Oh, back to satisfying our ‘satiable curiosity about liturgy around the country and around the globe. I’ve always enjoyed these threads because it’s just interesting to see the diversity – welcome and unwelcome. I think it’s also good for us all to see how important liturgy is – skeptics, even in Catholic circles, sometimes dismiss interest in liturgy as mere aesthetics. But threads like this tell us that it simply isn’t so.
I’ll begin.
On Palm Sunday we attended the traditionally German parish in town, the church which has been beautifully maintained, but unrenovated (except for that steeple, which still hasn’t been replaced!), in which you will find, if anything, the least ego-driven liturgy in town. No ad-libbing, no chatting, simply the commitment to serving God through the liturgy and letting God do his work in people’s souls without feeling as if these same people must be manipulated in order for that to happen.
There was no congregational procession at the beginning, simply a very solemn procession of priest and servers up and down the aisles while we sang All Glory, Laud and Honor.  It was rather moving – I have never found Palm Sunday processions to be a particularly helpful experience, spiritually speaking. Perhaps no place have been to has ever gotten it – the main problem always being coordinating the singing between the front and the back – I’m sure many places have figured out how to scatter choir members throughout the procession to keep things going apace (and even that is difficult,depending on the size of the crowd), but nowhere I’ve been has yet.  Living Stations of the Cross, Corpus Christi processions, Marian processions – all seem to work out better, for some reason. This, however – in this particular setting – was a meditative experience,The Passion was read in parts – the priest and two women. A brief but potent homily about suffering.
Minimal palm swordplay.
Holy Thursday was at the same parish. Again, simplicity.  No instrumental accompaniment after the Gloria. No foot-washing (which is optional) and no stripping of the altar.  I was fine with the first omission, but think the second  was unfortunate. There’s a lot of power in that ritual. The procession with the reserved Eucharist was up and down the aisles of the church to Tantum Ergo in both Latin and English.
I didn’t make it anywhere for Good Friday this year. Michael wanted to go to the Extraordinary Form service and I just wasn’t up to something new (and old!) with the two little ones at that time of day (ie naptime). So he went on alone and has blogged about it – and his attendance at the Extraordinary Form Easter Vigil – here.  (the latter went from 11pm to 2am, btw)
Sunday morning, the rest of us heading to Easter Sunday Mass, which was about half full at the beginning of mass and maybe 3/4 full twenty minutes in.  Music: “Jesus Christ is Risen Today” “I am the Bread of Life” “Alleluia, Alleluia, Give Thanks”. “Christ the Lord is Risen Today” for the sequence. The horrible “Halle, Halle” for the Gospel Acclamation, a setting that seems most fitting, if you must use it, for a children’s liturgy, and which always sounds to me like something played at a circus. Some things, I just don’t get, and never will. Homily was on the theme of how a busy Holy Week with lots happening and some things going wrong might make you doubt that this really is “the day that the Lord has made” but the presence of the people at the various rituals helps you see that it really is true, that it’s all good.
Anyway.
It was a good Holy Week, if somewhat distracted. My spiritual reading (well, my reading) for the week consisted (go ahead and think this is odd – no matter) first, various blogs I keep running across of people grappling with physical suffering and mortality (beginning with CF Husband and moving on, for some reason I’ve forgotten, to a number of blogs of parents with children diagnosed with Trisomy 18, like this one), in which death, resurrection and the healing love that emerges from sacrifice and suffering are profound realities, right now.   Secondly, I was reading Ratzinger on liturgy: Feast of Faith and The Spirit of the Liturgy. I found that my prayer and reflection was bouncing all of that off of what I was experiencing, not in a critical way (in terms of the liturgy)  at all, but simply in a way that revealed to me, “There’s more here than I thought.” But at the same time, “Where?”
But more on that later.
No gas cards were given to me anywhere I went though. Bummer.