I have just completed teaching a unit in my “Catholic Vision” course in which my students and I read Catherine de Vinck’s A Passion Play: A Drama for Several Voices (Allendale, NJ: Alleluia Press, 1975). I’d like to share some excerpts from this poetic drama to enrich the experience of those of us entering into the celebration of Triduum. Here, for Holy Thursday, is the Narrator’s monologue as Jesus and the disciples enter and take their places at the table:
In the beginning was the beast:
sacred, swift life to track
trap, pierce with magic tools
— flint, arrow, obsidian knife.
The blood of the wilderness flows.
Around campfires, the hunters gather
roasting the meat, eating with filed teeth
great chunks of earth and sky.
We have seen the man with bird-beak
and lion-claw, the woman with the owl-head
draped in the owl’s wings. We have passed
dancing from one stage to the next
hauling our weight, our pots, our water-jars
step after stony step, shedding centuries
like breast-feathers or scales
becoming what we are: men in an upper-room
visited by the God we expected
from millennia to millennia
from meal to meal.
We have come
from the middle and far distance
to eat that one real body
to collect in the ancient cup
that one real blood.
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