It's Good Friday.
In the Catholic faith, this is in
some ways the spookiest day of the year. There's no Mass, no communion
wafer. No music. Worshippers remember the death of Jesus, a horrible
death, executed as a criminal for standing up to the local authorities.
Back when I was a kid, there were lots of statues around the church, and for
this week, Holy Week, they were all covered up with long purple cloths. In that
era, with the communion host inspiring absolute awe, the tabernacle in which it
was normally kept was emptied out for the entire day, and its gold-plated door
was left open to show that Jesus was no longer there. He'd be back on
Saturday night, of course, when the bells would ring and the organ would blare
at midnight Mass, louder than at any other time of the year.
But starting on Thursday night, and
all day Good Friday, there was silence, darkness, and black and purple
everywhere. Even the little bell that we altar boys would ring at key
parts of the Mass was put away, and a loud wooden knocker device was brought out
to replace it.
In those days, religious people would
keep the "three hours' silence," from noon to 3 p.m., to commemorate the three
hours Jesus hung on the cross. It was a holiday, and banks and many
government offices were closed. But the mood was anything but celebratory.
Like many Catholic grammar school
kids, I was a little jittery all day as I hung around the block. Baseball
season had just started, and so the boys were thinking about the Yankees.
The first of the season's baseball cards were being tossed in competition
against somebody's front stoop. But the emphasis on death, and on the
ultimate in the supernatural -- the resurrection of the dead! -- was enough to
make most of us a little edgy.
And so it was with great alarm that
we discovered one April Good Friday afternoon that
our neighborhood was on fire!
A duplex or four-plex a couple of
blocks west of us caught fire. There was a pretty good breeze blowing our way,
and burning cinders were falling around us. The smell of smoke was strong.
The fire trucks, which luckily were based pretty close to the blaze, were
blasting their sirens, adding to the drama.
We kids were in a panic as we watched
the roof of a house on our block -- our block! -- catch fire from the cinders.
Was this the end of the world? Was this Jesus showing us what His "descent
into hell" was like? We remembered what the Bible said happened at the
moment He died:
And behold, the veil of the sanctuary was torn in two from top to
bottom. The earth quaked, rocks were split, tombs were opened, and the
bodies of many saints who had fallen asleep were raised. And coming
forth from their tombs after his resurrection, they entered the holy city and
appeared to many.
We ran back into the house, where
our elders had very concerned looks on their faces. The sirens got closer.
We were dying to get out there and watch, but it was too dangerous. We
were ordered to stay inside, and even the moms and grandmas did the same.
The main fire and the few spot fires
that it spawned were put out pretty quickly. The party line telephones
were ringing off the hook with the news when all was clear. The primary
blaze caused a good amount of damage, but the smaller fires didn't do much harm.
Nobody was hurt.
At 3:00, we all trudged dutifully to
church for just another round of Stations of the Cross, right on schedule.
But for about an hour there, we had already said enough prayers to last a month.
(Photo of St. Aloysius by my
friend Bill Montferret)
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