The take-away from Good Friday

1. 1457

That is the number of people who in France attended the Maundy Thursday Mass in one of the Catholic Churches last night. A friend of mine was visiting and sent me the most heartening texts. The take-aways:

• 55 Catechumens being prepared for baptism this Eater Sunday
• 1457 people in attendance
• Average age seemed to be under 35
• Unsurprisingly, this was at the Latin Mass, that was supposed to be ever-so-stuffy and "out of touch" and "rigid".

All this in a church that was going to shut. Until the Latin Mass happened to it. Now it's putting us all to shame. Thank God for that. But it just shows you the future of the Church, what direction Catholicism is taking - despite certain Cardinals' best efforts to force the Church to cut off its healthiest limb. 55 catechumens is more than the Sunday attendance of some of our local churches in its entirety.

2. "Who is not with me, scatters"

While I was still buzzing from the above news I received on Signal, I had to leave the house and take the Parish on a "Walking Stations" thing, where we walked up from one of our parish churches to the other one, stopping here and there, to hear a reflection on one of the Stations. And gracious me, it was dire. It was very feebly written, and most of all, because it was so desperately trying to shoehorn the latest buzzwords and darling political causes, and connect them with the events of the Crucifixion—even if no discernible link could be thought of. So we heard how Jesus falling for the First Time was like George Floyd (this was the least problematic of the conjectures); how Jesus being stripped of his garments is somehow like the maltreatment asylum seekers suffer; and how the Lord dying on the Cross should lead to the banning of "nucular" (sic) weapons. Fortunately, I am on enough medication now that I do not even bat an eyelid, but offer it all up.

Because frankly some of this is blasphemous: it is exploiting the most sacred to push own political agendas. And of course, I cannot describe how DEEPLY touched for example the five Indian children (the oldest of them, probably 8) were to hear about events that took place 4 years ago in the United States...

But just imagine, being one of those people who actually has to flee persecution for their faith, then travelling 'round the globe to find a place where you can practice your religion freely, and then somehow get watered down propaganda instead of faith.

But suppose that none of these conjectures were theologically as problematic as they are (mostly because of putting the human in place of the divine): it'd still be utterly void of any spiritual content. I don't know about others, but my little life is finite, with not a lot of time in it before I will finally be relieved of this mortal coil: if I earmark an hour for religion, then I would like religion please.

This time could have been used for spiritual gain. I felt it wasted. The Lord said, "Who is not with me, scatters."

3. How I love some of my deeply inspiring friends

Good Friday is a day of fasting and abstinence. I personally try to make it a day of fully fasting - not eating anything all day. I have done this in many past years, but lately, in the last 2-3, I always found myself falling short of this. When dinner time came, my efforts were over.

But a good friend of mine, a professional boxer and former area title holder, just completed a 100-hour, then a 168-hour fast. While training. For those who do not know - an hour's boxing training session can easily burn 1000+ calories, ie. half the daily suggested calory intake of an average adult. Add to that that he was in a calorie deficit of about 2400 calores / day... So he was operating on something like 3400 kcal in the negative, and he was fine. "It's all in the mind", he said at the end in a video.

I only undertook one day today, but his example was hugely important in making me keep it. If he could do it, while training (...insane!), then so can I.

4. The Passion of the Christ

... remains a big favourite. Whatever strange things Mel Gibson did or did not do later, this movie is absolutely brilliant. I always end up in tears here and there when watching it, and I always get something out of it. So here are some things I got out of it this year:

• Totally changed my view on Pontius Pilate. He really did the decent thing in an impossible situation.
• The release of Barabbas. The choice Pilate was presenting the crowd with should have been a no-brainer: allowing a serial killer back into their midst to prey upon them once again, or to release Christ. That the crowds would rather be preyed upon by a murderous sociopath was hard to realise.
• While poor Mel Gibson did have his "moments" later on, shall we say, I really think any cries of antisemitism with regard to this movie specifically are unfounded. The portrayal of some of the Pharisees who are the voice of reaosn in Jesus' mock trial kinda makes it clear that this has nothing to do with ethnicity, but with listening to the voice of truth. Which is exactly the dynamic we see with Pilate and his wife; or with the two thieves.
• There's a really touching scene (imaginary) after Peter's denial of Jesus. He stumbles into Mary and says, "Mother! I betrayed him!" Mary extends a loving hand, to comfort Peter; but Peter runs off in shame. Which makes me realise that if anybody might make the successor of Peter make sense when he is making bad decisions - China, the Latin Mass, safeguarding, etc - then we must call upon the Mother of God. Because if anyone can convince Peter, then it's Her.
• The various little roles strangers and people played in the story. Especially with Veronica or Simon of Cyrene or Longinus. Our encounters with Christ do not only reveal who we truly are in the depth of our hearts, but it seems that sometimes simply doing the decent thing there and then is what our part is in the salvation of the world. Because yes, following their examples, we all have a part to play in the salvation of the world.
• Christ the bait: this is an ancient theme in Patristic commentaries, and in iconography. Christ is sometimes portrayed / depicted as the bait on the end of the hook that Hades swallows and causes its downfall. There's a lovely icon where Jesus stands on the end of a gigantic hook, lowered into the underworld, into the mouth of a big fish / whale, Leviathan, an image of hell, both reminiscent of Jonah's story, and the description of the Gospel of Nicodemus about the descent into hell. There's a single look early on in the film where a single meaningful look from Christ seems to imply that whatever is to follow is simply baiting satan into defeat, and it's a lovely feature which I haven't spotted before.

+1 - LoRa radios can be used as Pagers, apparently

I follow the #LoRa hashtag on Mastodon, and today I saw the most amazing post: @asj@hachiderm.io managed to convince the Arduino LoRa libraries to talk to a pager.

This is amazing, I love it when the boundaries are so clearly pushed. The best kind of hacking.

Why is this so exciting to me? Because, there is hope, that I could make a little ESP32 based LoRa device that I could use to make the hospital on-call beeper go off at any convenient time, when I need to get out of a dreadfully boring meeting. A DREAM.

=> Code is here

And now, to bed.