Tuesday after Western Easter, six p.m. in the Paris underground. People packed in so tight I can lift both feet off the floor and not fall. Commuters back to their usual grind of “métro-boulot-dodo”: the smelly subway, the boring job, then home for a little sleep before it starts all over again too early the next morning. We arrive at Châtelet, a major hub. Maybe more people will get off than get on, then we can all breathe a little (it wasn’t to be).
For me it was early in Holy Week, and I was headed toward the “Crypte” of the Russian Cathedral on the rue Daru, just down from Place d’Etoile and the Arc de Triomphe. It should have been very romantic, but it was April, and April in Paris is awful. Aside from the rain and chill, everybody was coming back from spring break. Though at least some of them had just celebrated Easter and the Resurrection of Christ, you’d have never known it from the faces in the crowd. Even when the passengers thinned out after another couple of stops, those faces said it all. Easter has come and gone, and nothing has changed.
Even though I was traveling toward a very lovely and deeply moving Bridegroom service, I was hot, tired and half-suffocated. It occurred to me that I must have looked just like everybody else. Head down so as not to stare right in the eyes of somebody two inches away from my face; trying to think about the upcoming service, or anything else that would take my wilted brain away from the racket and rattle of this mobile sauna; irritated and showing it. Been through Lent and finally made it to Holy Week. Pascha, with all its beauty and joy, is just days away. But what’s changed?
I remember a priest telling me one time that Thomas Sunday is the saddest moment of the year for him, that somehow it is “Anti-pascha” in the most basic sense of the term. The splendid paschal liturgies are over, the Royal Doors of the iconostasis are closed, and everything returns more or less to normal. The fatigue and the exquisite tension of Holy Week have passed. The magnificent paschal canon, the angel’s song to the Mother of God, the joyous cry in a multitude of languages, “Christ is risen!”: their resonance gradually fades and they become routine. Métro, boulot, dodo. What, indeed, has changed?
If I don’t ask myself this question about myself, if I don’t pray about it, think about it, and look for an answer, then it seems that nothing changes at all. I find it very easy to romanticize both Lent and Pascha, to enter the former as a welcome trial and adventure, and to exit the latter with a sense of delight and wellbeing. But that’s not taking them really seriously. It’s not receiving, welcoming and rejoicing in them in a way that really makes a difference, for me or for anybody around me. I can take the most sublime gifts and let them collect dust on a shelf, hidden behind a multitude of preoccupations and superficial “interests.” I can hear a message of grace, a promise of blessing, or even the assurance that Christ is risen from the dead, and something in me (or something missing in me) lets me turn a deaf ear. Do I really believe the paschal message and what it says about life, death and hope? Yes, I do. I believe it; but it’s not often that I act on that belief.
With the Resurrection of Christ, in fact everything has changed. Creation is renewed, death is overcome, life abounds both here and beyond, and, potentially at least, we can behold everything in the radiant Light of the paschal dawn. All that’s asked of us is that we take it seriously. All that’s asked is that we allow the Lenten pilgrimage to work its transforming effect on our conscience as well as on our waistline, to reshape our passions and intentions to conform with what we know God wills and wants, in our life and for our souls. That we enter Holy Week with a sense of awe and expectation, with fear and trembling before the mystery that unfolds in those few exceptional days. Then it’s asked that we welcome the paschal feast as a true foretaste of the heavenly Banquet, a real participation in the glorious victory of the Risen Lord.
That’s all. But that’s enough to allow God to change everything for us. It’s enough to enable Him to lift us out of the tedium of a hum-drum life, to grant us a sense of joy even in a crowded subway, or in a less than desirable job, or in a home too full of noise and fuss to allow us much sleep or real repose.
It’s enough to enable us to hear and to rejoice in the promise that ends and fulfills the Holy Scriptures: “Behold, I make all things new!”