Holy week began on the Sunday before Easter with two services rolled into one: the reenactment of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem in the Liturgy of the Palms, followed by the Dramatic reading of the story of Jesus’ betrayal and death in our Passion Sunday service (‘passion’ comes from the Latin word ‘passio,’ which means ‘suffering’). After that we will walk through the events leading up to Jesus’ death and resurrection more slowly, beginning with our Maundy Thursday celebration.
“Maundy” comes from the Latin word ‘mandatum,’ meaning ‘mandate,’ and on the Thursday before Easter we remember the mandate Jesus gave his friends, to love one another as he loved them. The gospels give two versions of how Jesus symbolized his mandate — by sharing table fellowship with his friends and giving a new meaning to the sharing of the bread and wine, and, in John’s gospel, by washing his friends’ feet as a sign of servanthood and blessing. At St. James’ this year we will give life to both of those versions. First by sharing a meal during which we will bless and break communion bread and share the communion cup using the most ancient communion prayer that has come down to us, from a second century church manual called the Didache, or Teaching. It’s a beautiful prayer which you may recognize from the Hymn “Father, we thank thee who hast planted,” that is a paraphrase of it. Then we will have the opportunity to wash one another’s feet as a sign of our mutual servanthood. After that, we will strip the church of its ornaments and liturgical furnishings, wash and anoint the altar, and leave the church in silence. Join us if you can at 6:30 on April 17th for this rich, moving (and delicious) service.
The next day, on Good Friday we remember Jesus’ giving himself up for death on the cross. We enter the church in the same silence by which we left it the night before, to pray and meditate on our own need for forgiveness and amendment of life. A plain wooden cross is brought into the church, and we venerate it with a bow, a kiss, or by taking a lily from the basket provided and laying it at the foot of the cross. With these gestures, we also lay our own brokenness on the cross, to be slain with Jesus so that we may rise up with him made new. Again, we leave the church in silence. Our Good Friday services will be held at noon at 7:30 PM on April 18. After the noonday service the church will be open for quiet meditation or praying the Stations of the Cross until 3 PM to mark the three hours Jesus suffered on the cross before he died.
The Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services are really parts one and two of a single three-part service which culminates with the Great Vigil of Easter on Holy Saturday, April 19. This is the richest, most moving service of the entire church year, and everything else we do in church during the year echos some part of the Easter Vigil. We gather in front of the church at 7 PM and kindle a new flame. From this new fire, we light the great Paschal Candle which will continue to light our services throughout the year. We carry the lit candle into the dark church, and from it light the individual candles that all of the worshipers will hold. By this new light, we will sing the Vigil hymn called the Exsultet, only sung once a year, that proclaims the blessedness of this night and of all creation, calling on humans and heavenly beings alike to “rejoice and be glad.” Then we give a full accounting of salvation history in story and in song by the light of our candles. Then comes the time when those preparing for initiation into the community would be baptized. Since we have no candidates for baptism this year, we will renew our own baptismal vows and be asperged (sprinkled with blessed water) as a sign that we too have been washed clean. After that we will invite all of creation, past present and future to join our celebration in the Litany of the Faithful, and then, ringing bells and shouting “Christ is risen,” and He is risen indeed!” we will celebrate the resurrection of Jesus and our own rising with Christ in the first Communion of Eastertide. It’s not to be missed.
If that weren’t enough, on Sunday morning we gather again, at 8:30 and 10:30 AM, in all of our Easter finery, to continue the celebration with music and prayer and Communion in our glorious Easter day celebrations. And even that isn’t all — Easter Season continues for fifty days of celebration, feasting, and joy.
If you have never participated in the Holy Week observances in their entirety, please consider it. Each of the services is rich and deep in its own way, and you will be moved and fed and your spiritual life will be strengthened if you come to any of them. But if you are able to come to all of them you will experience resurrection, the mystery that is at the heart of our faith, in a way that will, I promise, be unforgettable.