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LET'S DO THE NUMBERS
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This was a refrain when David Brancaccio was the host of NPR’s “Marketplace.” Of course, his “numbers” were the Dow, NASDAQ, & S&P. I’ll want to be a bit more liturgical.
Let’s begin with Lent—40 days, traditionally. While the number itself typically only meant “a really long time,” symbolically it was used to describe Moses’ time on Mt Sinai, or Elijah’s time walking to Mt Horeb (aka, Mt Sinai), Jonah’s call to repentance in Nineveh, and Jesus’ post-baptismal time in the desert. But for Lent all kinds of fudging have been employed to make the number work. It has been complicated by how we count. Do Sundays count (since in theory they’re not supposed to be days of fasting)? Do we subtract the days of the Triduum (more on that later) or count all the way to Easter? Still, as most of us know, whether the number works out exactly or not, Lent is still “a really long time”!
Easter season is easier—if Lent is 40 days, Pentecost (the technical end of the season) is 50 days—liturgical “one-up-manship.” But this time 7 weeks add up to 49 days, and Pentecost is #50. This turns out to be based on the Sabbath rest (God rested from creation on the 7th day), and the 7 “weeks” of years that were to mark the beginning of a Jubilee year for the Jews, when debts were forgiven and life was celebrated.
We have other sets of numbers that come into play in these times. Formally (that is, liturgically), Lent ends when Holy Thursday begins. Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil/Easter mark what is called the “Triduum,” or the “3-day day.” You can’t really stop at Holy Thursday and Adoration; the time demands continuation into Good Friday. It’s like the first few movies in the Star Wars series—one critic said that the first movie allowed for a sequal; the second movie demanded one. And for those of you who love opera, you really can’t stop with Die Walküre. Wagner’s “Ring” must continue on (and on, and on, and…) beyond that. So it is for us with the Triduum. If we don’t carry things all the way to Easter, none of this makes any difference or has any point.
We also have the idea of octaves. The idea of 8 days is a way of celebrating major festivals in our worship, either as preludes or postludes. Easter through Divine Mercy Sunday constitutes a postlude octave—and “8-day day.” Christmas, on the other hand, also has a prelude octave—the days we mark with “O Antiphons.” [The postlude octave takes us to 1 January, formerly the Circumcision of the Lord, now Mary, Mother of God.] But 8 is the beginning of a new 7 (the perfect number, after all), just like on the piano—high C is the octave of middle C, and the beginning of a new scale. [Don’t ask me about the “12 Days of Christmas”!]
Have fun with all numbers—they are a creation of the human mind that provides us with truth, beauty, goodness--and joy.