Holy Week

It is Easter morning as I write this in my garden, and attempt to sum up my impressions of last week. Yet I know even as I begin that it is useless. What I can write down bears about as much relation to what I experienced as a child's scratching on a slate to, let us say, the sunrise burning over the sea. However, I cannot rest till I have made my scratches, and tried to embody in words what even my soul itself could only dimly apprehend. Even as I put down these words I am aware that the light is coarsening. And it is really a serious reflection that even all that my stupid dulness could perceive is only as a shadow of a shadow of what the Church was trying to show^ me.

Tenebrae Well, I have been witnessing a four days' drama of the most appalling kind. To be plain with myself, it has been nothing else than the tragedy of the murder of God; and that interwrought with the most bewildering pangs and motives, and overshot with gleams of love and pity. All kinds of personages have been moving on the stage, clever, shallow souls, lovers, foes, simple, passionate, stupid, fiery-eyed, self-seeking, imperceptive — why pile up epithets? — in short, the entire human race. And in the midst God has been walking, dumb, with gestures, lifting His Hands in useless explanation, in appeal, in agony, dropping them in despair. And beneath the stage, like a Greek chorus, have crowded the saints and sages of all time, chanting comment and interpretation, running now on to the higher platform, now abased in the dust twisting like worms, now turning to cry to me, gesticulating what I was too dull to understand. Or it has been a shadow-show, with liturgy for the sheet, and the Person of God for the light: great confused movements have come and gone; and, from behind, groaning and singing, death-screams and hiughtor, have continually sounded. And at the end the great Mother of us all has turned to me, smiling and weeping. "Well," she has said to me, "you have seen the shadow of the shadow of truth — a little coarse daub of reality. What have you to say?... Have you anything to say?... What do you think of yourself and God now?"

Where, then, can I begin? I suppose with Tenebrae.

Each evening, for three nights, we assembled towards dusk, taking our seats in the echoing stone church, and waited, looking up at the cold altar and the stone-floored sanctuary. There were a few lights here and there, enough to read by, and on the right stood a peak of burning candles. There came a sound of footsteps, and through the gloom came two priests walking slowly, followed by a troop of men and boys; presently they were in their places, and after a silence, simple as a country show began the play.

Now, I do not propose to talk liturgically, but merely to describe my general impressions.

It seemed to me that each evening, deepening in power and pathos each time, a kind of gigantic Figure grew upon the dark air. I scarcely know who He was: sometimes it was simply He whom we call Jesus Christ. Yes, I think it was He, really, all the while; but it was not as I had always pictured Him to myself, and as the plain Gospel presents Him. It was much more than that. I saw emotions, agonies, and smiles, that I had not suspected. Strange persons, curious old prophets, veiled shadows, seemed to hold up lanterns to light Him, and to voice what He left unsaid. Evening by evening He stood there, moved from side to side, groaned, yearned, expostulated, explained, and suffered; "Save me, O God!" He moaned; **the waters are come in even to my soul.... I am become a stranger to my bretlireii... God, help me! Lord, delay not!... Leave me not!..." And when words failed Ilim, His comforters who could not help Him, took up His lamentation; telling us that His travail was the travail of the world, and pointing us to the City of God itself, lying desolate through His woe. Yes, it was Jesus Christ; but I have never before understood what it was that He meant when He named Himself Son of Man.

For it was all mankind that stood there in His Person — He Himself became sin and ruin Incarnate, He was Penitent as well as Priest, Sinner as well as Saviour, a worm and no man, as well as Eternal God. For an hour or two each evening I saw heaven and earth as one thing — glory and shame rushed together into one whirling core of agony: despair and hope, faith and darkness, love and hate, fused before my eyes. The infinite expressed itself finitely, and the finite soared into the illimitable — and the pity of all was that the supreme horror was enacted in a Heart like my own. The

Word became Flesh. The infinite sea was compressed into the compass of a single soul.

Well, well; it is of no use to write like this! But does no one understand, any more?...

What deepened the terror was the extinction of the candles. One by one the stars went out, with frightful deliberation, and each was like the putting out of an eye, or the slow turn of a rack. My heart cried out for a blaze of light, protesting against dying in the dark; but one by one, with long pauses they went out. (Did that man in the surplice, I wonder, know what he was doing.^) There was only one left after a while; but of that I shall speak presently.

Now at times there was a break in that monotonous recital of pain. One at a lectern chanted out a comment in a kind of wailing melody that rose and fell, as a dying man who has been long silent might croon out a tune, very slowly, note by note, up and down; and, then, as if the tension would break our hearts altogether, there came a gush of lamentable harmony, that was like the sudden smell of autumn and the ruddy gleam of sunset, penetrating a silent death-chamber.

