Easter

PRENOTE: You may wish to watch this film trailer, in which you’ll see a familiar face – if you know me.  The film will be released in France and the U.S. in the next few months.

There have been three other posts this month: Hoops, Arraignment, Tennessee, access here, if you wish.

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Thursday morning I watched what appeared to be a full moon as it was setting.  It was a perfectly clear sky, chilly morning.  Indeed it was the “Easter moon” – Christian Easter is always after the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox.

This Easter also coincides, generally, with Ramadan and Passover – I understand that such happens only once each 37 years.  For all of us, this is springtime, and all that means.

In my family collection of old postcards, most Easter cards were secular; here’s one which most speaks to me this year (Lidwina was Grandma Rosa’s youngest sister, probably about 8th grade when this was sent to North Dakota before 1910)

Easter season has its very dismal side.

Last Sunday was the annual reading of the Passion, with the annual “crucify him” from the “crowd”.  Here’s what was read to us (by two women and a man): Passion see p. 3.

Here are the precise words that have fueled hatred for perhaps 100 generations.  “The chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowds to ask for Barabbas but to destroy Jesus…Let him be crucified…Let him be crucified…he handed him over to be crucified…This is Jesus, the King of the Jews”  

The content/context is not optional.  Year to year, event to event, the way the narrative is presented and interpreted might change a bit, but the narrative is consistent and had a major part in fueling the holocaust – demonizing an entire people based on an ancient historical story, generation after generation, as I say, 100 or more..

My particular denomination has tried to soften the text over the years, but nonetheless it remains.  My guess is it will be read again tomorrow night at Basilica at Tenebrae (7 p.m. CDT which you can watch livestream if you like – check Mary.org if interested.  We’ll be there.)

Personally, I think the only antidote to the Passion is to let it be known, as I am doing here.  Eliminating or rewriting this particular Bible story won’t be dealt with in any committee at the Vatican, I’m quite certain.  We collectively need to be the “crowd”, the influencer of change.

A Personal Recollection: 

I’m lifelong Catholic.  I’m also a lifelong citizen of the United States.  Life is an endless series of affiliations: family, groups, nationalities, etc.

We are part of these groups; we are also individuals.  Labels lose something when we become a subordinate part of anything.

I can speak from personal experience about the Passion story, an annual reading during the Easter season, right before Easter, the Resurrection.

The words in the Bible – regardless of which version or edition – are essentially the same.  My Grandma Bernard’s 1911 edition says the same thing as in the Church version from last Sunday, except for slight changes in words – changes which make sense.

At the very end of the Passion, Mt 27-66 in Grandma’s Bible says “And they departing, made the sepulcher sure, sealing the stone, and setting guards.”  In last Sunday’s: “So they went and secured the tomb by fixing a seal to the stone and setting the guard.”  (The King James “Red line” Bible says this: “So they went, and made the sepulcher sure, sealing the stone, and setting a watch.”). And other versions would be similar.

In my growing up years, the scripture readings were always read by the Priest.

In the ecumenical years beginning in the 60s, there were moderate changes in practice by the year.  Typically, as I remember, when the duties came to be shared with Lay people, the Priest would be Jesus.  And there would be one or two lay readers – it is a very long reading.  Once in awhile, not always, but often enough to be remembered, the people in the pews might have a speaking part as part of the crowd calling for Jesus to be crucified.

There is only one specific reference to Jews Ch 27:37 “And they put over his head the written charge against him: This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.”

All of us know the potential and the danger of repetition.

Probably about all we can do is to be aware.  the Bible and the Constitution and all similar documents are subject to interpretation and the hands in which their interpretation is vested is important to note carefully.

COMMENTS (comments may not be enabled at end of post – technical issues still being fixed.)

from Joyce: When I studied biblical hermeneutics in college, I learned that, based on linguistic analyses, the Barabas story was inserted after Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire; it was added to make the Jews, rather than the Romans, guilty of crucifying Jesus, even though crucifixion was a Roman practice, not a Jewish one. That insertion was responsible not just for the Holocaust, but also for Jewish massacres for hundreds of years before that. Easter was always a particularly dangerous time for the Jews of Europe, when priests would order their flocks to murder Jews not only because of the Barabas story, but also because of the so-called blood libel, the claim that Jews used the blood of Christian children to make matzoh.

from Kathy: Thoughtful review of the Passion narrative…I never have liked reading “Crucify Him!” I am on the search for my Iberian Sephardim ancestors. Did any Iberian show up in your DNA? If so, quite possibly you have Jewish ancestry. That’s another story 🙂

from Jeff: funny, your website IP blocked my comment [see my response, below]…here it is: