by Helen Garvey
Contributor
What is it about the interstate service area that seems so sterile, so cold, so disconnected on Holy Thursday, the day of communion? Travelers, like me, desire only a break from the road, a cup of coffee, a tank of gas. In the parking area, a broken-down car stirs curiosity. Does the owner have the money for the repairs? Whom will s/he call for help? Finding the restroom, a mother carrying an infant and holding the hand of a toddler, sighs in relief. She looks exhausted, worried. Why is she alone managing these tired children? Is the father in another city, working to send money home? Is there a father in the home? Is there a warm and welcoming destination for this family?
Truck drivers chat in their lounge. What is it like to be in that cab for hours and hours? Where is their home base? I have a nephew, a truck driver who often leaves his family on Saturday afternoon and does not return for days. He is “on call.” What are the probabilities of his participating in the Holy Thursday church experience?
It is Holy Thursday, a day when practicing Catholics (very practicing Catholics) yearn to be in their own parish, their own Motherhouse, their own Newman Center. For older folks, the strains of “Pange Lingua” rise from the past. For younger members, “Jerusalem My Destiny” may evoke similar grace. For all these believers a certain mystical sense of Holy Thursday penetrates the day – the practical mysticism of the washing of the feet, the drying of the feet, and for Pope Francis, the kissing of the feet. It is nourishment, communion and the overwhelming experience of the ritual.
With its overpriced refreshments in vending machines, its tedious repetitive design, its transitory nature, nothing in the environment of the service area leads to nourishment and communion. Yet we travelers need to go where we need to go. We have promises to keep. How to connect the beauty of the feast with the ambience of this functional place and the desires of the human heart? A Quaker writer summons the ancient reality:
Deep within, in the whispers of the heart is the surging call of the eternal Christ hidden within us all. By an inner isthmus, we are connected with the mainland of the eternal Love.
In the clamor and din of the day, the press of eternity’s warm love still whispers in each of us as our truest selves. Attend to the eternal that s/he may recreate you and sow you deep into the furrows of the world’s suffering.
So for many, the communion of Holy Thursday is the care of children, the commitment to the job, the nursing of an aging car. It may entail heroic virtue to which I have no claim. In each of them, “. . .Deep within the whispers of the heart, is the surging call of the eternal Christ.” Guiltily eating junk food, studying the map one more time, washing our hands, we hear that whisper of the heart. We usually do not break the artificial barrier that keeps us from communion.
Who knows? Perhaps that energetic woman hurrying to her car may the leader of the liturgy committee in her parish or she may be a fundamentalist on a book tour. That bearded guy checking his instant messages may just be on the staff of a Catholic Worker House on his way to Chicago, or the owner of a prestigious high-tech firm based in New York. That handsome coffee drinker may be the editor of the National Catholic Reporter or a drug dealer.
Perhaps for some of these travelers, the rituals of faith signify a deep desire for God. Yet, others many contend that they are spiritual, but not religious, unchurched, but not indifferent. And what of those who deny God’s existence? Gathered by circumstance in this arid place, we travelers experience a beauty within and beyond the service area, a thirst for home and communion. Remembering the dying words of the priest in the Diary of a Country Priest, “All is grace.”
“Tout es grace,” I journey west to the Motherhouse and to the liturgical celebration of Holy Thursday.
[Sr. Helen Maher Garvey, BVM, is an organizational consultant for religious congregations. Presently she serves on the Board of the National Catholic Reporter Publishing Company. She held the position of Director of the Office of Pastoral Services for the Diocese of Lexington for 10 years and served in the presidency of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) from 1986 to 1989.]