"O Jerusalem! Jerusalem!" sane: the boys, "turn to the Lord thy God." That was all.

Well, well; even at this distance of time, writing as I am in the sunlit glory of Easter morning, it seems as if I could not bear it. But worse was to come.

We were stilled at last, all of us, I think into a kind of resignation. It seemed useless to strive. We were driven down into the lowest depth, and lay there passive and helpless, as Jesus turned His great eyes upon us out of His drawn, sunken Face, lit only by a single flame. There was no more to be said. He was there, and we could not help Him. God said it was to be so. And then the cruelty waxed tenfold more poignant; for, no sooner had we come to this, and yielded to the darkness and misery.

than far above us, out of sunlight, our great Mother Ufted up her voice and sang like the Cherubim —

"Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for He hath visited and redeemed His people."

I think I could have borne anything but that. If I had but been left alone, there was nothing that I could not suffer now; but that happy song was as a sword for pain. Is it anything for wonder that even as I write these words, my eyes are blinded again with tears? Oh, the cruelty of letting the light into that pit! Yet she did so, flooding us with sorrow upon sorrow, and shame upon shame; and Jesus Himself sobbed, there, before my eyes, with the exquisite torment. Oh! could she not leave us with the tears of Jeremias, and the soft moaning of David — but that she must mock and pierce us with joy? Yet she sang on and on...

"And thou, child, shalt be called the Prophet of the Highest.... To give knowledge of salvation unto His people....

Througli the tender mercy of our God, whereby the dayspring from on high liath visited us: To give Hght to them that sit in darkness and the shadow of death; to guide our feet into the way of peace."

There was a sudden silence; and a voice cried savagely —

"But the traitor gave them a sign, saying: 'Whom I shall kiss is He, hold Him.'"

And the second night —

"They placed above His Head His cause written, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews."

And the third night —

"Women sitting at the selpulchre lamented, weeping for the Lord."

Ah! we w^ere back again at the bottom of the pit, plunged deep, and hope had died again, and Heaven was closed, and Jesus stared at us, streaked with blood, expressionless, blank, and white-faced, rigid and all but dead; and one wailing voice be-gan—

"Christ was made obedient for us unto death,..." and again silence.

Then a quick, hurried muttering began, as of men in desperate fear at the brink of death, hastily, hopelessly, as if repeating some charm in despair, on one low, babbling note.

*'Have mercy upon me, O God, after thy great goodness," and so through the psalm. Then I saw what I had not noticed, and that was that the church was completely dark. There was not a glimmer left. I could see the pale line of surplices on either side of the wide choir, a great pillar grey against the dusk and rising into complete darkness; the solemn pallor of the vaulting. Then, as a voice began from the dark figure kneeling on the bare steps, a flicker shone for an instant in the apse, and a monstrous shadow moved across it. Again silence and complete darkness, then a crash that shook my heart and tore a gasp from my lips, echoing round and round like the roar of doom; and in the stillness that followed a man came out from behind the altar, carrying a single candle. That was the end — darkness, and one star.

Of the Maundy Mass, the Sepulchre, and the bloodless sacrifice of Good Friday, it is even harder to write; for instead of one profound emotion there are a thousand; and 1 could not follow them. It was as a hand dashed across a jubilant harp, and of the incoherent murmur there may be a hundred meanings. Is it in the sombre bass, or the mellow mid notes, or the ecstatic trebles that the secret Hes?

First, then, the Maundy Mass. The altar is ablaze with lights and gold and flowers, and from a side chapel comes the glow of the expectant tomb. Three priests are there, gorgeous and brilliant; the Mass begins as usual, quietly splendid; and, at the intonation of the Gloria there is an event, to me, at any rate, unexpected, which floods the whole soul with a passion that may rise from either torment or bliss. For, as the priest's voice ends, there is a crashing chord from the great organ, and a tumult of bells; and as if a whole heaven of sound had split, the mad riot pours on, moment after moment. The chords melt, change, wax in volume; the air is full of the throbbing bass of the bourdon, the windy bellowing of the tower, and the shrill silver tinkle of the tiny bells gathered from every altar in the church, to greet the new-born Eucharist — on and on till the heart is torn and vibrating, and the brain exalted with music: the three priests sign themselves with the Cross, and there is silence.

When the Mass is over, sung throughout unaccompanied, with a kind of quiet joy the procession is formed, and the Body of the Lord is borne, wafted along on Pange Lingua, to the waiting sepulchre, where It shall lie for a day and a night. The walls are decked with flowers, and sheaves of candles stand on either side. There it is laid in solemn joy, censed, and left.

