Good Friday - The Stations of the Cross

It's been a busy Holy Week for us here as we make our preparations -- both solemn and joyful -- for Easter. Schoolwork was frenzied on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday as we wrapped things up to be ready for spring break, which started yesterday.



The Triduum -- Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday --is one of the best times of the year to be a Catholic, and that's high praise coming from someone who thinks that every single day of the year is the best day to be a Catholic. Anyway, the churches all seem to be open and there's always something going on: evening prayer, rosaries, holy hours, the beginning of the Divine Mercy novena today, and my personal favorite, the Stations of the Cross.



The girls and I are all spiffed up ready to head out in an hour or so to go to our parish's Good Friday services, which include the Stations, a communion service (since Good Friday is the only day of the year when there's no Mass in any Catholic church), the Veneration of the Cross and the beginning of the aforesaid Divine Mercy novena. It's a blessed day. Solemn and sorrowing, yet somehow a-quiver with anticipation of what we know is coming: the grand and beautiful celebration of the resurrection of Our Lord at the Easter Vigil.



After the services are over at the church, we're off to the grocery to finish buying things for our Easter basket, which will be present at the church for blessing promptly at 1:30 tomorrow. That completed, we'll go home and count the hours until it's time to return to the church at 7:30 for music rehearsal, with the Easter Vigil Mass starting at 8:30.



Great, happy, lovely excitement and joyfulness await us. Jesus is the cause of our joy.

Holy Saturday - "The power of this holy night..."

Tonight is the great Easter Vigil, where we will enter into a dark church with an empty tabernacle, the sanctuary lamp snuffed out; where a new fire will be lit, both without and within. Where the beautiful Paschal candle, recalling the wounds of Christ will be lit from the fire; where that Paschal candle will light the candles of every person there. Christ is the light in the darkness and His light has spread throughout the earth.

Tonight is the night of the Church's highest hymn, the Exsultet, the Easter Proclamation. This hymn is traditionally sung by just one voice, no instruments. Just one pure, clear voice in the church, telling in these ancient words the story of mankind's downfall, God's plan for salvation, His showing of the way through the law and the prophets, and finally through the coming of His Son, Jesus.

My favorite line: "To ransom a slave, you gave away your Son." I always bring tissues. It's impossible to sit through this Mass and be untouched by Him.

Here's the Exsultet, the powerful hymn of praise and thanksgiving for the unearnable gift of our salvation through Christ Jesus.

Rejoice, heavenly powers!

Sing choirs of angels!

Exult, all creation around God's throne!

Jesus Christ, our King is risen!

Sound the trumpet of salvation!

Rejoice, O earth, in shining splendor,

radiant in the brightness of your King!

Christ has conquered! Glory fills you!

Darkness vanishes for ever!

Rejoice, O Mother Church! Exult in glory!

The risen Savior shines upon you!

Let this place resound with joy,

echoing the mighty song of all God's people!

For Christ has ransomed us with his blood,

and paid for us the price of Adam's sin to our eternal Father!

This is night, when Christians everywhere,

washed clean of sin and freed from all defilement,

are restored to grace and grow together in holiness.

This is the night, when Jesus broke the chains of death

and rose triumphant from the grave.
What good would life have been to us,

had Christ not come as our Redeemer?

Father, how wonderful your care for us!

How boundless your merciful love!

To ransom a slave you gave away your Son.

O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam,

which gained for us so great a Redeemer!
Most blessed of all nights,

chosen by God to see Christ rising from the dead!

The power of this holy night dispels all evil,

washes guilt away, restores lost innocence,

brings mourners joy;

it casts out hatred, brings us peace,

and humbles earthly pride.

Accept this Easter candle, a flame divided but undimmed,

a pillar of fire that glows to the honor of God.

Let it mingle with the lights of heaven

and continue bravely burning to dispel the darkness of this night!

May the Morning Star which never sets find this flame still burning:

Christ, that Morning Star, who came back from the dead,

and shed his peaceful light on all mankind, your Son,

who lives and reigns for ever and ever. +Amen+

Easter basket blessing

Our parish is very new, so new that we don't yet have a real church. It's nice to be in on the ground floor, so to speak, because we get to help build the traditions that will be part of the parish for years to come.

One new thing Father D. started last year was the Easter Basket Blessing. The girls and I had lovingly bought all the things we wanted to put in it and were sitting in the kitchen coloring eggs when my mother called to tell me that an arsonist had set fire to St. Anne's in my hometown. Hopefully, this year's Easter Basket Blessing day (tomorrow) will be a lot less eventful. By the way, the Easter basket in that photograph is not our Easter basket, although you can see the same elements: ham, bread, cream cheese, etc. But look at those gorgeous, hand-painted eggs! And I have a feeling that bread didn't come from a store.

