Monday, April 6, 2009

Holy Week Reflections

Three holy days enfold us now
in washing feet and breaking bread
in cross and font and life renewed
in Christ, God’s firstborn from the dead.
Hymn 731 Wonder, Love and Praise

This week finds us entering the most sacred time of the liturgical year: Holy Week. It culminates in those three holy days, the Triduum Sacrum, one liturgy stretching from Thursday night through the Great Vigil of Easter and into Easter Day. From the earliest time the church has gathered to commemorate these days, following Jesus’ death and resurrection liturgically. In the forth century a nun, likely from Spain, left us an account of the liturgical life of the church in Jerusalem. Egeria records for posterity how the Triduum is celebrated at the very places tradition says they unfolded in Jesus’ life. These liturgies are, in some ways, very similar to our own these centuries later.
This sense of walking in the way that Jesus’ walked in his final days, as countless Christians have for centuries, produces a sense of awe and wonder for me. Each year I am amazed on Palm Sunday as we sing in procession the hymn, “All glory, laud, and honor” (Hymn 154) with a text written before the year 821 and music written in the 1600s. On Good Friday we sing the traditional chant, “Sing, my tongue, the glorious battle” with words composed before the year 600. At the Great Vigil of Easter the deacon chants one of the most ancient chants of our liturgical life, the Exsultet. It was likely written between the years 400 and 600.
This is not to say that all we do is rooted in the past alone. Much of the music we sing during these three days is much newer. But it is precisely this great wealth of tradition complemented by the more contemporary that is so striking. As Christians have done from the start, we at St. Paul’s Church now do, adapted to express who we are.