Yet the whole affair is not what it seems. It has an air of sorrow beneath the beauty, that rises like the indefinable scent of death

HOLY \vp:ek so from a coffin piled high with flowers and walled with fights. Oh, yes! the vestments are white and gohl, the organ peals, the candles flame; but it is no good. It is desperately hard to keep up the exultation. The mind assents, as always, to the liturgical instinct that rejoices over the inauguration of the marriage-supper of the Lamb, but the heart remembers that the Meat and Wine upon the board have been made possible only by the death of the Lamb whom we love. "Eat and drink," cries Wisdom, "see the wine that I have mingled and the bread that I break to you. Lift up your hearts and sing." But as we watch her, her eyes are full of secret pain, and on her lips a grievous paleness.

It is indeed like that First Supper of w^hich the Gospel tells. "Now is the Son of Man glorified," cries Jesus, with shining eyes and broken Heart, "and God is glorified in Him...." "And when they had sung an hymn they went forth to the mount of Olives." Singing and praising they went out, desperately feigning that all was well; they looked upon the Golden Vine in the Temple courts in the glory of the paschal moon.... And there followed the Agony and the Sweat of Blood.

I looked into the church again that afternoon towards sunset, and I knew that I was right. There was the chapelle ardente before me, one avenue of white flowers and yellow flames, heavy and redolent, and in the midst, enthroned, lay Jesus Christ in state; not as when He beams through the tabernacle door instinct with life, but with an aspect of dreadful death. His guards were two children, come in from the school next door, with white veils on their heads; and, as I knelt and looked, they presently stood and stretched out their arms crosswise, to remember Him better. So they stood, minute after minute, till the slender arms drooped and trembled and rose again resolutely, striving to explain in gesture their pity and love. "Come, then, at Thy Will, heavenly Physician," cried Richard the hermit six centuries ago, "kindle in my heart a spark of Thy passion, of love and of pity, to quicken it with."

Yet Jesus was not dead yet. But to this Church who Hves in eternity, who still greets Mary as she kneels in Nazareth, and views the Judge coming even now upon the clouds of heaven — this Church to whom time is nothing, to whom space is nothing — nothing more than imagined lines on the globe of eternity — since she adores the Body of God at one moment in ten thousand places — to this Church all things are possible. She buries her Lord on Thursday and raises Him on Friday, crucifies Him ten minutes later, and sings her Easter Mass while He yet lies in the tomb. It is all one to her — Calvary, Bethlehem, Heaven — for she ''sees God in a point"

On Friday, then, the climax comes, and it is as simple as the death of a child.

First, then, I saw three priests in black and white approach the altar. There was some reading from a book, a collect or two, the singing of the Passion — a long song of mournful recitative by various voices; a number of prayers. The peace and stability of the Church, a blessing on Christ's Vicar, the Bishop of the diocese, on all clerks, catechumens, and the world, comfort for mourners, conversion for heretics, Jews, and heathens — this was what was asked as we stood on Golgotha. Then followed the adoration of the Cross.

How can I describe that, except by saying that it was the simplest thing I have ever seen, as clear and natural as a pool of water, and yet as bitter as brine? The crucifix, laid as if for tenderness' sake on a soft cushion, is approached by all who are present. I, too, went up — I, a heretic and outcast, for Jesus Christ came to save sinners — and I knelt there, trembling, between two boys who seemed to tend that wounded Figure, wiping His feet softly after each kiss. And I kissed the smooth ivory, too, above the nail... and He did not strike me!

One thing, too, I saw: an old woman came up the stones on her knees, moaning and muttering, wrapped in a shawl; and she kissed Ilim, as a mother might, on His pierced feet. His bruised knees. His wounded side.... My God! how beautiful that was! And all the while there pealed the reproaches.

"Oh! My people, what have I done to thee? In what have I grieved thee? Tell me! Tell me! I brought thee out of Egypt: and thou hast prepared a cross for thy Saviour."

Then followed a roar of Greek, strange and sonorous:

Agios O Theos... Agios ischyros... Agios athaiiatos eleeson imas.

So, as in a delirium a man talks in a long-forgotten tongue, now, when her heart is rent, the Catholic Church drops twenty centuries without an effort, and speaks as she spoke underground in Rome, and in Paul's hired house, and in Crete and Alex-andria and Jerusalem.

