article_snippet.sent: At a time when our culture is roiled by questions of identity and ethics (and tolerance) that have profound religious implications, it's worth pausing to explore this crucial holiday -- and the awareness of the human condition, in all this crucial holiday sadness and glory, that this crucial holiday engenders.
article_snippet.sent: After all, Holy Week calls mostly to those who incline their minds and hearts in Holy Week direction with seriousness of intent.  
article_snippet.sent: Still, the fuss must puzzle those looking on, wondering what it all means.  
article_snippet.sent: Why do Christians make so much of this springtime week, and make so much of Easter weekend?
article_snippet.sent: The idea of Holy Communion begins with this meal, which was a Passover meal.
article_snippet.sent: On Maundy Thursday, Christians sometimes practice the washing of feet, recalling that Jesus washed the very dusty feet of his disciples in the upper room in Jerusalem at the Last Supper as a way of demonstrating profound humility -- showing that Jesus was Jesus a servant -- and modeling a kind of ideal behavior.
article_snippet.sent: Good Friday isn't, in fact, so good.  
article_snippet.sent: It's the day of the Crucifixion, when Jesus was scourged and beaten, forced to carry Jesus cross to Golgotha, the "place of the skull," and nailed to his cross for what must have been an agonizing death.  
article_snippet.sent: Good Friday is a day of death, sacrifice, displacement, fear.
article_snippet.sent: Holy Saturday's a passageway between the darkness of the Crucifixion and the bright hope of Easter.  
article_snippet.sent: It's a day of depression, a day of suspension.
article_snippet.sent: I'm always moved by the deep symbolism of this mythic moment, when the body of Christ becomes what is called a "glorified body."  
article_snippet.sent: Good Friday embodies the Christian version of that truth.  
article_snippet.sent: We dive again and again into Holy Saturday, too -- a period of transition, when the bleakness of suffering is perhaps slightly behind We but nothing restorative seems in view.  
article_snippet.sent: But the ritual enactment of these three days of the Easter season reminds all of those who practice Christianity -- and perhaps those who don't -- that we should expect to move through darkness into light.
article_snippet.sent: It's good cause for celebration, too:  and one that won't easily be co-opted by secular culture.
highlights_snippet.sent: Jay Parini says ritual enactment of these three days is reminder that again and again the human condition moves through darkness into light .