last concur; this doubtful day
Of feast or fast, Christ came and went away;
She sees Him nothing twice at once, who’s all;
She sees a Cedar plant itself and fall,
Her Maker put to making, and the head
Of life at once not yet alive yet dead;
She sees at once the virgin mother stay
Reclused at home, public at Golgotha;
Sad and rejoiced she’s seen at once, and seen
At almost fifty and at scarce fifteen;
At once a Son is promised her, and gone;
Gabriel gives Christ to her, He her to John;
Not fully a mother, she’s in orbity,
At once receiver and the legacy;
All this, and all between, this day hath shown,
The abridgement of Christ’s story, which makes one
(As in plain maps, the furthest west is east)
Of the Angels’ Ave and Consummatum est.
How well the Church, God’s court of faculties,
Deals in some times and seldom joining these!
As by the self-fixed Pole we never do
Direct our course, but the next star thereto,
Which shows where the other is and which we say
(Because it strays not far) doth never stray,
So God by His Church, nearest to Him, we know
And stand firm, if we by her motion go;
His Spirit, as His fiery pillar doth
Lead, and His Church, as cloud, to one end both.
This Church, by letting these days join, hath shown
Death and conception in mankind is one:
Or ‘twas in Him the same humility
That He would be a man and leave to be:
Or as creation He had made, as God,
With the last judgment but one period,
His imitating Spouse would join in one
Manhood’s extremes: He shall come, He is gone:
Or as though the least of His pains, deeds, or words,
Would busy a life, she all this day affords;
This treasure then, in gross, my soul uplay,
And in my life retail it every day.
– John Donne
