As this year’s holy week and Triduum celebrations commence, I’d like to repost an article I wrote for another blog in 2017, soon after the release of a film that is often named as the best of the new Star Wars films: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016). Not only is this film in need of further attention here on Liturgy and Life, but the timing is good too: in the Great Paschal Triduum, Catholics celebrate the Paschal Mystery of Christ in a prolonged, three-day liturgy that begins on Holy Thursday, moves through the triumph of the cross on Good Friday and concludes at the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday with the initiation of new members and a festive celebration of the Resurrection. A liturgist friend calls this three-day season (the shortest in the Church year) “Paschal-palooza,” and rightly so. During the Triduum, we Catholics perform the symbolically richest, most lavish rituals we have to glorify a God who saves us by sending his own son to show us what conformity to God’s will really means (spoiler alert: it’s death). Yet death does not have the last word, and we are sanctified by the saving power of Christ’s humility “to the point of death, even death on a Cross” (Phil. 2:8).
Rogue One always struck me as a film with a lot to teach us everyday people about the Paschal Mystery: the loving self-sacrifice that brings new life and new hope. In a 2023 “Actors on Actors” interview between Star Wars stars Hayden Christensen (Anakin Skywalker, Darth Vader) and Diego Luna (Cassian Andor), Luna reflects that what makes Rogue One (and its excellent, must-watch Disney+ spin-off Andor) special is there are no Jedi—the magic is absent from this corner of the galaxy far, far away. The ordinary people of these stories must rely on themselves—and only themselves—to solve galactic problems. They are, Luna said, “simple, regular people doing extraordinary things.” Christ’s ultimate actions are meant to inspire and guide us in the same way: he was one of us—our brother, our friend. Being more like Christ does not mean learning magic or developing superpowers. It means learning to listen to and follow the will of God. Any simple, ordinary person can do it, but one must have faith, hope and—above all—love. These three gifts are exemplified by characters in Rogue One.
Fall is my favorite time of year, but this Fall is extra special, as it marks the release of a project that has been a long time in the making: a new podcast exploring the life, legacy and my own brief, personal encounter with Black Catholic priest, composer and liturgical pioneer, Fr. Clarence Joseph Rivers. Since November is Black Catholic History Month, there’s no better time for this launch.
From the official press release:
“The podcast seeks to introduce Fr. Rivers to Catholics of any color who have never heard of Rivers or the profound impact he made on the way Catholic worship looks and sounds today.
“Created and co-hosted by Emily Strand (of the podcasts Beyond the Words and Potterversity), Meet Father Rivers seeks out individuals who knew Rivers at all stages of his career—from the youthful optimism of his early years to the disillusionment and isolation he seemed to experience toward the end of his life. Strand and guests dialogically uncover hidden truths of Rivers’ (and their own) personal history, revealing both the gift of Blackness and the impact of racism and oppression—historical and ongoing—in the American Catholic Church.
I voted today. Standing in the long line snaking all the way around the Franklin County, Ohio Board of Elections felt like being inside some strange but essential internal organ of our democracy. As I walked lazily through the line’s many twists and turns for nearly an hour, masked and six feet from the next voter, I reminded myself that standing in this line to cast my ballot is likely the most important act of my secular life in a democracy.
But voting is also a fundamentally Catholic and even liturgical thing to do.
This past weekend, over 100 Potter scholars from all over the world attended the 9th annual Harry Potter Academic Conference, hosted by Chestnut Hill College. The conference was a great success by all accounts, and now that it’s complete, I thought I’d share my conference offering: a digital paper on the way all the many food images in Harry Potter point to the Eucharist. Please enjoy this with a hot glass of butterbeer! (And if you have a recipe you like better, please post in the comments.)
Emily’s conference talk for the 2020 Harry Potter Academic Conference at Chestnut Hill College
Hope to see you (digitally or otherwise) at next year’s Chestnut Hill Harry Potter Academic Conference. Until then, let’s all try to manage the mischief, shall we?
