EpiscopalCenter at Duke University

Holy Week is generally believed to have developed in Jerusalem in the fourth century during the episcopate of the great bishop and preacher St. Cyril. The Easter Vigil was already in existence, and the combination of a heightened interest in Christian history, the construction of churches on the sacred sites in the Holy Land by Constantine, and the influx of pilgrims to Jerusalem for Easter produced the series of services that became our Holy Week.

These services were usually held in Jerusalem on the original sites and at the times indicated in the gospels. The Spanish pilgrim Egeria, who visited Jerusalem in the 380s, was fascinated by the novel celebration of what they called the Great Week and described the services in detail in her journal. She was particularly impressed that the psalms and readings were appropriate to the time and place – obviously a new idea to her.

Whether the Holy Week liturgies were invented by Cyril or borrowed from other churches, it was from Jerusalem that pilgrims took them home, adapting and incorporating them into the liturgical cycle of their own churches. These rites thus provided the basic structure of the liturgical celebrations of Holy Week. Kenneth Stevenson calls the piety of these rites ‘rememorative’: they remember the historical events of the passion. They do not imitate them like a passion play, but they are remembered symbolically so that we may enter into them. The gospel story is the thread on which the events hang, and we move with Christ from event to event throughout the week.

Maundy Thursday

The name Maundy Thursday is derived from the Latin mandatum, and refers to the new commandment (novum mandatum) in John 13:34 (‘that you love one another, just as I have loved you’), appointed in the Prayer Book to be sung as an antiphon during the footwashing, which came to be called ‘the Maundy’ in medieval England. The Proper Liturgy celebrates the events of the Last Supper, the footwashing and the institution of the Eucharist. It is the only Eucharist celebrated between Wednesday and the Great Vigil and ties the events of the Last Supper to those of Good Friday. It is appropriately celebrated as a Holy Week liturgy connecting the institution of the Eucharist with the sacrifice of the cross.

The evening or late afternoon celebration of the Eucharist on Maundy Thursday is mentioned by St. Augustine and was known to Egeria on her fourth-century visit to Jerusalem. Both spoke of the general reception of communion on the occasion. We have become accustomed to afternoon and evening celebrations of the Eucharist, but for the Christians of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages the evening Eucharist of Maundy Thursday was unique. Its very uniqueness tended to force the hour of celebration back into the morning, until the general revival of the evening Eucharist in the twentieth century.

Red Vestments are worn for the Proper Liturgy of Maundy Thursday commemorating the Last Supper. The distinctive elements of the liturgy are the washing of the feet, the reservation of the Sacrament for Good Friday communion, and the stripping of the altar. The reservation of the Sacrament is for the purpose of administering communion at the Good Friday liturgy. If communion is not to be administered on Good Friday, then the Sacrament is consumed following the reception of communion at this liturgy.

In many places the Sacrament is reserved in a place where people may keep watch before it, following the example of the apostles whom Jesus asked to watch and pray with him before the Last Supper (Matthew 26:40-41). This all-night vigil apparently began, like so many other Holy Week ceremonies, in fourth-century Jerusalem.

There are two partially inconsistent explanations of the ceremony of washing feet. One is that it is a dramatic portrayal of the actions of Jesus at the Last Supper. The presider washes the feet of twelve men to imitate what Christ did. The second explanation focuses on two passages from John’s gospel: the new commandment and the command to wash each other’s feet which concludes the Maundy gospel (John 13:34; John 13:14-15). In this explanation, the washing of feet is the outward and visible sign of the love of Christ, which we are commanded to share with one another. We therefore wash one another’s feet as Christ commanded that we all may share in that love. It is not an acted parable to be watched, but an action in which all are invited to participate.

The Episcopal Center will join with St. Joseph’s for our Maundy Thursday Liturgy on March 20, 2008 at 6:00pm, at St. Joseph’s.

Good Friday

The observance of the Friday before Easter as a commemoration of the crucifixion can be traced back to Jerusalem in the fourth century. Prior to that time, Easter had been a unitive celebration of the passion and resurrection. The Pascha combined both fast and feast and included the entire saving event of Christ’s dying and rising again: crucifixion and resurrection were celebrated as a single event in its many aspects, as God’s victory in Christ over sin and death. It was not until the fourth century, when the observance of Good Friday spread throughout the Christian East and then to the West, that the two aspects were separated into Good Friday and Easter celebrations. The Good Friday proper liturgy consists of three parts: the Liturgy of the Word, the veneration of the cross, and communion from the reserved sacrament. Celebration of the Eucharist is not permitted on Good Friday, and all consecrated bread and wine must be consumed following the distribution of communion at the Good Friday service.

