From Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday


Of Holy Week and the meaning of its rituals and symbols

 

Last Saturday I watched the pope preside over the Easter Vigil from St Peter’s Basilica. It’s a curious service in many ways….a service in its modern form that owes as much to Pius XII (Pacelli) as to Paul VI (Montini). His Holiness looked frail and sounded frailer but no one who watched the service could deny the impact this man has had upon the church and upon its liturgy.

The prominence once more of Latin and the presence of the mitred pontiff in his throne spoke of a Counter-Reformation that in many ways Benedict XVI master-minded whilst still Cardinal Josef Ratzinger and Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (Propaganda Fide) long before he was elected to speak ex cathedra from St Peter’s chair.

The Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday is the last part of the restored Easter Triduum that comprises the Mass of the Last Supper on the evening of Maundy Thursday; the celebration of Christ’s Passion on Good Friday and the Easter Vigil on the night of Holy Saturday. Before this modern restoration both the Mass of the Last Supper and the Vigil Mass were often regarded as lesser services in the liturgy of the post Tridentine church.

The Service of Good Friday however, had been for a millennium before the missal of Pius V at the apex of the Lenten season. Its prayers and its structure are amongst western Christianity’s most ancient liturgical survivals. And the archaic forms used for example in the Intercessions are the basis of what becomes the simplified form used in the Collect in the Mass and later still into the collects found Cranmer’s Prayer Books of 1549 and 1552.

Most interestingly, Cranmer paid scant account to this service as its contents were inimical to his views on liturgy – even though the practices in the Good Friday Service were known even then to be amongst the most ancient in Christian formularies. Note as well that the Good Friday service isn’t a Mass. There is no consecration of bread and wine from the Mass of the Last Supper until the Vigil Mass. This is specifically to mark symbolically the three days between Christ’s death and resurrection.

The precise origins of the name Good Friday are uncertain. There is much speculation but most of it is guess-work. We know the Orthodox Church employs the name Great Friday and the Anglo Saxons called it Long Friday – taken perhaps to be a reference to the length of the fast.

And part of the Good Friday service – The Veneration of the Cross – has passed into our cultural history as the ceremony referred to as ‘creeping to the cross.’ Despite this name the veneration required, neither in the Sarum nor Tridentine rites,  ‘creeping’ nor ‘kneeling’ towards the cross in the manner often stated.

The Scala Sancta – housed in the chapel by St John Lateran –  is a staircase traditionally knelt-up by pilgrims to the Eternal City. At the top of the staircase a friar used to stand calling out the number of days indulgence obtained from each step a practice that so horrified one Martin Luther that he fled the scene – his first symbolic flight from Catholic pietistic practices.

On Good Friday, a crucifix, covered in a purple cloth, is brought in procession to the Sanctuary. The priest stops and uncovers  first one arm; then the other; then the entire crucifix. Each time he holds up the cross and chants the famous ‘Ecce lignun crocis’. Once the cross is entirely uncovered it is set up before the altar (which signifies Calvary) and the cross is approached barefoot – in penitence – by clergy ( by a monarch) and by the faithful, each genuflecting three times, as an act of veneration, before, finally kissing the foot of the cross and the feet of the crucified image of Christ.

If Holy Weeks ends with this memorial of Christ’s crucifixion it begins in high celebration of his triumphant entry into Jerusalem on a donkey but five days earlier.

It is after this entry in to the Holy City that he casts the money-changers from the Temple lighting the fuse that leads to his execution. Palm Sunday is named after the palms the population of Jerusalem laid in his path upon his entry into the city.

In the pre-Reformation church it was a day of processions and carols and games. Children were dressed up in long white beards and placed on a scaffold over the entrances to church where they sang carols for money. Passers-by could pull their beards and try to dislodge them from their position. In many of the countries of Southern Europe the processions still continue with statues of Jesus carried around the town accompanied by the faithful carrying palms and singing.

The first two days of Holy week possess their own daily liturgy and are merely referred to as Holy Monday and Holy Tuesday, the third day , Holy Wednesday is also called Spy Wednesday. Again the origins of this nomenclature are obscure. It’s seen to refer to the betrayal of Christ by Judas, who espies his opportunity to make a deal with the Sanhedrin of the Chief Priest Caiaphas for the infamous thirty pieces of silver.

The following day Maundy Thursday takes its name from the Mandatum of Christ….as he washes the feet of his Apostles before the Last Supper he says…. ‘A new commandment I give unto you…Love one another as I have loved you…’

In monastic communities this was taken literally and as an act of humility and the abbot washed the feet of his fellow monks and this became incorporated into the usual Mass liturgy.

The Mass is celebrated in the evening. The priest wears white vestments…as for a major feat. The most ancient practice was that this was the second Mass of the day, the first being (con)celebrated with the bishop  – The Chrism Mass – where all the holy oils used in the sacraments ( baptism, confirmation ordination and extreme unction) are blessed for use in the forthcoming year. Later in the Easter Triduum, at the Vigil Mass, the new water is blessed and traditionally at this mass adult Christians are baptised and received into the Church.

Over the last three days of the week special daily prayers are said – Tenebrae – where all the lights in the church are gradually extinguished over the course of the cycle of prayers until the church is left in tomb-like darkness.

During Holy week all music bar plainchant was banned in Rome; in the Lutheran tradition the Passions were performed. Handel whilst in Rome wrote an Oratorio La Resurrezione to be performed on Easter Day.
‘Light’ and ‘dark’ are the leitmotif of the entire services of Holy Week. The Easter Vigil begins in a dark church. The priests commences the service by the lighting of new fire and from it the Paschal Candle is lit and from the Paschal Candle of each of the congregation lights his or her small candle until the church is bathed in this new light.

The Deacon then climbs to the highest point in the church (usually the pulpit) to sing aloud the great prayer of the Vigil – The Exsultet….which ends:
‘May the Morning Star which never sets find this flame still burning….and may Christ that Morning Star who came back from the Dead…shed his peaceful light upon you…’

Beautiful words matter and these are very beautiful words and like all things of beauty deserve to be shared equally and by all. There is a link is below to a lovely rendition of the prayer….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h45ki6B7Wo&feature=related
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