**I planted thee. My lovely vineyard," moaned the choir, "and thou hast been bitter to Me. With vinegar thou didst quench My thirst, and with a lance didst pierce the Side of thy Saviour.... I scourged Egypt for thee; and thou hast given Me to scourging.... I drowned Pharaoh for thy sake, and thou hast betrayed Me to the priests.... I opened a way for thee through the Red Sea, and with a lance thou hast opened My side.... I fed thee with manna in the wilderness, and thou hast wounded Me with blows and scourgings.... I gave thee wholesome water from the rock, and thou hast given Me gall and vinegar.... I gave to thee a royal sceptre, and thou hast crowned Me with thorns.... Oh! My people, what have I done to thee, that thou dost use Me so.^"

Then we went all together to the tomb, and brought out His very Body, shouting as we went in terrible glee how the banners of the King go forth, glorifying the Cross that we made for Him and on which He hangs, praising the Fount of Salvation. We laid It upon the altar, censed It in silence, and so moved on to the end, in incoherent haste.

There is no sacrifice on this day, for all is sacrifice. There is no need for the Holy Ghost to come down, to make the Body of the Son, and touch the Father's Heart, for to-day all the world is Calvary. Yet fragments of the Mass are uttered as by a dreaming priest. The Paternoster is sung; the prayers are said, the Host is consumed; and, in an instant all is over; the black clouds topple over, the gulf is filled, the rending rocks are still again; and I — I was as a man who awakes and sees the sunlight in his room....

Holy Saturday

*'As when a man awakes and sees the sunlight in his room." This is the secret of Holy Saturday.

Many years ago I was in Italy, where the air is like water, and the water like wine. Morning by morning I awoke to the crying of the swifts outside, drawing long icy breaths of freshness, seeing the netted sunshine shake on the ceiling from the jug of water on the floor, hearing the rustle of the leaves below my window. There, in Italy, the morning struck the key of the day; the world was alive there, and as good as God made it, and everything was in His hand....

Now on Holy Saturday the Catholic Church is in just such a mood as that. She is as simple as the sunshine, as happy as the birds, as melodious as the rustle of branches. But it is morning, not noon. Christ is rising, but not yet in mid-heaven; and she springs from her bed of sorrows to make all ready for Him. He will be here presently.

First, then, there must be fire to meet Him with, lights and torches, for the garden is yet in tender twilight; and there must be water to wash Him with, to take clean away the smell of the tomb, and the aloes, and the myrrh. He being dead, dieth no more. Water too, not vinegar, for Him to drink — light again and water through which He may be seen and handled by her blinder children — for is He not the Light of the World and the Water of Life? — Hght and water once more, that He may Hghten those that sit in darkness and satisfy those that thirst after righteousness.

So we went down in the early dawn, all together, the priests still in purple, leading us to where a brazier burned in the porch. From outside blew in the morning breeze, carts rattled over the stones, contemptuous strangers eyed us through the door. But it did not matter; we were bent on great affairs.

First the red coals were blessed, for is not the Church the Lady-Mistress of the world? — all things are hers, for she is Christ's and Christ is God's. Those coals had been lighted from a flint, for God's Spouse is older than the Stone Age, as well as younger than yesterday, God is named by her as the Father of Lights — an exquisite title — and begged to bless this fire because He made it and loves it. It is Brother Fire now, as that dear child St. Francis called it. He must not rage and storm any more; he must burn demurely in lamps, and if he dances it must only be piously and on the summit of a candlestick. Then five large gilded things are blessed and sprinkled with the last drops of holy water. I whispered to a boy to tell me what they were — for we were all very homely and happy in the porch that morning — and he told me, Incense for the Candle.

Then the deacon took off his purple, and put on instead a large white dalmatic, stiff with gold. He took into his hand a pole surmounted by three twisted candles and wreathed with flowers, and went through into the church. When I came after, just behind the others, he was lighting it from the new holy fire. Then he straightened it, and there was a flame like a yellow flower perched on one of the wicks; he knelt, and simultaneously sang out at the top of his voice —

Lumen Christi!

And the choir roared —

"Thanks be to God!"

Three times he did that, raising his voice a tone or two at each repetition. He did not sing it very well: but did that matter? For we were going even now with Mary and vSalome tlirougli the scented garden; virgins to meet the Bridegroom, lovers to keep tryst with the Beloved; and the three lights swayed as we went.

There was a little going to and fro at the altar, as we of the laity — and I, not even of that — stumbled into our seats; and when I had regained my composure, that deacon was standing at a lectern, drawing a long breath, with a little group about him attentive and eager. Beyond, not a yard away, stood the huge bronze candlestick.

Then he began to sing....

