Holy Week and Good Friday

When I was younger, the beginning of our Easter vacation began during Holy Week. In the Christian calendar, this is the most significant and most important day with the birth of Christ aside. After all, we remember the last remaining days of Jesus's life leading up to his brutal death.

On Holy Thursday, we remember the Last Supper that Jesus shared with his disciples. Through the years, the church that I attended honored the day with a reenactment of sorts complete with a meal. Sometime after that, it later included the washing of the feet. The priest would basically take the place of Jesus and some chosen people of the church congregation would act as the disciples. The "disciples" would be seated at the altar, shoes off, and the priest would go from person to person washing their feet in water and drying them off with a towel. It was very symbolic and at best, gave us a great visual of the love and service that Christ gave to his fellow man.

On Good Friday, the masses were more than three hours long. I remember dreading this mass because they were always unusually crowded! Where were all these people during the rest of the year? I would later hear these attending crowds being referred to as the "C & E" bunch....or, the Christmas and Easter bunch, aka, those who only went to church on those two days.

Good Friday masses recounted the entire passion of the Lord, from his wrongful imprisonment and trial, to his heartbreaking crucifixion and death on the cross. Just as the washing of the feet was later added to the repertoire of the Holy Thursday mass, so was there this black wooden cross that would be passed over the congregation moshpit-style like that would be so emotional and again, symbolic, that it would always bring tears to my eyes as soon as my fingers touched or even grazed it.

In hindsight, I think it was so emotional because when attending such huge Catholic churches that I was so used to, you tend to feel disconnected in some way. You're one of hundreds and the symbol and representation of Christ is all the way up at the altar. But when the wooden cross is passed along to the entire congregation, it was our way of getting close to him...to touch a part of him.

Perhaps that is why when I became a born-again Christian, I felt so connected to God in such a way that I've never felt before. I immediately felt God all around me, not just on Sundays during mass, but inside of me.

On those rare times that I did not attend a Good Friday mass, I was taught that as a young person, I was not allowed to have any fun. This meant that on Friday between the times of 12pm-3pm, any activity that I chose to do had to be low-key such as reading, coloring, or even sleeping. The theory behind that is because those were the times that Jesus was supposedly hanging and dying on the cross. Because of the trials that He was experiencing, we had to, in turn, show our respect by sharing in his agony...so to speak. This had been what I was taught growing up and it is the same thing I had impressed upon the students in my catechism class later on.

Since I became a born-again Christian, I have not attended any masses during Holy Week. In the Christian churches that I attended, they did not have any special services. It was definitely different than what I was used to.

When Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" came out in the movie theaters, my husband and I actually didn't rush to the theaters right away like we are so accustomed to doing. Instead, we waited until Holy Week to watch it....it was the Saturday before Easter Sunday in fact when we finally did. I remember the theather being packed and all you could hear was sobbing and sniffling the entire time.

I don't know exactly what I was expecting. I've always known the Passion story, but being the visual person that I am, seeing a mild realistic interpretation of what Jesus went through was simply too much to handle. All of the crucifixes and the stations of the crosses that I've seen depict Jesus with a crown of thorns, but in the movie version, it's so much more gruesome that you almost feel the thorns being pounded into the skull and taste the blood running down his head and all over his face. The same with the whipping and the scourging. I almost couldn't stomach to see actual pieces of flesh being torn away from Christ's body and again, what we saw in the movie was a mild version of what the real thing must've been like. Just thinking about it now brings tears to my eyes and an ache in my heart...especially when I know that He did all of that for me.

With it being Good Friday today, there were no masses for me to attend, nor was there "The Passion of the Christ" to watch. And even so, I'm not sure I could ever watch that movie again. It's not that I don't want to be reminded of what happened. How could I ever forget that ultimate sacrifice that was made? Instead, I watched "The Chronicles of Narnia: the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe." Forget the fact that I was never aware of its Christian parallels while I was growing up, I know now. And to see the Christ-figure Aslan give up His life as the ultimate sacrifice to save the life of others brings tears to my eyes every single time.

Though it seems that I have changed my religion, the only thing I have changed is my relationship. I don't know if it still rings true about the whole 12pm-3pm timeline, but there was a certain laziness about the day as if my internal clock or being or whatever you want to call it knew what this day was all about. Even though I do not attend certain masses like I did once before, I still take to heart what transpired on Christ's last days here on Earth.