This Is the Night is a work of 'liturgical theology,' understood as a theology inspired or informed by the liturgies of Christian Holy Week. In the context of modernity in crisis, it is an attempt to think with the principal liturgies of the 'Paschal Triduum' Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Great Vigil of Easter about human suffering. The author works from an analysis of the structure of the Christian paschal liturgies to offer an account of suffering that is more compassionate and honest than that of western modernity. Moreover, this account is the theoretical correlate of an ethic performed by the paschal liturgies: their structure and rhythm give rise not only to an account of suffering and its remedy, but to a compassionate practice into which Christians are called. In both the philosophical and the popular imagination, modernity is a context in which 'progress' is the defining human telos. Because of this commitment to progress, modernity is often allergic to the concrete pain and horror of suffering. |
