As you all know (if you’re an avid reader of ours), last Sunday night all of us took part in Clonard’s very first Passion Play. I’m going to let Emily do most of the gushing about it in her post on Friday, but I’m going to tell you a little about it. First, it went SO well! All the work that 40+ volunteers put in over the last few months certainly paid off, as any of the 600 or so people who saw it will tell you. I’d especially like to congratulate Emily on all her work. She aimed for the moon with this production, as the saying goes, and I’d say it fell among the stars, if not on the moon itself! It seems the play has whet Clonard Parish’s appetite for the fine arts again – get ready for the return of the Holy Show at the end of May, folks!
I have heard several people say over that last two days that the Passion Play was more than just a performance: it was a prayer. From one of the cast members: “They were a great audience, weren’t they? They were right there with us in the story. That’s what made it a prayer.” From a member of the audience: “That will stay with me for a very long time. It went beyond just a performance – it drew me in.” From another member of the audience: “I haven’t felt so close to God in a long time.” I can’t think of any higher compliments, or any more humbling.
Mary Magdalene, Martha of Bethany, John the Apostle, and Madame Director
I have to smile at the beautiful irony in these comments. Let me explain. So often, we treat the Mass like a “performance,” wherein the delivery of music, readings, homily, and prayers are meant to entertain and please us, or to make us feel something. Sometimes we even applaud at the end. If Mass falls short of our expectations, we think it is boring or not worth our time. But we are disappointed because we go in with the wrong expectations. Mass is not supposed to be a “performance” in the sense that some of us perform and the rest are spectators. It is a prayer, in which we join together in the real presence of Christ who saved us. How appropriate, then, that we should attend a play, a “performance” in exactly that sense, and be unexpectedly led into prayer! How wonderful that a play about our Lord’s Passion should make Christ’s gift so clear, and so allow us to enter into prayer together!
Passion Play group hug!
With that renewed clarity, I hope that we can all enter more fully into the real drama of the Eucharist this Holy Week. I say “real drama” because for Christians, the Passion and Easter aren’t just stories. They are reality. And the world-saving, all-giving, all-embracing love of Christ revealed to us on the cross isn’t just in the past. It is ongoing. It is now. It is revealed in every celebration of the Eucharist, and we are part of it. That reality changes the way we live. That is what is so cool about being a Christian. Thanks for the reminder, Passion Play! I’ll be taking that with me into our Triduum and Easter liturgies this week.
