THE
P RTAL
March 2016
Page 19
The Liturgy in March
With Lent being so early this year, the Church’s
calendar in March is rich in theological lessons
Fr Julian Green opens some mysteries for us.
This year
we will keep Good Friday, the commemoration of Our Blessed
Lord’s Passion and Death, on the day which, ordinarily, would be the day on
which we would celebrate the Solemnity of the Annunciation.
Our Roman liturgy cannot cope with such a
coincidence, and we will therefore be celebrating the
Annunciation on the first free day in the calendar
after the octave of Easter. However, this coincidence
reminded me of a book which I found very influential
on my understanding of these mysteries of the Lord.
The book is ‘The Mysteries of March’ by Fr
John Saward, which was published in 1990. Fr Saward
had been prompted to write this book after the
25th March coincided, in 1989, with Holy Saturday.
As he writes, in the Introduction to the book, the
Orthodox Churches of the Byzantine Rite have no
problem, as we in the West do, about keeping the
Annunciation on the same day as Good Friday.
of Christ is love. “The Word became flesh and dwelt
amongst us, and we beheld his glory, the glory which
is his as the only Son of the Father, full of grace and
truth” (John 1:14). These are the two reasons for the
Incarnation: to bring us truth and grace. And these
two are but one.
In fact, as he continues, this ceases to be a day when
the Eucharist is not celebrated, and the Divine Liturgy
in honour of the Incarnation is served. Fr Saward’s
book is a beautiful demonstration of the connection
between the mystery of the Incarnation and the Cross,
using the sometimes rather intricate theology of the
twentieth century theologian, Hans Urs von Balthasar.
“For the truth which Jesus makes flesh is the love
of God. The grace which he brings to us is, again, the
love of God. And the motivation of the Father is this:
that we who are creatures by nature, and sinners, are
in need of the love of God to raise us up to become
sinless children of God. In order to raise us up, He had
to come down.
I was recently rereading another book, “Life in the
Lordship of Christ”, which is a spiritual commentary of
the Epistle to the Romans by Fr Raniero Cantalamessa,
the Franciscan preacher to the Pontifical Household.
He is an author who is often able to put things so
very succinctly, such that those things which one has
believed for a long time are given new light by their
very simplicity.
“The love of God which has to come down to
us is given to us in the form of mercy. The Latin
word misericordia has the word cor at its centre, the
word for the heart. It is “the loving mercy of the heart
of our God which visits us like the dawn from on high”,
as we pray each day in the Benedictus at the Morning
Prayer of the Church.
As Fr Cantalamessa says, “Two walls of separation
existed between us and God’s love which prevented
full communion with God: the wall of ‘nature’ (God is
‘Spirit’ and we are ‘flesh’) and the wall of sin. Through
the Incarnation Jesus defeated the obstacle of nature
and through his death on the cross he defeated the
obstacle of sin and so the pouring out of the Spirit and
love was no longer impeded by anything.”
This is it, quite simply. God’s love is revealed to us in
his Son, because the motivation of the whole mystery
contents page
It is a small detail which may pass many by, but in
this Jubilee Year of Mercy, it is so very appropriate that
these two mysteries celebrated on 25thMarch coincide.
Creatures are to the creator so separate as to be almost
opposites. And yet God overcame this separation
in merciful love by becoming Man for our sake.
Creatures who, moreover, are sinners are even further
removed from God. And yet God, having taken on
our flesh, takes on our sin, nailing it to the Cross, so
that we can become righteous. In reality it is no mere
coincidence, the coming together of these Mysteries
of March.