More than chocolate eggs

Michele Marr

Chocolate bunnies and pastel Peeps, jellybeans and egg dyes have all

been on store shelves for weeks now in anticipation of Easter.

But for those who celebrate the Christian holiday, it’s a holy

season that has little to do with Easter bonnets, baskets or bunnies.

Many Christians -- especially Roman Catholic and Orthodox

Christians, but also many Protestants -- anticipate Easter with Lent,

a long penitential season of self-examination, confession and

fasting.

Some Christians don’t eat sugar and sweets during Lent. Many

abstain from other foods like meat, diary products, alcoholic

beverages and olive oil. It’s not a time to party.

Christians sometimes keep an even stricter fast during Holy Week,

the week between Palm Sunday, which is the Sunday before Easter, and

Easter Day.

“During Holy Week we are called to enter into the life, death and

resurrection of Jesus,” said Sister Maureen Sheehan, BVM, director of

liturgy at Sts. Simon and Jude Roman Catholic Church. “We begin on

Palm Sunday with Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem.”

Palm Sunday is the last Sunday in Lent and the beginning of Holy

Week. Palms branches are blessed for a procession that represents

Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, when crowds greeted him with palms, a

symbol of victory, the week before his resurrection.

During the Palm Sunday service a Gospel account of the passion, or

suffering, of Jesus is traditionally read.

The Thursday before Easter is known as Maundy Thursday, named from

the Latin mandatum novum, which means “new commandment.”

Maundy Thursday remembers the night of Jesus’ last supper with his

disciples, when he instituted the Eucharist, washed their feet and

instructed them, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one

another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.” In

some churches the Eucharist is know as the Lord’s Supper, or Holy

Communion.

Some congregations symbolically reenact Jesus’ washing his

disciples’ feet on Maundy Thursday. In the Roman Catholic Church and

some other liturgical churches, there is a Mass in the evening, and

the Eucharistic Host is consecrated for the next day then placed in a

special chapel of repose. The altars of the church are stripped bare

and remain bare until the Easter Vigil, held on the Saturday night

before Easter Day.

“Good Friday is the day that we specifically remember the day

Jesus died on the Cross,” Sheehan said, “We pray for the needs of the

world, we venerate the Cross, we listen to the Passion of Jesus from

the Gospel of John.”

Many Christians throughout the world participate in processions

that reenact Jesus’ path from the judgment hall of Pilate, where his

death was ordered, to the site of the crucifixion on Mount Calvary.

This year, St. Wilfrid of York Episcopal Church has organized an

ecumenical Good Friday Procession of the Cross, on a route in

Huntington Beach, which will start at the Pier Plaza amphitheater and

end at the church on Chapel Lane.

“We hope anybody who is a Christian, or not, but who has an

interest in what Good Friday is about, or maybe just curiosity, will

come and join in with us,” said the Rev. Harold Clinehens, Jr.,

rector of St. Wilfrid. “We are simply wanting to bear witness in a

public way to a major liturgical day in life of the Christian church,

a public procession reenacted the Passion [of Jesus].”

Participants can park at the church a half hour before the event

and carpool to Pier Plaza. During the walk, a special Stations of the

Cross will be provided for children at the church, as well as nursery

care for very young children.

Those who need child care are asked to call the church in advance

and also to bring a bag lunch for their children. Walkers should

bring a bottle of water to drink during the three-mile walk. Cold

drinks will be served at St. Wilfrid after the walk.

Some of the procession participants will carry a life-size wooden

cross during segments of the procession and there will be stops along

the way for reading the Passion Gospel of John and for prayer.

“The Passion Gospel will be broken into sections and then read by

two members of our congregation, both of whom are actors,” Clinehens

said. “They read the Gospel in such a moving and engaging way that

people are just riveted.”

Good Friday is followed on Saturday by the Easter Vigil.

“This is the important celebration of the church year,” said

Sheehan. “We begin outside with the lighting of the new candle, the

Light of Christ, [then] we listen to a series of reading from the Old

Testament that gives us the history of salvation beginning with the

story of creation. We baptize adults who have been in a long period

of preparation and we celebrate the Easter Eucharist.

“Easter Sunday is a glorious celebration that is an extension of

the Easter Vigil.”

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She

can be reached at [email protected].