Harrowed and Hallowed Ground

           Professor (and Father) Bill Harkins opened our pastoral care class with a lecture (but I might actually argue sermon!) on the Triduum of Holy Week:  Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday.  He described how at the Cathedral, they call these three days of Holy Week “Liturgy on ‘roids.”  There is always something going on, some prayer service or worship service to highlight the significance of these three days.  He laments how some jump from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday without the weighty services highlighting suffering and waiting.

            Pastoral care, he posits, happens on Holy Saturday.  If you were to come to the Cathedral on Holy Saturday, you would be able to smell the faint aroma of the incense that was burning from Good Friday.  You would smell sadness even as you encounter the Flower Guild beginning their arrangements of the Easter lilies.  Holy Saturday, it turns out is a transition day, a day of waiting.  Easter Sunday doesn’t come right on the heels of Jesus’ crucifixion.  We have to wait.  And that space of waiting has occasional wafts of remembrance of the sadness, new waves that hit us with the shock of sadness and grief.  But it also looks ahead, that space dares to hope for Easter Sunday.  It takes the tension of suffering mixed with glimpses of hope to get us to the day of resurrection.

            Professor Harkins continued with a timely and poignant image.  My heightened attention to all things agrarian made the image come alive in a startling and chilling way.   A disc harrow is a tool used to dig into and turn over the soil in preparation for new planting.  It is used after plowing to break up hard lumps of dirt and to smooth out the soil for seedbeds.  Harrowing the field is a process that enables new growth. 

Bill then calls our attention to the way that “harrowing” is used in our everyday vocabulary.  If we were to talk about a harrowing experience, we are describing something that jarred us deeply.  It was not just a bad day, it shook us down deep.  A harrowing experience has a nuance of disturbance and maybe even a dimension of confusion.  In other words, harrowing experiences are the opposite of fun.  They are vexing and uncomfortable.  And yet.

Harrowing experiences are the uncomfortable and paradigm-shifting work that leads to growth.  The root of the word “harrow” is harway from which comes the word “harvest.”  When we harrow, it hurts.  But it is necessary to get to harvest-time.

Holy Saturday space is not easy.  It takes work, sometimes dirty and messy work.  We feel all wound up in knots in the in-between time of suffering and hope.  Harrowing de-constructs some things we grasp onto.  It takes the bursting up of our clumps and our knots for us to be good homes for brand new seeds.  Our crops will not prosper if we don’t do sometimes miserable prep work.  The hope of Easter Sunday doesn’t sink in as deeply if we haven’t cleared away the obstructions through the pain of Good Friday.  When we encounter the world’s “no,” like Jesus did on the cross we feel deflated, even crushed.  It is when we have the courage to live in that dissonance between culture and Christ that we begin to see the real hope and power of God’s “yes” on that day that the tomb was found empty.  Glory to God for harrowed and hallowed ground!