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| The Rites of Holy Week By the Rev. Canon Paul S. Nancarrow, PhD The special services of Holy Week--Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Day--have their roots very deep in Christian history. Together they bear witness to generations of disciples' commitment to follow in Jesus' footsteps on his Way of the Cross. In the earliest days the Church celebrated Easter with a simple three-day ritual. Good Friday and Holy Saturday were days of fasting, culminating in an all-night vigil on Saturday with baptisms and the Holy Eucharist at dawn on Sunday. During this time Christians were still subject to persecution; their rites and ceremonies had to take place in secret and at times that would not interfere with normal workday hours. The Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity in 313, and Christians "came out of the catacombs," as it were, and could celebrate their holy days openly. They began to have a lively interest in pilgrimage to the places where Jesus had lived and ministered. From about the year 350, there developed in Jerusalem a complex series of pilgrimage-rites that involved going to the various places mentioned in the Gospel accounts of Jesus' final days in order to read from those Gospels and to offer prayers. A Spanish nun named Egeria traveled to Jerusalem sometime between 400 and 500 and wrote a detailed account of the Holy Week she experienced there. She tells of going to Bethany to commemorate Jesus' raising of Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha. She tells of gathering at the gates of Jerusalem to reenact and celebrate the Triumphal Entry. She tells of keeping vigil on the Mount of Olives through Maundy Thursday night, going to Gethsemane at cockcrow, and having Good Friday prayers in the great Church of the Holy Cross (which tradition said was built on the very spot of Calvary). She tells of the Great Vigil of Easter on Saturday night, and the joyous Easter Eucharist on Sunday morning in the chapel built on what tradition said was the site of the empty tomb. Every stage in the pilgrimage was meant to link a holy place in Jesus' story to a holy time in Jesus' life, and therefore to bring the pilgrims into holy space and time as well. Our contemporary Holy Week services are descendants of these early pilgrimages. In each service we commemorate a particular happening in the Passion story, in a way that both "takes us back" to the original event and "brings the event forward" to be a part of our lives here and now. On Palm Sunday we remember how the people welcomed Jesus at Jerusalem, and how the priests and elders turned on him and rejected him only a few days later; at the same time we consider how we welcome Christ into our lives, and how our sins are also implicated in his suffering and death. On Maundy Thursday we recall how Jesus shared the Passover Seder with his disciples and gave it a new meaning when he instituted the Holy Eucharist; at the same time we give thanks to God for the unbroken celebration of that Eucharist for nearly two thousand years. On Good Friday we remember the horror of the Crucifixion; at the same time we praise God that the Cross has become the way of our salvation, and we imitate Christ's self-giving love by giving ourselves in intercession for all the peoples of the earth. On Easter Eve we recall the history of salvation, from the Creation through the Exodus and up to the Resurrection itself; at the same time we look for the Light of Christ to shine in our hearts and minds and lives today. And on Easter Day we look back to the empty tomb; and at the same time we look forward to the transformation of our own lives in and through Christ's eternal life. Each service of Holy Week has its own special meaning, not only as a kind of "historical reconstruction," but even more as a "making-present" of the mighty works of God in Christ in our own day and time. I urge you to "make yourself present" at these special services, to walk again with Jesus in the Way of the Cross, and to receive the Good News of Resurrection into your life as well.
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