Holy Week in flashback

CHRIST IS RISEN!

 

Well, I haven't blogged for almost a month! I feel so out of touch with you all (whoever actually reads this haha, or my future self, coming back and reading it as a journal lol). There's so much to talk about!
Aside from last Saturday, when I blogged "briefly" about my day, my most recent blog was Lazarus Saturday, in the middle of April. So I will pick up where I left off :)
 

That night I went to the Ellwood City Monastery (currently my blog background picture) for Vespers of Palm Sunday...it was very awesome, and I saw Nikki there. Nikki is the Hellenic College dean's secretary, and it was very random to see her there, but she loves it there and just wanted to spend part of Holy Week there.
Palm Sunday morning I went to my parish in Aliquippa, and also spent the first three nights of Holy Week there.

Monday morning I had a doctor's appointment for a cyst on my back that has since diminished in size and even though I have an appointment in a few weeks for possible surgery, I think I am going to let it be. Holy Monday was also my paper-doing day...I had to finish a paper for New Testament, as well as a belated one for History of Music. I ended up getting an A- on the History of Music one, even though it was a couple pages short and I turned it in late. I don't remember about the NT one... Holy Monday was also the day that I deactivated my account on Bookface (aka facebook.com), because Bookface was eating up precious time and stealing it from my papers, and it had always been a love-hate relationship but I was never able to just deactivate it. Crunch time was the deciding factor (There is a way to permanently delete it, but I am not ready to take that step yet). I deactivated my Bookface account with the full intention of reactivating it during Bright Week; but Bright Week rolled around and I still didn't see a need to reactivate it so it's stayed dormant. It's still there but I haven't used it since Holy Week. haha I feel like someone trying to quit smoking lol. But anyway, my feeling is that if someone really wants to contact me, they can use my blog, email or phone. If they don't have my email or phone number, they can ask a mutual friend. So that's it about Bookface.

I went to the Monastery on Holy Tuesday and stayed through Pascha. Holy Tuesday Bridegroom service was amazing, and I realized that I really love the first part of Holy Week...we are done with Lent, but the Passion has not come yet...it is sort of introspective, waiting for the climax, focusing on our sin and how unworthy we are to see the "erchomenos Pathos" - the coming Passion - of Jesus Christ. The Bridegroom services are so beautiful, and about 1/2 the hymns are repeated at the Presanctified Liturgy the next morning.

The tradition at the Monastery is to read the entire Gospel according to St. Mark during the last week of Lent (because it is the shortest), and then to read the Gospel according to Sts. Matthew, Luke and John - in their entirety - on Holy Monday, Holy Tuesday, and Holy Wednesday, respectively, during the Hours. The Gospel readings end right before the Passion narrative, because we are going to hear that in the upcoming days. The Hours are Lenten in character, with Kathisma readings from the Psalter and the Prayer of St. Ephraim. Dark, penitential Altar coverings and vestments are used. The days still feel Lenten, even though Great Lent ended officially the previous Friday.

Fr. Hopko served the Hours and read the Gospel according to St. John, beginning at 7:00 AM on Wednesday. Around 10:00 Fr. Shomsky - a parish priest from the area who serves some weekday services at the Monastery - celebrated the Presanctified Liturgy, and afterward we sang the Canon for anointing and were anointed with Holy Unction - this was the second year that they didn't do the full service, we were just anointed with Holy Unction from a previous service. The Slavs perfume their holy oil and it smells amazing for hours! (The Greeks use straight, boring olive oil :P)

While the first three days of Holy Week are Lenten in character, Holy Thursday is a real, sudden switch. It is a feastday commemorating the Institution of the Eucharist by Christ. While the Divine Liturgy is combined with Vespers - a typical feature of a strict fast day - the Hours are normal, the Prayer of St. Ephraim has ceased to be read in church - and the colors switch to bright (they use red at the Monastery, for the Blood of Christ). In the Slav churches regular melodies are used for the responses, instead of the more somber Lenten ones. Olive oil - the sign of a slight relaxing of the fast - is allowed at the meal following the Divine Liturgy.

Wednesday night we did the Matins of Great Thursday, and the Thursday Divine Liturgy was quite glorious. it all seemed surreal, though...was it really Holy Week again? Was Christ going to be crucified tomorrow?? Was it time already for the annual celebration of His Death and Resurrection? It seemed like Lent had just begun!
Thursday afternoon I took a walk down to Gregory's family's house - the groundskeepers of the Monastery, who live at the entrance to the monastery, down the driveway. I am good friends with their daughter Anya, who just released a CD with seven of her friends - three of whom I know - and who was home visiting for Pascha. (a description of the CD and the Panagia Koukouzelissa Choir - the name of the group - can be found here, as well as an option to purchase it: http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?PID=7209379&style=music&frm=frooglemusic) I went down to their house to buy a CD and ended up talking for awhile with Gregory and Anya, and was invited to stay for dinner. It was a nice meal, a little festive repast before the dark service that night.