It was a sonfj such as none but a Christian could ever sing. It soared, dropped, quavered, leapt again, laughed, danced, rippled, sank, leapt once more, on and on, untiring and undismayed, like a stream running clear to the sea. Angels, eartli, trumpets. Mother Church, all nations and all peoples sang in its singing. We, "dearest brothers," as he named us (and I a heretic!), were bidden to join with him — Jiim, he said in charming parenthesis, who was quite unworthy of being numbered among the Levites, — in imploring God Almighty and Merciful, to glorify this wax-candle through Jesus Christ who lives and reigns through all ages. We were to lift up our hearts, to thank God, because such was fitting. It was He who had paid the debt of Adam, and washed us in His Blood. This is the day and this the night on which Israel came out of Egypt, and the pillar of fire burned through the dark. This is the night of supremest grace, for Christ rose in it, burst the bands of death, and soared from Hell. O inestimable love of charity! O most necessary sin of Adam! O blessed, blessed fault which brought down such a Redeemer! O more than blessed night! For this is the night that is clear as the day. This is the night that banishes darkness, washes sins, gives innocence to the foul, and joy to the unhappy — that puts hatred to flight, brings peace to the birth, and all things in subjection to Jesus Christ!

Have you ever heard such a song as this?

— such a wealth of divine contradiction, deHrious paradox, and chikHike wisdom?

Presently, after fixing the five incense grains into the soft wholesome wax-candle

— (it was at least twelve feet high, by-the-way) — he was off again in his song, beseeching God this time to receive this evening sacrifice, prepared from the labour of bees by the pains of Holy Church. Then he lit the candle, and it was lifted to its place high above all heads, while he drew a lesson or two from its composition. Then as boys dispersed in all directions, each with a taper tipped with ho y fire, to light every lamp in the place, the deacon settled down again indefatigably in his praises of this holy night, and in his entreaties that God w^ould hear his singing, and see the burning candle and bless every one in the world, clergymen, people, and Pope. And so he ended; and I, in my stiff pew, smiled all over my face with sheer joy and love.

I thought a great deal about it all as I sat down for the next three quarters of an hour while the interminable prophecies were read. I had meant to attend to them, but I was far too much moved. Of course I had read about these ceremonies, but I had never seen them before, nor heard that amazing song.... I wonder if any one will think me irreverent in my thoughts. They will be wrong if they do, for I am as sure as I can be, that this is more or less what the Catholic Church meant me to think. She wished me to be as happy as a child — happy because Jesus Christ was risen; and because she was happy.... Well, well; I must get on.

The blessing of the water was as joyous as the blessing of the fire.

We all went down to the font, singing that, as the hunted hart pants after water-brooks, so panted our souls after God. We were thirsty for God, we said, for tears had been our only drink. Then we came to the baptistery, and there was that deep, cool, dusky pool of water shot through with one clear sunbeam.

Here again God was prayed to bless the sweetest of His elements — the water that washes souls — the water on which His Spirit moved — and to open a river of salvation to all that He has made. All evil things were to leave this cool, innocent creature; they were not to interfere with God Almighty's plans. And then, as if His Spirit indeed had given it life, the priest turned to that quiet pool and spoke to it as to a man.

"Yes: it is thee I bless, thou creature of water, thee whom God once set apart from dull earth; thee, who dost flow to us straight from Paradise in four streams; thee, who quenched Israel's thirst in Arabia. Yes; I bless thee, thou dear water, once turned into wine by Jesus Christ. He walked on thee with His blessed feet; He was baptized with thee by John; He poured thee from His Side; He sent thee out into all the world to wash His children's sins away.

"Then let God bless this creature, and send down His Holy Spirit — like — this — candle — into — it!

I?>

There followed pourings of oil, — oil which, after all, is but water transmuted by divine power in the heart of the olive tree. And so presently we were back again, singing the Litany of the Saints with all our hearts, and the priests, for the last time, lay flat upon their faces like dead corpses before the altar....

I cannot go on. Is it not too good to be true.^ And I have no part in it, anyhow. I was an intruder upon these secrets — for I am a heretic.

Or was I not rather like some child peering through the bars of a palace-garden.? Within, royalty goes to and fro, music sounds, banners wave, bewildering glory moves up and down. But how happy it made me! And at least I have this encouragement, that though I may not yet receive the children's Bread — yet fire and water are the common heritage of all. God who has made the sun and the sea, who shines and rains upon just and unjust alike, will not be angry with me because I loved to see how He can deal with phiin thinf^s, how He can make water holy as well as beautiful, and fire to lighten souls as well as eyes....

Ah! there comes the crash of bells once more, the roar of the organ, as the white priests bow before the flaming altar: and there is no tragic silence to follow as on Thursday. All is splendour now....

Fire is holy... Water is clean....

Christ is risen....

God bless us all!