Passiontide Veiling

Yesterday, I watched a little of the Roman Catholic Palm Sunday mass after church. I wasn't impressed, as usual. But I did notice that the crosses and statuary were not veiled. This is now optional in the novus ordo. I also notice a lot of pagaentry in the procession of palms, the passion reading in parts, the stations of the cross, and so on, in Catholic practices

We do the procession with palms and the passion reading in parts as well. But that's about as much of the pagaentry and drama I can handle.

If passiontide is about re-living the last days and hours of our Blessed Lord's earthly life, as if it is some kind of liturgical version of civil war reinactments, then it seems quite unreasonable that we would veil the crucifix, and I would assume this is why novus ordo Catholics often opt out of the practice.

Others try to interpret the veiling according to this passion play mentality. Some, for instance, say that our veiling of the crucifix is a kind of reverse psychology--that hiding something has the effect of drawing our attention to it. It's like the 80's Cinderella rock-ballad, "You don't know what you got, 'til it's gone." I heard this same explanation for not celebrating the Lord's Supper on Good Friday. Omitting it brings it more in focus. I find that rather silly, since Jesus said "Do this in remembrance of me" not "Omit this in remembrace of me."

Still others point to the John 8 Gospel reading in Missa Judica (5th Sunday in Lent), when Christ hid Himself from the Jews seeking to stone Him. That sounds somewhat convincing, but then it is just another prop in the passion drama. I would like to think that something else is going on here. And that something else has to do with the sacramental shape and meaning of the season. In other words, passiontide is not about our participating in a reinactment of the passion history of Jesus, but it is a participation in the real and eternal act of salvation through the Holy Sacrament of Communion. The Epistle from Missa Judica, Hebrews 9:11-15, draws us to consider our Lord's death not from the earthly, temporal side, but from the heavenly, eternal, and sacramental point of view. (The Book of Hebrews as a whole is a great Eucharist Homily)

The problem with pageanty is that in the end it is only about motivation. It's about finding the moral of the story. The reinactment places you in a mental recollection of the events, while the Choir sings the negro spiritual "Where you There", and the ladies weep gently in their lace handkerchiefs, and in the end, you are moved by pity to consider what are you going to do for Jesus in return for what He did to you. Frankly that is how many modern Roman Catholics and Evangelicals view the passion anyway. Justification takes a back seat to Sanctification.

All that said, I am of the opinion that the veil over the crucifix is there to remind us to look at the passion more deeply and theologically (and, therefore, sacramentally) than on the outward historical events. Ultimately, we find the finest expression of our Lord's passion not by looking at an image on the wall, but in receiving the Body and Blood of Christ in the Sacrament.

As memory serves, Pius Parsch gets at this kind of thinking in The Year of Grace. He also explains that the custom originated at a time when crosses where so ornate that veiling them only made sense. (my recollection is a little cloudy here, so correct me if I'm wrong.)

That explanation also ties in with the idea of the veil as a kind of visual fasting. I don't buy this at all. The lenten disciplines of fasting, prayer and almsgiving are not about giving up things just for the sake of giving things up. Each discipline touches upon a different kind of self-denial and mortification. Fasting is about the denial of our appetites and cravings. Prayer is about the denial of our sense of power and control. And almsgiving is about the self-denial of our false notion of self-reliance. In other words, it's all about getting yourself out of the way and your pride and self-centeredness. We take our attention off our ourselves, and fix our eyes on Jesus. Veiling your bathroom mirror would make sense, but not your crucifix.