Good Friday, and a Remembrance

7 am – The Mass of the Pre-Sanctified: Fr. Hulme was Officiant for this conclusion to the overnight Vigil, assisted by my friend John, who bore the processional cross, veiled in black. A handful of us came forward to the Altar and partook of the Body and Blood of our Lord, reserved from last night's service.

After that: Matins and Litany, for which I was Officiant. Psalm 22, Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac (Genesis 22), and three verses from St. John's Gospel:

Simon Peter said unto him, Lord, whither goest thou? Jesus answered him, Whither I go , thou canst not follow me now; but thou shalt follow me afterwards. Peter said unto him, Lord, why cannot I follow thee now? I will lay down my life for thy sake. Jesus answered him, Wilt thou lay down thy life for my sake? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, The cock shall not crow, till thou hast denied me thrice. (13:36-38)

And after that: Loose Ends. I cleared the music from last night, which was still at my place in the Choir, set up the choir room for tonight, emptied the dishwasher and washed the crock pots which had been left to soak.

One other Loose End: John told me of the man who was asleep in the Healing Touch room; he had been to the church yesterday, again in the evening, and in the early hours of this day during the all-night vigil, from there finding a place to sleep. He would not leave when we asked him, so we called the police, who spoke to him sternly and escorted him out. He was in bad shape, with the looks of one emaciated by addiction. I was not feeling charitable toward him, not nearly so much as John and Nora were, but he too is among those for whom we prayed at Matins, and will again tonight:

Almighty God, we beseech thee graciously to behold this thy family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was contented to be betrayed, and given up into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross; who now liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost ever, one God, world without end. Amen. (BCP p. 169, the Collect for Good Friday)

The musical thought that has been uppermost in my mind all morning is the nightingale from the Messiaen that I played as last night's prelude. I did not record my playing of it; here is a better performance.

The calm music represents the Upper Room, with the Words of Institution as a series of slow descending chords – akin in its soft gentle way to the mighty descending figures of Dieu parmi nous from the Nativity Suite. I have little doubt that Messiaen intended the resemblance, for God comes to us in the Bread and Wine just as much as He came among us in the Nativity. And then, a nightingale sings outside the window. All of this is repeated and expanded.

It is the bird, in his own beautiful language so foreign to our slow awkward songs, who proclaims the gentle Grace of the Sacrament, God with us, Dieu parmi nous.

But we are without that Grace for now. Until tomorrow night, we must wait.

Noon - On this day, no organ practice. I need the work, but it would be a desecration. I locked the instrument last night when we were finished with it after the opening hymn, and locked it must remain until tomorrow. I have worked fitfully in the office, but on this day it is always difficult to concentrate, most of all during the Three Hours. But my work – selecting hymns and voluntaries for several weeks of the Easter Season, starting the bulletins for next Sunday – serves as a reminder that the Eucharistic Acclamation is three lines, not just one:

Christ has died.
Christ is risen.
Christ will come again.

There are other reminders: the nightingale's song in my memory, the blue sky and sunshine outside the little windows in my office, the very opportunity to slow down, to lay aside the frantic work of these past days with bulletins and lesson printouts and setups and rehearsal plans, the words and friendship of those with whom I share this work – the wonderful and amazing members of the Adult Choir who sacrifice much to be here for these liturgies, the ladies in the kitchen last night as we washed dishes, my colleagues in the care of this parish. Yes, I am nibbling at the work of the days and weeks that are to come, but these Three Days are the culmination and we have now prepared for them as best we can. Now it remains only to live them, in our liturgies tonight and tomorrow and Sunday – and beyond.

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It is but a small thing, a historical detail by comparison, but I would be remiss without a remembrance of the events of this week 150 years ago in 1865. Today, April 3, was the day that the Union army entered Richmond.

In a series of actions on the three previous days, the Union forces had achieved a breakthrough at Five Forks and the Confederate lines south of Petersburg, forcing Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia to withdraw from the city. They were on the march this day, headed for the planned rendezvous at Amelia Court House where they were supposed to find a supply train of food and provisions. But no provisions were there, forcing a delay that allowed the Union forces to catch up. This led to the action at Saylor's Creek on April 6 where about a third of the Confederate force was cut off and forced to surrender; I wrote of these places here when I visited some of them a few years ago.

And on April 9 – Appomatox.

Whitman wrote of his memories of “ever-returning spring” in one of the great poems of the English language, in regard to the events that followed just a few days later at Ford Theater:

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,
And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,
I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

He is welcome to mourn for Mr. Lincoln. But for me, these first days of April will always be bound up with the fall of Richmond, the hungry and desperate march west, and the surrender. The example of these brave men, Mr. Lee most of all, continues to prompt me to greater faithfulness to my own duties.

Some years ago, I wrote:

The legacy of the Confederate States of America is a mixed bag. Yes, slavery was part of it. The racism of Jim Crow and the Ku Klux Klan that followed the war must be counted as part of it. In this, the CSA was no better, and in my opinion no worse, than the USA, or any other nation of the earth. For every nation and people of the earth, history and culture amount to a mixed bag, with shameful deeds alongside moments of glory; men and women who would be better forgotten, and those whose names should live forever.

A certain indescribable freedom was lost when Old Dixie went down. I have felt the evanescent spirit of it lingering among gatherings of my older relatives, and in conversation with neighbors and co-workers “back home,” especially the more backward and uneducated among them. I have tasted it in the moonshine at my uncle's funeral, and in my mother's corn bread and beans, made just the way her mother, and her mother's mother, made it. Some of it can be heard in the old “hillbilly” songs, and to a lesser degree in the bluegrass and country music that descended from them, or in the “shape-note” singing that has survived mostly in the Old South.

On this Day, I find it worth revisiting another thought, as well:
Lamentations: the mystery of Providence