Monday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time
At sundown tomorrow the great Paschal season of Lent-Easter begins. Some of us who knew the pre-Vatican II Church experienced Lent very differently than today. We grew up in a church caught between the eras of the Council of Trent and the Second Vatican Council. What follows are some recollections on my part just prior to my twelfth birthday when everything seemingly changed (although the essentials remained the same).
Giving something up. As if breaking New Year’s resolutions wasn’t bad enough! I gave up non-peanut butter candy one year because I loves Reese’s cups. I tried giving up lima beans (which I hated) but my mother would have none of it. It was a staple at our table because she loved lima beans. Maybe she should have given them up? My favorite was Father Guido Sarducci on Saturday Night Live who gave up menthol cigarettes.
Stations of the cross every Friday at 2:15pm. The entire school gathered in Youngstown’s Sacred Heart Church which stood on a tall slope overlooking the massive steel mills of the Mahoning Valley. Our little stations booklets featured rather graphic pictures of the journey Jesus took to the cross. The stations originated, like the nativity scene, with the Franciscans and were designed for pilgrims who couldn’t walk the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem. Most of us kids liked it for less than pious reasons – it took time away from the classroom!
Guilt and more guilt. I didn’t so much have guilt as I had Irish guilt. Did you raise your voice at your parents? Did you disobey them? Did you think of something mean? Guilt was the engine that drove our spiritual lives. Confession wasn’t so much about reconciliation as it was about sin. Making a bad confession was a mortal sin. Leave something out? That’s even worse! I have a vivid memory of my first grade class making its way into a morning mass when we were stopped dead in our tracks by the sister principal who admonished, “Jesus hung on a cross for you for three hours and you can’t keep quiet for three minutes!”
Penalties. Breaking the Lenten fast was considered a mortal sin, meaning damnation! I recall one Friday in Lent as a kid with our family in a McDonald's parking lot (it was a big deal to go to McDonalds and eat in your car). Half way through my 15 cent hamburger, I realized that I was eating meat. My 10 year old self panicked. My mother’s response: “Finish it. It’s a sin to waste.” Talk about a Catch 22!
St. Patrick’s Day exception! As the majority of US bishops still had names like Malone, McFadden, McNicholas, Purcell, Devitt, Gorman, O’Connell, Casey and even Cronin, the US bishops made March 17 an exception for the Lenten fast. This was especially celebratory when March 17 landed on a Friday. All praise to Saint Patrick!
Covering the statues. The last few Sundays of Lent the Gospel featured the account of Jesus slipping away and hiding from the crowd that wished to make him king. So since Jesus hid, the statues hid, too, and were snuggly covered head to toe with Roman-purple cloth. Daffodils and crocuses aside, covered statues were a sure sign that Easter was around the corner.
The perfidious Jews! Three deadly words to describe the Chosen People in the intercessory prayers within our Good Friday liturgy. This terrible and inaccurate moniker was dropped in the reform of the liturgy. No serious New Testament scholar believes that “the Jews” killed Jesus. He died on a Roman cross and had made enemies of a few within the Jerusalem leadership and was ordered to the cross by the Roman governor.
Mackerel snappers! Catholics were disparaged for confessing to “someone other than God” and no meat on Fridays (that’s not in the Bible!) by some other Christians. It wasn’t unusual for our Catholic high schools to hear cheers at games such as “beat the mackerel snappers!” (Our Youngstown Ursuline High athletic teams would be met with “Stew the Irish” from our “public school” competition, but that’s another story.)
Good Pope John knew that the essentials of the faith never change but the ways in which that faith is expressed can and have changed throughout our history. Change is the one constant of life and the Church, made up as we are of human beings, must also embrace this truth. As we age this truth becomes more and more evident. But God doesn’t change and Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
From one mackerel snapper to another, that’s very good news indeed.
—Timothy J. Cronin