At this point, it is necessary that we consider how we are going to spend Holy Week and make it truly blessed. I am suggesting that you take the BAS (green book), turn to page 296 and read the rubric there as a starter. Perhaps you would find it helpful to use some of the prayers that follow for the week. You may feel you would like to do something creative to enrich your life or that of someone else. If there are children in your life include them in a teaching or worshipping experience. How about using the Advent Wreath at the evening meal during the week, as it is, or expand it by adding extra candles. Pray that the Holy Spirit will give you creative and enriching ideas.
Try to attend the evening service on Maundy Thursday. The ceremonies of washing feet and stripping the altar are dramatic and moving. It is a time where children might be allowed to stay up late. The next day will be a holiday from school as it is Good Friday, the most solemn of all the days in the year, when we remember Jesus’ supreme love which gave him the strength to die for us. Holy Saturday should be a happy day; weather permitting a drive in the country, picnic, visit to a loved one or a shut in. Helping to get ready for the next day’s celebration and of course for children, colouring Easter eggs. They are a symbol of the Holy Sepulchre or the tomb. I seem to remember sharing with you, last year about an Easter dance, common in Orthodox churches in earlier times.
The dancers held aloft a hardboiled egg in their hands. They concluded the dance shouting “Christ is Risen” and cracked open their eggs against someone else’s to symbolize the opening of the tomb. Let us join in that Orthodox Church custom of greeting one another with “Christ is Risen” to which the reply is “He is Risen Indeed”. Let us embrace his love and accept his great gift of forgiveness. Let us be a Resurrection people, a living people.
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