Fr Matthew Reese
“Then they led Jesus from the house of Caiaphas to the praetorium. It was early. They themselves did not enter the praetorium, so that they might not be defiled, but might eat the passover.”
—John 18:28
Dear Friends in Christ,
Today’s Gospel lesson in the Daily Office is a startling reminder of where we’re headed. Today is the last day of Epiphanytide, called Shrove Tuesday. Tomorrow, on Ash Wednesday, we begin Lent. It will be forty days until we hear the full Passion narrative on Palm Sunday, and we will not hear John’s version until the Solemn Liturgy of Good Friday. But here we are on what is—at least by some metrics—a feast, reading about Jesus’s interrogation by Pilate, and his sentencing to death.
The obvious logic of the Lectionary here is that the end is in the beginning. This is also the logic of the Christian life, the Christian faith, and the Incarnation of Our Lord.
But there is a subtle, secondary element here as well. Today is a feast associated quite strongly with food. This is the end of Carnevale in Italy, or Mardi Gras (“Fat Tuesday”) in the Francophone world—a time to literally use up the butter, the fat, the finer things in the pantry, that we will deny ourselves in the great fast that is Lent.
It is significant that today’s Gospel lesson references another fast and feast—that of the Passover meal. The Jewish authorities who hand Jesus over to Pilate—his very own people—do not enter the praetorium because they wish to avoid ritual impurity so that they may eat the Passover meal.
As I wrote last year, the English word for this day—Shrove Tuesday—suggests the other side of the coin—preparation, penance, and most importantly forgiveness.
In the transitive form, to shrive is “to impose penance upon (a person); hence, to administer absolution to; to hear the confession of.” In the passive form, to take shrift, it means “to be confessed; to make one’s confession and receive absolution and penance.”
Hence another archaic phrase that we use all the time, but perhaps without knowing its full meaning: “short shrift.” To shrive, of course, is related to many other words that have to do with writing. The Latin scrībere, to write, gets us to “inscribe,” “ascribe.”
We prepare our pantries by emptying them of their fat. We prepare our consciences by unburdening them of our sins. Today is a feast of a kind, but one tinged with sadness, with preparation, with a knowledge of what is to come. But that which is to come is not just the Passion, but the Resurrection.
Yours in Christ,
—Fr Matthew
