This is the Night: Suffering, Salvation, and the Liturgies of Holy Week

by James Farwell

Publisher:

T&T Clark

, 2005

Overview

This Is the Night is a work of “liturgical theology,” understood as a theology inspired or informed by the liturgies of Christian Holy Week. In the context of modernity in crisis, it is an attempt to think with the principal liturgies of the “Paschal Triduum” – Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Great Vigil of Easter – about human suffering.

The author works from an analysis of the structure of the Christian paschal liturgies to offer an account of suffering that is more compassionate and honest than that of western modernity. Moreover, this account is the theoretical correlate of an ethic performed by the paschal liturgies: their structure and rhythm give rise not only to an account of suffering and its remedy, but to a compassionate practice into which Christians are called.

In both the philosophical and the popular imagination, modernity is a context in which “progress” is the defining human telos. Because of this commitment to progress, modernity is often allergic to the concrete pain and horror of suffering. Modernity sidelines suffering as an unfortunate but necessary moment in the course of human progress, not infrequently because it is a by-product of our “progress” – our technical mastery of nature and leadership of global capitalization. In this context, suffering is more a concept than an existential fact or experience. Yet downplaying human suffering in this way creates even greater suffering, by anesthetizing us to its effect on human beings.

Some of the critics of modernity also criticize Christianity as a religious version of the modern myth of progress, or even as its very source. Inspired in part by the political theology of Johann Metz and by the liturgical scholarship of Don Saliers, Robert Taft, and others, the author argues instead that in the liturgies of Holy Week, the passion, death, and resurrection of Christ form a context in which Christians recognize human suffering not as an unfortunate moment on the way to salvation but as the very field of God’s saving activity. That divine activity is saving precisely as we enter into it by practice. To be saved– to enter into an abundant and vigorous human life– is to become a priestly people, orienting ourselves toward suffering in the same way that Jesus Christ did, facing it with courage where necessary and resisting its ravages where possible.

Key Features

• Explores the development of liturgy in the church
• Examines the role of the Paschal Mystery and Eucharist

Contents

Top Highlights

“First, the Triduum liturgies center on the remembrance and celebration of the culminating events of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ: his passion, death, and resurrection.” (Pages 2–3)

“To study liturgy is to study the formation of the people of God: the focus is on the liturgy itself as the enactment of the saving relation between Christ and the church.” (Page 13)

“In a human life, suffering is not merely an episode, an event, or a passing psychological state—it is a condition. Whether we suffer at the hands of others, intentionally or unintentionally, or struggle against the inevitable internal obstacles to growth that we inherit from our families of origin, or grieve the loss of those who have died, or live through the pain native to the process of psychosocial development, or bring a child to birth, suffering is as much a feature of human life as is joy, wonder, or satisfaction. The soteriological force—the saving force—of Christian faith depends upon its relevance to this fundamental human condition of suffering.” (Page 1)

“Christianity is to be any more than an interesting explanatory system for those who enjoy the diversions of metaphysical philosophy, then it must open in us a way to live abundantly in and with our suffering, give us hope, empower us to live with others in their suffering, and discern the difference between the suffering characteristic of human existence and suffering that demands alleviation or resistance. That is, Christianity as a living faith must sustain and heal human persons as we ‘suffer’ the long journey of a life lived through the ebb and flow of pain and joy, struggle and peace—both in what we bring on ourselves and in what comes to us unbidden.” (Pages 1–2)

Product Details

• Title: This is the Night: Suffering, Salvation, and the Liturgies of Holy Week
• Author: James W. Farwell
• Series: Christian Approaches to Contemporary Thinking Collection
• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Publication Date: 2005
• Pages: 200

About James Farwell

James W. Farwell is Assistant Professor in the H. Boone Porter Chair of Liturgics at General Theological Seminary, New York.