In Ohio, public worship resumes for Catholics this weekend, and I have a confession to make: I haven’t missed receiving the Eucharist once since the pandemic began. I feel guilty even typing that, since so many folks have had to settle for “spiritual communion” during these long weeks and months of quarantine. A woman told me recently that not being able to receive Jesus has felt like a piece of her heart is missing. A liturgy scholar I know said receiving communion again recently, for the first time in months, was like celebrating his first communion all over again. I bet it was even better.
Quarantined Palm Sunday (photo by Emily)
I am simply lucky – that’s why I’ve been at the Eucharistic table in a physical way during this time. I am lucky our Church decided to live-stream our Mass, when so many neighboring parishes simply – and with profound regret – closed their doors. I am lucky to have musical gifts that benefit our live-streamed Mass. I am lucky to have had parents who taught me to recognize my gifts as God-given, and return them to God, in service of the Church, whenever possible. I am lucky that my gifts are found useful by my parish community. I am lucky to be under 65 with no underlying health issues. I am lucky to have stayed well.
But I do not feel lucky when I look down from the choir loft at a nearly-empty Church, at an absent assembly. I just feel lonely. And liturgical loneliness is a difficult thing.
These are weird, wild times we live
in. Masses are not cancelled where I live (yet), but COVID-19 has caused our
Bishops to dispense us from our Sunday obligation for the next three weeks. My
parish has cancelled all non-essential (that seems to mean non-sacramental)
gatherings. This includes our weekly choir and ensemble rehearsal, though we
are still permitted to gather and sing/play for Mass on Sundays, with the
important instructions to stay home if members are particularly vulnerable
and/or experiencing symptoms of any kind.
On one hand, we could take this ban
on non-essential gatherings as an invitation to relax while we deal with this unprecedented public health crisis.
Tuesday night choir will be one less thing to worry about as we all focus on
staying healthy and safe.
The feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary (December 8 most years, celebrated this year on December 9) confuses many people. On a basic level, some do not realize this feast celebrates Mary’s conception rather than the conception of her son, Jesus. Once this misunderstanding is cleared up, questions still linger. Why, when we’re preparing to celebrate the incarnation of God in the birth of Jesus Christ, would we pause to celebrate the conception of Jesus’ mother? What’s so special about the way Mary was conceived?
The short answer is: Mary’s conception was unique and essential to our redemption. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception declares that “To become the mother of the Savior, Mary ‘was enriched by God with gifts appropriate to such a role.’”[1] These “gifts” entailed nothing less than the grace of redemption, setting Mary apart from her human peers. When the angel Gabriel greeted her as “full of grace,” this freedom from sin, given her by God’s own hand, Catholics interpret, is what he was referring to.
If we were to
translate this idea into terms Harry
Potter fans could relate to, we might say Mary was a bit like a
Muggle-born. In Harry Potter, magic
occurs most often in magical families like the Weasleys, but it “pops up”
sometimes in Muggle families, as in the case of Hermione Granger and Lily Evans
Potter, Harry’s mother. While Mary’s conception was unique in the human race,
Muggle-borns are rare, but not unique. But Lily’s status as a Muggle-born – as
someone set apart from her peers by a particular grace – is one of a few
significant (and likely intentional) ways in which Lily Potter alludes to Mary,
the mother of Jesus.