I went back to my guesthouse, washed up and went to the Matins of Great Friday at 6:30. This is the solemn service with the reading of the 12 Gospel narratives. The first one is the pre-arrest discourse of Jesus to His disciples from the Gospel according to St. John, and the following eleven are various accounts of the Passion, Crucifixion and Burial, conflated from the various Gospel narratives. It was nice to see Pete and his family, a family from our church whom I had invited to come to the monastery for a service or two that week, and who ended up coming that night. The monastery's liturgical rubrics are a bit different from the normal Greek parish way, but it's still beautiful and the family loved it - it was their first visit.

It was nice to be at the Monastery - I felt this way last year when I stayed there for Holy Week - because I was able to stay after the service on Thursday night, and just sit in silence before the Crucified Lord, for as long as I wanted. When I left I just had to turn the light off. It was not like in the parish where they need to lock up and the family wants to go home and there's no time to sit and contemplate.

Friday morning I was up early. Royal Hours started at 9, but I got to church early to sit and pray some more. After Royal Hours I took Mother's blessing and napped after reading a little bit. Vespers was at 2:00 PM. I forget what I did between the end of Vespers and the beginning of Matins at 5:45. I may have showered. But I didn't have a lot of time, because Mother assigned me to read Compline around 4 or 4:15.

Matins was nice. We did the engomia or Hymns of Praise before the Tomb of Christ. Near the end of the service, we were supposed to process down to the cemetery as we did last year but it was raining so we instead made an inside procession through part of the nuns' cloister (with all the cell doors closed of course!), and back into the church where we concluded the service. That night some friends and I stayed up late reading the Psalter. I was exhausted but it was nice to do that...you're supposed to read the Psalter over a dead person, including the Lord Who lies dead in the grave that night. I think ideally it's supposed to be read continuously between services from Friday night to Saturday night, but since there were only a few of us we stopped after we read it once and went to bed.

The Hours started Saturday morning at 9:00, and Liturgy at 9:30. I got there a little early. My friend S, a Catholic friend from High School who had been to the monastery twice before, came that morning because I invited her. It was a glorious service...the fifteen OT readings, changing from dark to bright colors, and truly anticipating that night's Resurrection service. Then we had lunch. Unfortunately S had to leave as she had other plans that afternoon.

Holy Saturday afternoon I took a walk with Anna, another freshman who was visiting the monastery with her family. They're from out west and Anna and her sister go to college in the area. It was a nice walk through the woods - about an hour, I believe - and then afterwards I sat and talked on the porch of their family's guest house with Anna and her sister and their mom.

I went back to my guest house and ate dinner, then tried to nap and couldn't so I decided to take my shower. Then I was able to fall asleep :) I woke up around 10-ish? I don't remember. I got ready and went over to church. It was silent, empty and peaceful, all draped in Ukrainian-looking white coverings with brilliant designs. It was still in anticipation.

The people started coming. My parents and brother came and it was nice to be with them for the Feast. I was assigned, with one of the sisters, to ring the bells during the "Angels in Heaven" procession around the church and through the cloister. I took a lot of pictures and video of Matins and Liturgy. Again it felt surreal...was this really happening? Yes, this is the Paschal canon, Fr. Tom is censing and saying Christ is risen! we are singing it 5000 times over in dozens of languages; here comes Blessed is the Kingdom. Now the Gospel, now the Epiclesis. Now it's Communion time. Really?! it all felt so surreal, I don't know why!

I went to bed a little before 5:00 AM after eating a lot at the meal afterwards - I'm not a huge meat fan: I like it but I usually prefer other food to most kinds of meat. The monastery will serve meat for pilgrims on feast days. Processing into the Refectory after Liturgy, I smelled the meat and craved it! :)

I woke up late on Sunday morning and lounged around eating leftovers from the previous night. I went to Agape Vespers at 1:00 and heard the Gospel in different languages, both during the service and after. I ate something with the nuns afterwards and then drove home. Pascha dinner with the family and some cousins' friends. We took a nice walk after dinner.

Pascha was great!

I will blog more about the previous few weeks but my shift is over in the computer lab and I don't want to save this blog because who knows when I will get back to it;

My finals are over and I am using tomorrow and Sunday as packing days. Graduation is Saturday. I leave Monday. I will hopefully catch up to blogging next week sometime :)

God bless you all! +

CHRIST IS RISEN!