Easter always makes me a little uneasy. Maybe it's the thought of Lent, again something that seems punitive in my brain. I guess I'm a little unclear as to the whole reason behind Lent--we give up something we love for forty days. Why? It's usually food, like chocolate, or swearing, or some other undesirable habit. And then when Lent is over we go right back to shoveling in the M & Ms or shrieking out the cuss words. Also, why no meat on Fridays? There's something mixed in there about helping out the fishermen, but I admit my knowledge is scanty at best. And toss in the uneasy mix of cute bunny rabbits and eggs and chocolate and the message is completely mixed.
Of course I speak of my Catholic background. And it's not my intent to bash Catholicism. On the contrary, I still view the faith I was raised up in with reverence, if not confusion.
My parents both attended Catholic grade school and went to Mass, so when they had me, it was the natural order of things to send me to CCD. I was plunked into those Saturday morning classes at the age of six, and my religious education began. Except it really didn't. Two and a half decades later and I still feel as if I know nothing about being Catholic. I know the prayers by heart. I once memorized all Ten Commandments. I know the Mass (except I think they changed some things again, which always throws me). I know the most prominent stories, like the birth of Christ and also of the Resurrection. I remember watching that 19-hour long Charleton Heston movie about Moses every Easter when I was a kid. But as for understanding any of it? I confess I don't.
I clearly remember one Easter holiday. And I seem to recall being surrounded by students, so it must have been the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter. The church was darkened, and the students were spread in a giant square all around the pews. I think we were supposed to represent the beads on the rosary. The priest was up front, seeming to be yelling as his robed self flailed back and forth. And a woman--could it have been Sister Ruth?--went around to each student with a microphone, where you recited your assigned prayer for all to hear and judge. I believe I was wearing a dress, so it was obviously a big occasion.
What I remember most is the frenzied feeling. Other religions have people who speak in tongues or who fall into convulsions of fervor when the spirit moves them. I relate this experience as the Catholic version of speaking in tongues. As each child recited a rosary prayer, I felt a growing presence, something ominous and dark, something that was slowly being lifted from the congregation into the air. At one point, to me, it felt like the howling dark cloud that appears at the end of the first Indiana Jones movie, when the Nazis open the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Spirit sets about destroying all the evil. I remember feeling paralyzed with fear. I remember the priest shouting more and more loudly up front at the altar. There may have been some sort of reenactment of Jesus carrying the massive cross down the aisle, the crown of thorns on his head.
It was terrifying and it was palpable.
Perhaps a little more care in my religious education could have explained what was happening--but my guess is no. I think that day in the church we conjured up the darkness of man's sin--the sin of tormenting and torturing a gentle prophet, a man who was simply different from everyone else.
That dark, ominous cloud of flawed humanity still hangs over us, centuries later, and we haven't learned from our mistakes. Perhaps this is the source of my uneasiness. Perhaps it's just knowing that we are forever imperfect. Perhaps this is why we prefer chocolate on Easter over the stations of the cross.
I'm not sure I know.
