Tomorrow, in a fairly large part of the world, is Easter. The Resurrection. Hence, last week was the Holy Week.
As nice as 'Holy week' may sound - la Settimana Santa, in Italian - I find it nevertheless too polished. Too pure.
I've grown up used to calling it "Stràstna sèdmica", in Bulgarian. The Week of Passion, that is. And I was recently reminded of the double meaning of "passion" - on the one hand, it is that powerful emotion that overwhelms us and makes us feel the vibration of life; on the other hand, it means "suffering". The etymological ground for it is that passio means something that we are subjected to, that we endure. The passion, as well as the suffering, puts us to a test.
And what a test, at that. One is teared inside out, their body and soul are crucified and sometimes it just feels so desperate that you think - I can't bear it any more. I am done. This is going to kill me... and if it doesn't kill me, it won't make me stronger, either, just more broken than before. This is the passion-suffering: it breaks you and tears you and leaves you weeping and desperate. Abandoned. Abandoned to the solitude of your suffering, to the crucifix of your naked insignificance. He Who Had Loved me, Has Abandoned me.
For me, linguistically, that is what the Holy Week is about. It is not a meditative preparation for the Event to come. It is that exaltation and suffering that happen in the last week of Jesus' earthly life. And tonight, on Saturday night, is the deepest of the abyss, because we all know - He is really dead. The Hope is dead. I couldn't live without hope. My world is void of sense, if I don't have either hope or fear. Without hope, I don't live for something. Without fear, I simply don't care. Without hope and fear, there is no God. Only me and my resignation.
You know how the story ends. Christ is Risen. This we will be able to say from tomorrow on. But now, I don't know. I know that He is dead. I know that nothing will come.
And what is it, what is it that is coming next? What is it that could save me? What is that Resurrection that has been promised? From the abyss of a godless world, a world where every hope or fear is gone, I don't know.
See you in the next blog post, looking forward for the Resurrection. And I am going now to hide some Easter eggs and sweets around the home, because the Easter bunny is coming tomorrow. And Mila was passionately, desperately crying tonight, because, in the eve, you never know if He Whoever You Are Waiting For will come.
But he will. The Easter Bunny, I mean.
But he will. The Easter Bunny, I mean.
Thank you, Evelina. I'm finally finding the mental space to come read this. I am trying to create a website. I have no (meaning zero) understanding for how the internet works and no natural talent for it. But I'm determined to figure it out and as a result I feel like banging my head against a wall. Not quite the kind of suffering that you're describing here. You're writing is really beautiful. It makes me think of a very primitive experience of Christ's three days in the tomb and maybe what the myrrh-bearing women were experiencing, before they knew "the end of the story," as it were.
ReplyDeleteHey hey there, happy to hear from you! And thanks for reminding of the three myrrh-bearing women, it fits perfectly into my picture (which probably switches viewpoint from Jesus in his last days to those who are left to themselves after his Crucifixion).
DeleteI wish you some luck with that website. I hope you'll soon get the hang of it and will be able to enjoy the more creative side of it.