April 19: Holy Mysteries
♫ Music:
Holy Saturday, April 19—Day 46
When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who himself had also become a disciple of Jesus. This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. And Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock; and he rolled a large stone against the entrance of the tomb and went away. And Mary Magdalene was there, and the other Mary, sitting opposite the grave.
Matthew 27: 57-61
Holy Mysteries
The most silent moment in the divine drama of salvation is Holy Saturday, the Sabbath day in which the Son of God makes his dwelling in a tomb.
Lamentation expresses the great contradictions in the scene of Christ’s burial: the fairest beauty is now a dead man; the Living One is anointed for burial, the one by whom all things were created is placed behind a stone.
We bury bodies in part because death brings about rot. Human bodies decay; corrupted, we literally fall apart. We also bury the dead because we love them, because we love their bodies that have made them present to us in life and make us feel acutely their absence in death.
Joseph of Arimathea saw fit to care for the body of Christ, the disciple yet devoted to the Lord. Since Joseph pled with Pilate, Jesus’s body was tended and his grave was marked. Christ’s radical humility is expressed in this, too. He was “cloistered in the womb” before his birth and nursed by his mother, and in his death, he needed, once again for his own creatures to tend to him.
Mantegna’s image of the dead Christ confronts us with his physicality. The painting’s extraordinary perspective situates the viewer so near to Christ’s body that she seems to be crowded in a nearly too small tomb. The image invites the eye up from the massive corporeality of Christ’s graying body, with wounds torn in his hands and feet by the nails which fixed him to the cross, toward his face, which rests finally on a pillow. Here lays his head still marked with weariness and agony between his brows, which have worn, only hours previously, a crown of thorns. But now his body is in the hands of those who love him, who anoint him for burial with a jar of myrrh visible in the corner of the painting. And though there be no sign of life in his flesh, still there remains the faint glow of a halo above his head, the sign of divine anointing that excels even the oils with which those who love him will anoint his body.
A ringing bell punctuates various moments of Tavener’s dirge-like “In a Grave They Laid Him.” But the bell’s pattern does not conform to the structure of the chant. It seems that the strike is arbitrary and uneven, when, it is, in fact, continuous and patterned; every twenty beats the monastery bell rings. The ascendant sound of the bell’s ring keeps time not according the grief of Christ’s burial, but according to the persistent and continued presence of Heaven even in the grave. The sound is otherworldly, disrupting the pattern of lamentation and insisting that even here, and even now, God is working.
What holy mysteries appear here? The Son of God was buried because of corruption, and, in Christ, the dead will be raised incorruptible (I Corinthians 15:52). The Son of God was confined in a tomb so that the children of God would be set free indeed (John 8:36). His grave was sealed to prove his death and burial, and at the resurrection of the dead the Lord will open the graves of His people (Ezekiel 37:12).
Holy Saturday was full of grief. And it must have seemed to the disciples that the rest of their lives would be filled with lamentation. But Christ’s death and burial wasn’t the whole story. Even then, God, in Christ, was filling up all things with his fullness (Ephesians 1:23). In his burial, Christ filled our graves.
Melissa Schubert, Assistant Professor of the Torrey Honors Institute
Prayer
O God, as we consider Christ’s burial, we offer our laments to you. Please help us to grieve with hope and to groan for redemption. Please help us to love your Son more as we remember the depths of his suffering for our sakes. Amen.
Lamentation of Christ
Andrea Mantegna
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan
Oil on Canvas
About the Artist and Art
Italian painter and engraver Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506) often worked with bright colors, strong linear perspective and sharp lines. Mantegna’s attention to details and the fine drawing of his paintings was influenced by Flemish masters such as Van Eyck. In Lamentation of Christ, Mantegna presented both a harrowing study of a strongly foreshortened cadaver and an intensely poignant depiction of a biblical tragedy. While it diverges from his typically intense color palate, this painting is one of many examples of the artist's mastery of perspective. The theme of the Lamentation of Christ is common in medieval and Renaissance art, although Mantegna’s style is unusual for the period. Most Lamentations show much more contact between the mourners and the body. Rich contrasts of light and shadow abound, infused by a profound sense of pathos. The realism and tragedy of the scene are enhanced by the violent perspective, which foreshortens and dramatizes the recumbent figure, stressing the anatomical details: in particular, Christ's thorax, and the holes in his hands and feet.
About the Music
Wherewithal Shall A Young Man takes it’s name from Psalm 119, portions of which are quoted throughout this entire song. It is considered part of the orthodox service held late Good Friday night (often beginning at midnight and going into the wee hours of Holy Saturday), and falls into the portion of the evening centered around the chanting of the Lamentations at the tomb. The Lamentations are the unique portion of this service. These are short poetic verses divided into 3 sections. The first two sections lament the Lord's passion, death and burial. The third section begins to speak of the anticipated resurrection ahead in a more joyful melody than the melody of the first 2 sections. In total, there are 185 verses, but the number chanted varies from parish based on local practice.
About the Performers
Chanticleer, an all-male a capella chorus, has been called “the world’s reigning male chorus” by The New Yorker magazine, and named Ensemble of the Year by Musical America in 2008. Since Chanticleer began releasing recordings in 1981, the group has sold well over a million copies and garnered two Grammy awards. Named for the “clear-singing” rooster in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Chanticleer was founded in 1978 by tenor Louis Botto, who sang in the Ensemble until 1989 and served as Artistic Director until his death in 1997.
http://www.chanticleer.org
About the Composer
Sir John Tavener (1944 – 2013) was a British composer, known for his extensive output of religious works, including The Whale, The Protecting Veil, Song for Athene and "The Lamb", a choral composition that was included in the soundtrack for Paolo Sorrentino's film The Great Beauty.
http://johntavener.com