To explain, let’s go back to Mary a moment. Mary was full of God’s grace from the start, and this redemptive grace had two primary and interrelated effects. First, it gave her a preliminary share in the redemption of the human race. Secondly this graced state in which Mary was conceived, born and lived afforded her the freedom to choose to participate in God’s plan of salvation. The angel Gabriel did not come to inform Mary that she was already pregnant with the Christ. Mary had the freedom to choose her response, and she said “yes.” Catholics call this Mary’s fiat, a Latin phrase that sums up her self-emptying response: “May it be done to me according to your word.”[2] In so doing, she, an insignificant young girl from a marginalized group (the Jews), played an important role in the redemption of the world. St. Irenaeus famously said that Mary, in her fiat, “became to herself and to the whole human race a cause of salvation.”[3]
image property of Warner Brothers’ pictures
The role of personal choice is an important theme in Harry Potter, and her birth into the magical community does not make Lily Evans’ key role in the eventual salvation of the world a fait accompli or a “done deal”. She must choose, constantly. She chooses to accept her invitation to Hogwarts, she chooses to marry James Potter and not Severus Snape, choosing (as it were) Gryffindor over Slytherin. She chooses to be a member of the Order of the Phoenix, fighting Voldemort rather than either joining him or giving up.
But one choice by Lily is ultimate: her free choice to throw herself in front of her infant son to protect him from Voldemort’s killing curse. Lily’s sacrifice is the essential forerunner of her son’s more important, more widely reaching sacrifice, and in this way she alludes to Mary. Both women made self-emptying choices: choices that made them willing vessels for the plans of others. Mary’s choice to accept a miraculous, extra-marital pregnancy threatened all her future plans – even, perhaps, her life and safety, had not Joseph chosen to accept and protect her. For Lily, the instinct to protect her son even at the cost of her own life afforded the ultimate plans of Albus Dumbledore to defeat Voldemort. Neither woman understood the plans of those “in charge,” but both agreed to play key roles, with trust and hope for the plans’ eventual successes.
Above I hinted that Lily’s allusive relationship with Mary the Mother of God may have been intentional on the part of the author. Our best evidence of such intentionality regards Lily’s name. Because of the lily’s traditional associations with purity, it became associated with Mary, who is often depicted holding lilies of white. Ferguson notes the lilium candidum, or “Madonna lily,” is among the most recognized symbols of the Virgin mother in Christian art.[4] Another way Lily Potter alludes to Mary (intentionally or un-) is through her youth and relative insignificance; she is Muggle-born, and thus marginal and vulnerable, as Mary’s Judaism made her. And as discussed above, Lily’s Muggle-born status alludes to Mary in a particular way, for while Harry’s father James, like Joseph, has a noble heritage,[5] Harry’s mother Lily, like Mary, is of far humbler origins. Yet in her, magic bubbles forth unexpectedly and completely.
Lily windows adorn a side entrance to the Church of the Steps, formally known as Immaculata Parish (named for Mary’s Immaculate Conception), in Cincinnati, Ohio. Photo by Emily.
Lily’s Muggle-born status makes her only offspring, Harry, a meeting place between the magic and non-magic worlds, just as Jesus, for Christians, is the axis mundi, the meeting place between heaven and earth.[6] This is why we celebrate the Immaculate Conception of Mary here in the midst of our preparations for Christmas – because Mary, like Lily, was born special, and her specialness shows us that an ordinary, lowly girl from humble origins, can, through graced cooperation with God’s plans, participate in the world’s redemption. Like Mary – and like Lily – we too are called to make self-emptying choices, hollowing ourselves out, as it were, putting aside our own ambitions and desires to make room for God’s plans. In celebrating the Immaculate Conception of Mary, we proclaim the possibility that through us, God can and will do “marvelous deeds.”[7]
[1]Catechism of the Catholic Church, para. 490; internal quotation is from Vatican
Council II’s Lumen Gentium, para. 56.
[2]
Luke 1:38, New
American Bible Revised Edition.
[3]
Irenaeus, Adversus
haereses,
XXII, 4 (180 A.D.).
[4]
George Ferguson, Signs and Symbols in Christian Art (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1961), 95.
[5]
That the Potters are
descended from the Peverell family can be assumed by James’ possession of the
Cloak Hallow.
