The Easter Triduum is the pinnacle of the Christian calendar. For mature Catholics, these three holiest days of the year should be bracing, moving, and clarifying. From the perspective of children, however, the Triduum might just look like a series of abnormally long, strange, and puzzling visits to church – albeit followed (thank God!) by candy.
But here’s one way for parents of small children to draw the little ones into the great mystery we are about to enter this Holy Thursday: through the wardrobe in the spare room.
One of the first things little Lucy Pevensie learns on her first visit to Narnia in C.S. Lewis’s children’s novel “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” is that it is always winter there, but “never Christmas.” That sad situation is thanks to the malevolent queenship of the White Witch.
This dreary plight sets the stage for the whole drama of the novel, making clear that the stakes of the story are high – literally implicating the fate of the whole world (of Narnia anyway) – in terms perfectly suited for a child to understand: “Always winter but never Christmas” means giving up all the fun of summer without even the reward of presents and sweets. Put another way, it’s like a Lent with no Easter.
I think you see where I’m going with this. But here’s where the brilliance of Lewis’s storytelling works its “deep magic.”
When the lion Aslan (as obvious a stand-in for Jesus Christ as the White Witch is for Satan) arrives in Narnia, none of the narrative’s heroes see him at first. Instead, they see the effects of his presence. Winter thaws, and Father Christmas even appears to hand out presents to Peter, Susan, and Lucy Pevensie. Christ’s arrival in the world means relief and reward are at hand for those who are faithful.
But their brother Edmund misses Father Christmas’s visit. Why? Because when Edmund first arrived in Narnia some time back, he immediately fell under the sway of the White Witch. In fact, he agreed to collude with her and serve as her agent, thus becoming complicit in the perpetual winter she imposed. And for what? All for sweets and promises of reward.
What’s more, Edmund’s betrayal ultimately precipitates the sacrificial death of Aslan, an act so profoundly loving and noble that it breaks the curse and – upon Aslan’s resurrection – enables the lion to trample and kill the witch.
Reflecting on this story is as straightforward as one could wish a children’s lesson to be. It was not good when Edmund allowed his desires for sweets and rewards to waylay him. It was better, and in fact more rewarding, when Susan and Lucy followed Aslan into the cold night and witnessed his fearful death, then patiently held vigil with his lifeless body until dawn.
In other words, the story of the novel is the story of the Easter Triduum. Lewis gets the climax of the Christian life exactly right, placing the highest dramatic emphasis precisely on the events our highest holy days commemorate.
But Lewis’s is also a children’s story, written in the terms that occupy a normal child’s mind and invoking the stakes that cause such a child the most anxiety and anticipation. The result is a masterful process that uses childish and superficial preoccupations to seamlessly open the child’s mind to the profound events the Church presents to us during the Easter Triduum.
Every child understands the stakes of fun versus boredom, candy versus vegetable soup, Christmas presents versus mere winter. And because they understand those stakes, Lewis’s story reveals, they can also understand Lent versus Easter.
It’s doubtful that a child of eight will fully attend to and absorb the readings and rites of every liturgy these next three days. But if the goal is for him to enter the Easter Season with a better grasp of the significance of the Triduum, Catholic parents could do much worse than invite their children to meditate on the “Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.”