April 14, 1990
A Logical Absurdity
In the end, faith comes down to this: either it is given or it is not; either it is altogether absurd, or it is absolutely necessary. I suppose that is why, through the ages, believers and non-believers have had equal difficulty explaining their respective positions. Quite simply the God thing just boggles the human mind. Whether for a Thomas Aquinas or a Bertrand Russell it defies the most rigorous rationalization.
On such account, I rather like what the contemporary Italian philosopher and novelist Umberto Eco, a lapsed Catholic, once told an interviewer who asked whether he had ever considered any other religion: ”Between a logical absurdity and an illogical one, I would rather have the first.” In other words, whether you believe or not, you might as well go the whole hog.
The Catholic religion is built upon all kinds of rituals commemorating the sacred mysteries. None are more ancient and extravagant than those of Holy Week. None demonstrate what Eco refers to as a logical absurdity in more explicit and systematic a fashion. In but four short days unfolds the greatest drama of all times, a tale of defeat and triumph both compounding and compelling.
Thursday the Son of God, the Savior of the World is betrayed. Friday he suffers and dies on the cross like a common thief. Saturday he lies entombed, his life and teachings seemingly come to naught, his loved ones and followers thrown into blind terror and utter confusion. Sunday, as he had promised, he rises victorious from the grave.
True, the whole story is absurd, but in the end, it is also logical, as logical as the very pattern of nature, the cycle of life and death that maintains and nourishes the earth, is necessary and ineluctable.
Most of us no longer see that, of course. But before scientific progress alienated man from the soil and other living forms; before it obliterated the distinction between night and day and blurred the passage of the seasons; and before it held up the possibility of an indefinite sojourn on this planet, faith merely confirmed to our Christian forbears the higher meaning of what daily they perceived with their own senses.
They saw the sun wane at dusk, as they saw darkness yield to light at dawn. In winter animals hibernated and the fields lay frozen and fallow, but all of nature stirred anew with the advent of spring. Vines withered and then flowered. Seed had to die before being sown and germinating into new life beneath the ground, and wheat when ripe was cut down and winnowed.
Today we have come to call Black Saturday. Understandably, for indeed it is the bleakest time of the year, numbed as we have been by the orgy of pain and sorrow of the past two days and still in the dark as to its real intent and final outcome.
It is winter in our soul as outwardly the Church manifests only emptiness and desolation: the altar is left bare, the sacrifice of the mass is not celebrated, and holy communion is given only as a viaticum. But the surrounding gloom is attenuated by our certainty of his rising. We know it will come, and soon.
Tonight, towards midnight, we will celebrate His resurrection. At the Easter Vigil, a single large taper will be lit and introduced into a totally blackened church. And as we chant Lumen Christi, the Light of Christ, we will each draw light from that source until all darkness is dispelled.
What we do externally we shall do internally as well, for later in the mass we will also renew our baptismal vows, promising to reject Satan, the father of sin and the prince of darkness, and to live in the freedom of God’s children.
For a Catholic, no rite could be more meaningful and poignant than this evening’s, and no truth deeper or more compassing than the passage from death to life it commemorates. Without it our Lenten observance would be pointless, and our Easter joy incomplete.
