Holy week officially started yesterday, with Palm Sunday. For Christians, it is the most solomn, intense week of the year. The previous 35 days of Lent (excluding Sundays) have been the preparation for it. It starts with the procession with palms commemorating Jesus' triumpahnt arrival in Jerusalem, traces the events of his last week of life on earth and his untimely (in human terms) death, and concludes with the central mystery of the Christian faith, his resurrection. We all know how the story will end each year, and that becomes the metaphor of our hope.
Holy Week is meant to be a struggle. In our lives in the here and now during this week we confront everything that is dark, that is sinful, that is wrong, always knowing that we will be making a new beginning at Easter.
I personally am very on edge throughout Holy Week each year. It starts with Palm Sunday. When the book of Common Prayer was revised in 1979 its revisers decided that we needed to hear the story of the Passion (the arrest, trial and crucifixtion) on Palm Sunday because not enough people show up to hear it on Good Friday. Well, I always show up on Good Friday, so I've stopped coming to church on Palm Sunday. Except that I needed to be at church yesterday for something else and arrived just in time for the Passion story, missing the triumphant procession with palms into the church from outside. It feels like I missed out on something important. Memo to self: show up next Palm Sunday.
Speaking of missing out, I changed churches almost four years ago, and my former church did Holy Week in a big way. I love my current church family dearly, but this particular week of the year I miss the old one terribly. To do up Holy Week with flair and pagentry you have to be of a size and culture that St Thomas is not. It will never be, and that's really ok. But this longing and sadness becomes a focus for me--always knowing that the week will end with Easter, and then life will start anew and everything will be ok.
And so, I will somehow make it through this week--Tenebrae at my former Church on Wed, labyrinth at another church on Good Friday (we will eventually have one of those at St Thomas), and the great vigil of Easter at 5:30 AM on Sunday at a church in Arlington. And I will say that St Thomas does have lovely services on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday (but not a vigil, they expect you to go to the cathedral for that...if you want to go) and of course Easter day.
Next year I will come top St Thomas for Palm Sunday. That is something beautiful that my current church does do, even if it means hearing the passion story twice in the same week. As the years go by, the darkness of Holy Week will take new meanings and forms. But the conclusion will always be the joyous same: He Is Risen. Alleluia!
