“It is finished.” Those are Jesus’ last words on the Cross and they are a mic drop in modern parlance, because when Jesus, the Son of God dies and pays the price that we couldn’t pay on our own, then there is noting left to say. It’s final. It’s irrevocable. It’s supreme. No one can add to it, no one can take away form it and to one can top it. At this act Heaven and Earth fall silent for a half measure, like the nearly half week that Jesus body lay in the tomb.
When he broke open the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. ~ Revelation 8:1
It’s my favorite part of the mass, called The Great Silence, and its probably the most misunderstood and easiest missed moment when communion is over and the priest has finished setting aside the vessels and he sits down. It’s that moment when the chorus and music ministers have stopped orchestrating, when the congregation put away their kneelers and slide back into their pews. Then comes nothing. Silence. It’s awkward, beautiful and poignant if the priest lets the moment linger. We wonder, what’s going on. Did the priest fall asleep? Did he forget to dismiss us? And if we are not in the moment, we start to think of other things; lunch, shopping, family gatherings. But it’s not arbitrary, meaningless or empty. It’s not merely the absence of sound our thought; its a pregnant pause where we contemplate the gift of Christ in the Eucharist we just received. It is sleep and dreams for the soul, where the events of the liturgy play and replay in our hearts and minds fortifying us. It’s a moment that sums up the entire mass. It’s a moment that says, “It is finished.”