Here's an article I found online titled "How to Put Together a Traditional Easter Basket" by Fr. Hal Stockert about the Easter baskets of the Slovic, German and Greek Catholics. Father D. sent this out as a little flyer in our bulletins. Below is the list of the things we're putting in our Easter basket and their symbolism.

ham -- This meat symbolizes our freedom from the Law of Moses, which forbid the eating of pork.

eggs -- European people traditionally gave up dairy products and meat for the duration of Lent -- ouch! -- and so eggs were abundant at Easter. Martha Stewart did this great segment on her show a few years ago, demonstrating how to dye eggs with onion skins, which is apparently a Polish tradition. I know that sounds awful, but onion skins turn the hard-cooked eggs an absolutely lovely golden color. Anyway, we're just using the traditional Paas dyes. In fact, I'm typing this post while we're waiting for all the little colored tablets to dissolve.

bread -- We bought hot cross buns at Panera this morning (and believe me, they weren't one a penny, two a penny). The hot cross buns will take the place of the sweet loaf I made last year, which everyone refused to eat. But anyway, the buns are rich with eggs and dried fruit (strawberries and orange peel, or so said their little label inside Panera's bakery case) and they are included in the Easter basket to remind us that Christ is our True Bread.

salt -- Salt is a condiment, much prized throughout the world when Christians first started assembling Easter baskets, and it reminds us of our duty to flavor the world and make it better by our presence.

cheese -- We bought a tub of cinnamon cream cheese which I'll form into a ball and put on a pretty plate covered with plastic wrap. The purpose of the cheese is to provide a food that is bland yet sweet, and is intended to remind Christians that we are to be moderate in all things. (I think that maybe the cream cheese of the Slovak, German and Greek Christians wasn't as good as ours.)

wine -- Red wine reminds us of the Blood of Christ, shed to cover our sins.

candle -- Jesus is the Light of the world. We bought a nice Sacred Heart holy candle at the grocery in the section where Hispanic foods are sold.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The only thing we don't have is a traditional basket cover which Fr. Stockart's article says is usually "intricately embroidered" with various Resurrection themes. I don't trust myself on the "intricate" part, but I used to be a real whiz at cross-stitching, so I wonder if maybe I could come up with something for next year? Hmmm...

Tomorrow at 1:30, then, we'll be at the church with Aisling lugging the basket (as the youngest child, she gets this honor) for our second Easter Basket Blessing at our parish.

Good Friday - Stabat mater dolorosa

A lovely piece of traditional Good Friday artwork

At the Stations of the Cross, we always sing a verse of the ancient hymn, Stabat mater dolorosa, after each station, translated from Latin as "the sorrowful mother stood weeping." I don't think it is a particularly beautiful hymn -- it's almost more of a chant, each syllable, word and line varying by only a few notes. But the words are very powerful, telling the story of Mary's pierced heart, prophesied in the Temple by Simeon when Jesus was an infant.

Here is the English translation we sing from the 1901 Adoremus hymnal. It is sung in a dirge-like tempo, perfect for the solemnity of this day.

Stabat mater dolorosa

At the cross her station keeping,
stood the mournful mother weeping,
close to Jesus at the last.

Through her soul, of joy bereavèd,
bowed with anguish, deeply grievèd,
now at length the sword hath passed.

O, that blessed one, grief-laden,
blessed Mother, blessed Maiden,
Mother of the all-holy One;

O that silent, ceaseless mourning,
O those dim eyes, never turning
from that wondrous, suffering Son.

Who, on Christ's dear mother gazing,
in her trouble so amazing,
born of woman, would not weep?

Who, on Christ's dear Mother thinking,
such a cup of sorrow drinking,
would not share her sorrows deep?

For his people's sins, in anguish,
there she saw the victim languish,
bleed in torments, bleed and die.

Saw the Lord's anointed taken,
saw her Child in death forrsaken,
heard his last expiring cry.

In the passion of my Maker,
be my sinful soul partaker,
may I bear with her my part;

Of his passion bear the token,
in a spirit bowed and broken
bear his death within my heart.

May his wounds both wound and heal me,
He enkindle, cleanse, and heal me,
be his cross my hope and stay.

May he, when the mountains quiver,
from that flame which burns for ever
shield me on the judgment day.

Jesus, may thy cross defend me,
and thy saving death befriend me,
cherished by thy deathless grace:

Holy Thursday

An old favorite from Leonardo daVinci, meant for this day.

Today is Holy Thursday, the first day of the Triduum, the three days of solemnity when Jesus suffered His Passion. The Masses and services held on these three days are so beautiful, so holy and so heavy with meaning, it's impossible to come away untouched.

We often go to Mass on Holy Thursday (last year, my husband had his feet washed and had to take off his shoes and expose his salt-white feet next to a guy who'd evidently spent spring break smack dab on the equator), but this year, his work schedule is not permitting that to happen, since the Masses offered at the two parishes we frequent are both at the same time -- seven o'clock p.m.

Tomorrow, the girls and I will go to the Stations of the Cross at twelve noon and stay on for the Good Friday service, which includes Holy Communion and the veneration of the cross. Tomorrow is also the first day of the Divine Mercy Novena, which will start at 3:00 p.m., the hour of Jesus's death, the hour of mercy.

This, in my opinion, is the best time of the entire year to be a Catholic.