[6]
Lily is not simply
born of Muggles, she’s born from the same Muggles who produced her sister,
Petunia, whose name is allusive to a lily which, in some interpretations of
Victorian floriography, invoked “anger and resentment.” (“Lily, Petunia and the
Language of Flowers,” Wizarding World
(formerly Pottermore), https://www.wizardingworld.com/features/lily-potter-petunia-and-the-language-of-flowers,
accessed 6 November 2019.) One must admit Petunia and her Dursley family are
the most Mugglish Muggles we meet in the series, and this makes Lily’s magical
ability even more surprising. For more on magic in Potter as an extended metaphor for the (Christian) life of grace,
see Emily Strand, “Harry Potter and the Sacramental Principle,” in Worship vol. 93 (Oct. 2019), 345-365.
I recently overheard a conversation between two Catholics about evangelization. They seemed unequivocally against it, at least in its more typical form of intentionally sharing the Gospel with non-Christians. To them, in this age of human rights, active evangelization necessarily means the compromise of another person’s religious freedom. To promote one’s own religion, to them, is to degrade someone else’s notions of the numinous.
The discomfort modern Catholics stereotypically feel with the practice of evangelization can make this an awkward time of the liturgical year, this time of Ascension and Pentecost, when Jesus gives the Great Commission, that “repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” (Luke 24:47) It’s true that, on the surface, we Catholics don’t seem to have much in common with the missionary branches of Christianity, like Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, whose dogged evangelization efforts relate closely to their belief that the end times are now, lending an effective urgency to Christ’s command to go out in his name to all the world.
Last year, my father died on the
day before Ash Wednesday. He was 85 years old, and he’d lived a wonderful,
respectable Christian life, full of charity toward others, including prison
ministry in his retirement. He’d enjoyed a fulfilling professional career, been
a good friend to many, and was happily married for over 50 years to a wonderful
woman with whom he’d raised a big, happy family. Letting go of this kind,
funny, intelligent and loving man was hard and sad, but something about it also
felt right. It was Dad’s time, and
we’ll all have our time.
Ash Wednesday invites us all to reflect on “our time” – to remember that indeed our time approaches, even if still far off. We wear ashes on our foreheads to symbolize, as a recent NPR article put it, that we are all “dust-creatures”. There is an impermanence to our earthly lives that we must never forget, lest we fail to live lives of charity and love with every breath. Psalm 95 says, “If today you hear God’s voice/harden not your hearts,” for tomorrow, you may be gone. On Ash Wednesday we remember that we are dust, and to dust we shall return.
As foreshadowed by Chris Brunelle’s comment on my original post (thanks, Chris!), the song “Ashes” was given a deep lyrical revision for its appearance in Oregon Catholic Press’ Breaking Bread hymnal. I can confirm this update appears in the 2022 hymnal, but I am told it debuted in Breaking Bread 2021. (I am so far past considering this song for use in the liturgy, I confess I did not notice the revision last year.) The revision removes a lot of the self-absorbed language from the verses that I critique below, but it retains the misleading identification of ashes as “an offering,” so prominent in the song’s refrain.
Still, I find it interesting and perhaps encouraging that a major publisher took the time to consider theologically-based critiques of a popular song and to do something about it.
Do note that what I’m critiquing below are the songs original lyrics, not the revision.
Thanks for visiting,
Emily
ORIGINAL POST, dated 27 February 2019:
We rise again from ashes,
from the good we’ve failed to do.
We rise again from ashes,
to create ourselves anew.
If all our world is ashes,
then must our lives be true,
An offering of ashes,
an offering to you.
(lyrics from the song “Ashes” by Tom Conry c. 1978 New Dawn Music)
Catholics have been singing the song “Ashes” at Ash Wednesday Masses in English-speaking North America since the late 1970s. Many Catholics view it as the inevitable choice for the occasion; I have heard more than one person claim “it’s not really Ash Wednesday” if we don’t sing “Ashes.” Thus in preparing the Ash Wednesday liturgy, “Ashes” gets a free ride; its popularity means it is not subjected to the usual scrutiny. “Ashes” on Ash Wednesday is a fait accompli.