The Good Friday liturgy is a solemn commemoration of and participation in the great events of this day, the salvation of the human race through the victory of Christ, who by dying destroyed death, not a funeral for Jesus. Nonetheless, it is a powerful liturgy, which begins and ends in silence. Many churches then close and lock their doors until the Great Vigil of Easter.

The Episcopal Center will join with St. Joseph’s for our Good Friday service at St. Joseph’s at 6:00 pm at St. Joseph’s. Bishop Michael Curry will be our guest preacher.

Holy Saturday

Holy Saturday, also called the Holy Sabbath and the Great Sabbath, is an empty day, the day when Christ rested in the tomb and all creation awaited the resurrection. Only the daily offices are traditional. The altar is bare, as on Good Friday, although in some places it is covered with a funeral pall. The entrance is in silence. After the gospel and homily, and in place of the Prayers of the People, the anthem from the Burial of the Dead is sung or said. The presider then leads the congregation in the Lord’s Prayer and the service concludes with the grace. All bow to the altar and leave in silence.

The Episcopal Center and St. Joseph’s will hold our Holy Saturday Service at 9:00am, March 22, at St. Joseph’s.

The Great Vigil of Easter

The Holy Week services carry us through the events of the passion. The Great Vigil, a more ancient services, leads us from death to life with Christ through fire, light, word, water, and bread and wine. A new fire is kindled, a great candle is lighted, by its light the Bible is read, prayer and praise are offered, and we celebrate the Easter sacraments of baptism and Eucharist. At the Great Vigil we celebrate the paschal mystery, which incorporates us into Christ’s saving acts.

The service of Light is a special form of the lamp lighting that was once a part of every evening service. In origin it is a utilitarian act: the service is at night, and light is needed. The service will be long, so a large light is needed. Yet it did not long remain a utilitarian act. Not only at the Vigil, but at every evening service, the bringing of light into the dark building was identified with the light of Christ shining in the darkness. At the Great Vigil the service begins with the lighting of a new fire. The ritual extinguishing of the old lights and the kindling of a new fire is an archetypal symbol of renewal and new birth. Before the invention of matches it was serious business to put out your source of light and kindle a new one. So the Great Vigil starts with this act of beginning anew, as reflected in the presider’s prayer ‘that in this Paschal feast we may so burn with heavenly desires, that with pure minds we may attain to the festival of everlasting light’ (BCP p. 285).

The deacon leads the congregation into the church, carrying the newly lighted candle and proclaiming it ‘the Light of Christ.’ The candles of the congregation and the lights of the church are lighted from the new light. The Exsultet is a special example of the prayer for light which traditionally accompanies the lighting of the evening light. It celebrates not only the mighty acts of God in Moses and in Christ, but our own participation in these events through the Easter sacraments of baptism and Eucharist.

By the light of this new fire the Old Testament is read, beginning with the story of Creation, and including Israel’s deliverance at the Red Sea. Each reading is followed by a psalm or canticle and a collect which gives the reading Christian context. As many as twelve lessons have been read at various times, but the Prayer Book requires two and offers nine.

After the readings the action moves to the font, where the water is blessed, the candidates are baptized, and the baptismal covenant is renewed by the congregation. Baptism is the theological climax of the Great Vigil.

Finally, the church, renewed and increased by the addition of the newly baptized, makes Eucharist, as we join in celebrating the Easter Eucharist and in receiving the Body and Blood of Christ. The bond of union with God in Christ established in the font is proclaimed in the reading from Romans 6.

It is all there. Not with the drama of Palm Sunday and Good Friday, but with the solid symbols of faith, fire, light, water, bread and wine, and with the proclamation of the Word of God. In the Great Vigil of Easter we pass over with Christ from death to life, and with the church from Lent to Easter.

The Episcopal Center and St. Joseph’s will celebrate the Great Vigil of Easter on Saturday, March 22nd, 2008 at 7:30 pm.

Our Easter Sunday service will be at St. Joseph’s at 10:30 a.m. and will be followed by a festive brunch. Bishop Michael Curry will join us as celebrant and preacher.

—- excerpted from Leonel L. Mitchell, Lent, Holy Week, Easter and the Great Fifty Days (Boston: Cowley Publications, 1996).