“So, what do you
do in Madonna House for Easter?” The question was asked me at the parish
mission I did in Orangeville just before Holy Week. It was hard to answer in a
few words – this past week in MH is one of the richest, fullest, and most
varied weeks of our year, and is exceedingly beautiful to boot. So, what
exactly did we do this week in MH?
First, there’s
what most of us didn’t do this year
for once, due to inclement weather. It’s hard to believe, since we are now in a
thoroughly spring cycle of days, but just a week ago most of the MH priests
trying to go to the Chrism Mass in Pembroke were stymied by snow and ice rain
which virtually shut the highway down—one last blast of winter that seriously
messed up our plans that day.
But Holy Week
continued on regardless. That evening, we had our communal penance service,
being shriven so as to enter the Triduum together washed clean by the blood of
the Lamb. The next evening, we had our customary egg dying night, coloring and
painting in festive liturgical symbols the hard boiled eggs that would be our
fast-breaking after the Vigil on Saturday.
In all these
days, the customs I am going to describe are of course surrounded by intense
work—cooking, decorating, cleaning, music practices, and so forth. It is the busiest
week of the year in many corners of MH.
First came Holy
Thursday. The tables of the dining room, normally set up in three rows, were
turned around end-to-end to create four long single tables, covered with
tablecloths to create the effect of a banquet hall. A mosaic of Christ the lamb
shedding his blood for us dominated the front of the room, along with a head
table and ornate candelabra. This was the setting for the Supper of the Lamb,
one of our most beloved customs. It is not a seder meal, exactly, but a Christian
version of that
At the beginning
of the meal, the candles are lit with a prayer of blessing. Then the paschal
lamb, a slain lamb, roasted whole, resting on a cross-shaped frame and
supported by loaves of bread, is solemnly carried into the dining hall while we
sing a psalm of praise to God. It is placed at the head of the room, and an
ancient homily speaking of Christ the Lamb of is read. It is processed out, and
then we have a truly wonderful, joyful meal of lamb, bread, wine—the liturgical
symbols blend with life seamlessly.
At the end of
the meal a long portion of the Farewell discourse from John’s Gospel is read,
connecting the agape of our meal, the
agape of the Eucharist, and the call
to love one another beautifully. After all this, of course, we have the evening
liturgy, familiar to all Catholics, with the washing of feet and the solemn
procession of the Eucharist to the altar of repose. All accompanied by truly
gorgeous music ably led by our schola
cantorum.
Good Friday is
hot cross buns for breakfast (keeping within the fasting rules, of course), the
use of a clacker instead of bells, and the traditional afternoon service. For
supper we fast on plain boiled potatoes, and then in the evening we have the
Byzantine service of the Burial of Christ, a most beautiful and beloved gift to
us from our Eastern heritage. This is, essentially, a funeral service for
Jesus, in which the sorrow of his passing repeatedly gives way to anticipated
joy in his coming resurrection.
It is impossible
to describe the beauty of this service. The heart of it are three cycles of
praises of our fallen hero, modeled on pre-Christian forms of odes. ‘How can
you die, O my Life, how can you be buried?.. O life-bestowing one, it is right
indeed to magnify you… The most handsome of men is today laid in the tombs, all
the armies of the angels were dazzled, and they glorified your burial divine…
ointment bearing women came to your tomb singing a hymn of victory…’ At this
latter verse, one of the priests goes around the chapel sprinkling everyone
with perfume, the burial ointment of Christ (which the women did not, after
all, have to use!) becoming the sweet fragrance of joy and life for us.
There is much
more to the service—the prophecy of the dry bones from Ezekiel, a haunting
chant where Joseph of Arimethea pleads with Pilate for the body of Christ—‘Give
me that Stranger, who being a stranger, has nowhere to lay his head… Give me
that Stranger, of whom his mother cried out when she saw him dead, ‘My Son, my
senses are wounded, and my heart is torn, but trusting in your resurrection, I
glorify you.’ There is whole funeral procession around the chapel with the
epitaphion, the shroud of Christ, with the solemn Trisagion intoned in many
languages. At the end, then, we all in solemn assembly one by one pass under
this shroud, holding lit candles. We extinguish the candle, say ‘Glory to your
long suffering O Christ our God’, and pass under. Going into the tomb with
Christ, we come out the other side, now bearing the light of Christ in our
mortal flesh.
Saturday brings
the Vigil, which I was privileged to celebrate this year. We all know how that
goes—in MH we have opted to do all the readings and take our time with them,
too. After the Vigil, so around midnight or so, we have a festive collation
together, where we break our Lenten fast with the previously mentioned hard
boiled eggs. One person says ‘Christ is risen’ and the other replies ‘Truly he
is risen’ and they smash their eggs together and eat the contents.
What else goes on?
Well, we have pascha and koolitch, the traditional Russian Easter foods, the
one a sweet cottage cheese paste enriched with eggs and butter and raisins, the
other a special sweet bread. We have three days off, with a relaxed schedule
and some leisure time together. We have much singing at the meals, people
bursting out with variations of the great Easter troparion ‘Christ is risen
from the dead, trampling on death by death, and on those in the tombs,
lavishing life’. We have Ukranian pysanky eggs everywhere—hanging from the
ceiling, laid out on every flat surface… everywhere.
Beauty, beauty, beauty
everywhere. And I guess that’s what Holy Week and Easter in MH is all
about—making the beauty of our faith visible in manifold customs and rites. And
that’s what happened this week in our corner of the world.
Khrystos Voskres!
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