For the first time in my priestly life celebrating the Holy Week liturgies have not be been a delight but thank God for my servers, who picked me up and stopped me wobbling or falling over during the Holy Thursday and Good Friday liturgies.I suppose if I were my own confessor I would congratulate myself on being able to share physically in the passion but in reality it is just frustrating! Next year, well, either I will be better, or perhaps I won't be able to do it at all!
A liturgical thought - today for us is dies non, until sunset and the Easter Vigil, I used to try doing the Office of Readings but it never caught on, but for our Polish community it is the big day, even the lapsed turn up for 'basket blessing', even if they don't turn up for anything else, even Easter Mass.
It is obviously a vestige of the Old Easter Vigil which happened on Holy Saturday morning, when people brought the foods forbidden in Lent to be blessed with paschal water in order to end the Lenten fast and to visit the the dead in the cemetery. The Liturgy of the Hours is very much about the consequences of the Redemption of the Cross, the tearing of the Temple veil, the descent into Hell, the freeing of our first parents and the conquering of Satan, and the opening of Heaven to the Just. What was celebrated was not so much the corporal Resurrection of Jesus in the flesh but supernatural overcoming of evil and the establishment the Kingdom.
Few defend the notion of Easter 'Vigil' happening on the morning of Holy Saturday, yet it seems entirely sensible and logical to celebrate the 'hidden mysteries' of the Resurrection in a sparsely occupied Church rather than vacuum that the Pian reforms introduced as to, or for the Poles and other Eastern Europeans, a rather confused liturgical day, after sixty years of catechesis the Vigil though the most important of the Church's liturgical actions is still not, in many places, the best frequented.
Happy and Blessed Pasch
15 comments:
Next year you will be better Father, as I am sure that I am not alone in praying for you.
God Bless, Fr.
Wishing you a very happy Easter, Father, and good health in the future.
Well done Father Ray,we are all praying for your recovery
You are in my prayers!
Prayers promised Father!
Prayers sent. Happy Easter to you
God bless you, Father! A very blessed Easter to you! You are indeed in my prayers.
A blessed Easter, Father. I'll continue to keep you in my daily prayer for priests, and Good Lord willing, next year we'll be able to enjoy your very thoughtful musings. I miss your writings, but His Will be done.
By the way, I am one of those pesky "basket blessing" people. In our parish only three came on Saturday morning, all three rigid Polish and Down Under Catholics.
Hello Father, May you have a Happy Easter and I shall pray for an early recovery. Resurrexit. That is all that counts.
Colin
Easter greetings Fr.Ray. Sirach 34:16-17 guides my prayer for you at this time.
Father...last year I was opened up and came to in that most grisly place,the Vascular ward of the John Radcliffe,surrounded as the Blessed would say,by angel faces.My doctor son told me...like a wounded animal,you must rest and heal. Father,rest and heal. You are a great blessing to so many of us and we need you.
Happy Easter. Kristus är uppstånden! Nearly three glorious hours of the Vigil from Moscow here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_SS0agU5Dw&t=2187s
Physiocrat,
That is not the 'Vigil' the video shews Paschal Mattins followed by Liturgy. The service similar to the old Roman Holy Saturday but with fifteen OT readings takes place earlier in the day - in the morning in most parish churches.
However it is certainly glorious.
All blessings to you, Father. Rest as much as you can, and your strength will slowly return. (I speak from experience).
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