The Sacrament of Easter
By Jeremy Haselock and Roger Greenacre
Gracewing, 224 pages, £15.99
At the heart of the Paschal Mystery is a passage, a move from death to life. This is the core message of The Sacrament of Easter. I first came across this book thanks to a winning bid on eBay. It was, without doubt, the best 99 cents I have ever spent. Every year, and usually after Ash Wednesday, I am approached by someone who has seriously heeded the admonition to the observance of a holy Lent and will ask if I can recommend a good book as part of a Lenten discipline.
I have, heretofore, been a poor resource. Everything I can think of is either too scholarly, with little devotional import, or too sentimental and more interested in social commentary than dying to oneself and rising with Christ. On eBay, I found a resource that struck just the right balance. Rather than present a staid history of the liturgies of Lent, Holy, and Easter, The Sacrament of Easter explores the transistus — passage — at the center of our faith. Some parts of the book certainly are out of date, but the real challenge was that it was out of print and therefore not a realistic recommendation.
Sixty years ago, Canon Roger Greenacre (d. 2011) was perfectly suited to write this book. As chancellor and later precentor at Chichester Cathedral, he was a liturgist. As a member of the Anglican–Roman Catholic International Commission and an expert on the church in France, he was an ecumenist. As a priest who prayed what he believed and believed what he prayed, he was a theologian.
In the early 1960s, thanks to the Archbishop of Canterbury, he studied at the Catholic University of Louvain. On the eve of the Second Vatican Council, he found himself among the brightest lights of the liturgical movement, and on their turf. A couple of years later, while a curate in London, he delivered a series of Lenten addresses on the liturgies of Holy Week and Easter. Impressed by what he heard, Eric Mascall encouraged Greenacre to publish the addresses. The result was The Sacrament of Easter in 1965. The name of the book is inspired by a sermon from St. Leo the Great, in which he described the great unitive celebration of our Lord’s passion, death, and resurrection as the paschal sacramentum — the Paschal sacrament.
Rather that present a staid history of the liturgies of Lent, Holy, and Easter, Greenacre used the development of those liturgies to engage more deeply with the transitus, the passage of Christ Jesus, crucified and buried, to being raised to new life. This is the heart of the Paschal Mystery. and it was foreshadowed in God’s deliverance of the Hebrew people, their passage from the living death of slavery in Egypt to the land of promise — a journey through the waters and the desert. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as the Paschal lamb is the passage from the Old Adam to the New. Our life in Christ is a transitus as we, joined with him, move from death to life. All of this, Greenacre shows, has its proclamation and demonstration par excellence in the liturgies of Lent, Holy Week, and Easter.
The Sacrament of Easter was revised and published in 1989, 1991, and 1995 with the help of Fr. Jeremy Haselock. The 30 years from 1965 to 1995 saw significant developments in the liturgical expression of the church, both in practice and scholarship. Now, 30 years from the last revision, we can again say the same. Haselock’s revision builds on the original corpus in three ways.
First, Haselock deepens the biblical and theological reflection in Part I with a new chapter on the Passion and resurrection. Second, he welcomes new developments in scholarship by engaging with scholars of liturgy such as Paul Bradshaw. Third, he reflects on 30 years of liturgical revision and renewal.
Whereas Greenacre was in Belgium during the Liturgical Movement, Haselock brought to bear his experience not only as precentor at Norwich Cathedral but also as chairman of the working group (Times and Seasons) that developed Holy Week and Easter liturgies for Common Worship in 2006. The latest revision of The Sacrament of Easter is the result of firsthand knowledge of two priests and liturgists during two different, and tremendously important, times of liturgical development.
This book finds a way to thread a very narrow needle. It is accessible and challenging for clergy, specialists, and — most important — the faithful Christian. The specialist will appreciate the nuanced treatment of liturgical development. Haselock’s coverage ranges from the late ancient Quartodecimans, who kept Easter on the 14th day of Nisan, the travel journal of Egeria, and the liturgies she witnessed in fourth-century Jerusalem, on the one hand, to the Easter Vigil reform of 1951, on the other. Connoisseurs of art and music will appreciate frequent references to important pieces that illustrate Paschal themes. Mental lightbulbs will flash at fascinating snapshots, such as the introduction of the Golden Legend story that explains why painters so often place skulls at the foot of Calvary.
Clergy will find enough material for Lenten, Holy Week, and Easter sermons to see them through retirement. They will also find support and challenge regarding liturgical decisions. Haselock makes the case that liturgies of Holy Week are to involve Christians in the transistus and not merely entertain them. That being said, he also warns that “even the most thorough formation of the faithful regarding the paschal mystery as the center of the liturgical year and of the Christian life will be of little effect if the liturgy itself is anti-climactic, disappointing, and dull.”
His practical advice is measured but direct. For instance, he writes convincingly against the well-intentioned custom of handing out palm crosses on Palm Sunday instead of carrying them in procession, which is the real point. He gives helpful advice in challenging matters such as foot-washing on Maundy Thursday and why there is, and should be, no such thing as a “Christian seder.” When I first read The Sacrament of Easter, I was convinced by the argument against extinguishing the Paschal candle on Ascension in order to preserve the integrity of the Great Fifty Days.
But it’s to faithful Christians (lay, scholar, and clergy) for whom this book will bear much fruit. This book, more than any other I’ve read, presents Lent, Holy Week, and Easter through a clear biblical and theological lens. Haselock isn’t interested in the development of Lent and Holy Week only. He is interested in the development of Lent and Holy Week as proclamations to and invitations for the passage from death to life in Jesus Christ. In what may be the most moving passage in the text, Haselock and Greenacre remind us:
The Sacrament of Easter demands from the believer a total commitment. Christians are called to live the liturgy of these days in such a way as to lay themselves open to be assimilated into the mystery it celebrates. The faithful must so fully enter into the transistus of Christ to the Father that they celebrate at the same time their own passage to the Father. To enter deeply into the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings is to know fully and joyfully the power of his Resurrection.
In the introduction to this edition, Fr. Haselock mentions the publisher’s description printed on the back cover of the 1965 edition. The description began, “This book is neither a theological study of our Redemption nor a devotional commentary of the Cross and Resurrection, but rather an introduction to the liturgical celebration of Holy Week and Easter.” This is my only critique: I think it absolutely is a theological study and a devotional commentary precisely because it so eloquently, faithfully, and practically brings the Christian in direct fellowship with the very rites that make Christ’s Paschal Mystery known.
The Rev. Steve Rice is the rector of St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church, an Anglo-Catholic parish in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and is the founder of the Society of St. Joseph of Arimathea.