Holy Week & Easter

I mentioned earlier how much I like Easter, or more specifically Holy Week, and during that week I posted some of the prayers and poems I most like. I've been meaning to write more about it for a while, but, well, I didn't--till now ;) Partly, it's thanks to labingi's post on the 25th that I finally am sitting down and pulling my thoughts together. I'm going to quote liberally from the poems and prayers in the previous posts, so beware!

I'm relatively new to the liturgical tradition (Ok, um, going on 8? 9? years here, but I didn't grow up with it), and one thing that impresses me is how much and how well both the pain and the joy are recognized.

We go through the long, solemn time of Lent, when not even Alleluias are allowed, because it is not a time of rejoicing but a time of reflection, a time to recognize the fallen, flawed nature of the world we live in. This is a place where everything is not all right. Where, as Gerard Manly Hopkins wrote in a poem I posted earlier, "All is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil."

And as we approach Easter, we recognize the sacrifice that was made to, ultimately, redeem the world, and, in some ways, how far away we still are from that ultimate shining out. There is a descent into the depths with the formal stripping of the altar and the silent, thoughtful exit at the end of the service--an exit made in near darkness as a remembrance. There is the thoughtful remembrance in the Stations of the Cross, a time when we do recall that Christ first "suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified." The dark paradox of Good Friday.

And then. And then the Great Vigil, the holding of the breath and waiting for the final moment of glory.

And Easter.

Sunrise services and the great cry of

He is Risen!

The joy and light and laughter and the realization of hope and, ultimately, victory.

Despite the darkness, despite the pain, because of His pain, there is joy.

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And that is why I try to get to every service held during Holy Week. I don't want to miss a moment.

The Lord is Risen!

Christ is risen indeed! Allelujah!


In case you haven't guessed from the last week's worth of posts (with the exception of the Stargate post, of course), Holy Week is by far my favorite church celebration.

There is all of Lent, leading to the solemnity and joy--going down to the grave, and then up to the resurrection.

And, on Easter we can say Allelujah again.

Good Friday

The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer's art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.

Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse
Whose constant care is not to please
But to remind of our, and Adam's curse,
And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.

The whole earth is our hospital
Endowed by the ruined millionaire,
Wherein, if we do well, we shall
Die of the absolute paternal care
That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.

The chill ascends from feet to knees,
The fever sings in mental wires.
If to be warmed, then I must freeze
And quake in frigid purgatorial fires
Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.

The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood—
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.

T.S. Eliot, East Coker IV