Holy Week Notes

THE HOLY WEEK BOOK

Prepared for The Church of St Columba and All Hallows, East York, Toronto

by the Revd Dr William Craig, Priest-in-Charge

A GENERAL INTRODUCTION

From ancient times Christians have observed the last week of Lent with special solemnity and called it the Great Week and the Holy Week. As early as the days of St. John Chrysostom (died 407), Christians generally ceased their daily business; they fasted with greater strictness than in the other weeks of Lent, and engaged in special acts of mercy and charity. From a litle before Chrysostom’s time we have the detailed account of the services that were carried out at Jerusalem recorded by a Spanish pilgrim named Egeria or Aetheria. She refers to Holy Week as the “the week of the Pasch, which they call here the ‘Great Week’”.

From the Blessing and Procession of Palms to the Great Paschal Vigil of Holy Saturday Night, the purpose of the liturgies of Holy Week is that “we may enter with joy into the celebration of those mighty acts whereby God give us life and immortality” [BAS. P. 297]. Our modern liturgies are an adaptation of the rich heritage of rites and practices that have served the Church since about the fourth century, when the keeping of Holy Week began.

Of central importance of course are the Three Holy Days (the Triduum): Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday night. In the liturgies of these days the whole of Christ’s saving work is commemorated; together they are the celebration of Easter. Further comments on those days will be made available in the next while; now we have a more pressing question. How are we to keep Holy Week today?

It is hardly a practical suggestion for many of our people that they ‘cease their daily business’. It may well be that to attend the liturgies of Palm Sunday and the Triduum is all that can be managed. Perhaps, though, these suggestions can be of help. Though you cannot ‘cease your daily business’, perhaps you can cease regular amusements and entertainments for this one week and devote the time to prayer and bible reading in preparation for Easter. In the Calendar at the end of these notes the psalms and readings in the Daily Office Lectionary for Holy Week may be found.

As you will see in these notes and those for the rest of the week, there is a large amount of Scripture to be read; and if those who make an effort to read and study all the passages will not find it hard to fill up the time in Holy Week.

As far as possible keep this as a quiet week. If you can, attend a celebration of the Eucharist on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. There are daily celebrations at St James’ Cathedral at 7:30 am and 12.30 noon; many other churches have daily celebrations in Holy Week. (It would be a great help if the diocese were to publish a schedule of Holy Week Services throughout the city!) It may be too late now, but plan ahead, so that Holy Weekl does not come as a surprise The relevant dates in 2012 will be : Ash Wednesday: February 21st ; Palm Sunday: April 1st ; Good Friday: April 6th ; Easter Day: April 8th

PART I: PALM SUNDAY OF THE PASSION

This Sunday has had many names, but throughout history its most common name is the one which is most familiar to us, Palm Sunday. It is called Dominica in ramis palmarum [Sunday of the Palm branches] in the Sacramentary of St. Gregory, and Dominica in ramis olivarum [Sunday of Olive branches] in that of St. Ambrose. In the former there is a plain reference to the ceremony of branch-bearing as one then in use: "May Almighty God grant unto you, that as ye present yourselves before Him with branches of palms and of other trees, so after your departure from this life ye may attain to appear before Him with the fruit of good works and the palm of victory." The Ambrosian rite does not so clearly refer to a liturgical use of branches , but Chrysostom mentions the shaking of the palm-branches as one of the customs of the day in one of his sermons for the Great Week. In the fourth century it was known Indulgence Sunday, as we know from the Lectionary of St. Jerome, and by many other later writers. This name has several explanations: some say it comes from a custom of the Christian Emperors of setting prisoners free and closing the law courts during Holy Week, other that it is connected with the reconciliation of penitents. Another name is Capitiluvium, which means head-washing, from a rite of washing the heads of the candidates for Baptism at Easter. In Jerusalem, according to Egeria’s letter, the commemoration of Christ's triumphal entry into the city took place in the the same afternoon. Great crowds, including even children too young to walk, assembled on the Mount of Olives and after suitable hymns, and antiphons, and readings, they returned in procession to Jerusalem, escorting the bishop, and bearing palms and branches of olives before him. In the new Lectionary, this Sunday is known as the Sunday of the Passion, a name formerly given to the Fifth Sunday in Lent. This change was made to reflect the fact that one of the three Synoptic accounts of the Passion of our Lord is read on this Sunday. The word ‘Passion’ has several meanings, all of which are derived from its root sense of ‘suffer’. The Passion of the Lord Jesus describes the account of his sufferings and death.

The Readings

The sheer amount of Scripture that is read and sung this Sunday and throughout Holy Week challenges both the preacher and the people to careful reading, study, and reflection before and after attending the liturgies. In Church, it is best to listen and sing, not so much thinking about the words as thinking them, concentrating on them, and receiving them into the depths of our being. With this end in mind, here are some comments (I fear they are too scanty to be of any real use) on the readings for Palm Sunday. I cannot stress strongly enough the importance of using all the resources one can in studying the Bible. “Commentaries: Revised Common Lectionary” is an excellent resource put online by the Diocese of Montreal. See http://montreal.anglican.org/comments/apasnm.shtml. Another handy resource is a study Bible such as the New Oxford Annotated Bible.

THE LITURGY OF THE PALMS

Since this liturgy commemorates the entry of Jesus into Jersualem, in its fullest form it is not merely a blessing and distribution of Palms, but a procession from some place apart which enters into the church. It begins with the Anthem Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord and the respose Hosanna in the Highest, which was the acclamation of the crowd that accompanied Jesus as he rode into the City. Then the Priest greets the people with a brief Introduction to both the day itself and the Great Week which it begins, to the journey “from the glory of the palms to the glory of the resurrection by the dark way of suffering and death”. A collect follows asking God that we may enter into the celebration. This is followed by

The Gospel of the Palms

The Lord’s entry into Jerusalem is recorded in all four Gospels with minor differences in detail (only John’s gospel specifies that the branches were of palm trees). This year (Year A) we read the account from the Gospel according to Saint Matthew (21.1-11). We are tempted to think of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem as joyous beginning to events that went tragically wrong. But as the introduction to the rite in the Roman Catholic liturgy puts it, “Christ entered in triumph into his own city, to complete his work as Messiah: to suffer, to die, and to rise again”. In this work the notes of suffering, death, and resurrection are one, and cannot be separated. As we enter with joy into this act we see that it was in triumph that he set his face set like a flint and went to his self-offering, and death. Outside of this and without it, the glory of the palms would only be a parade. It may seem odd that Jesus is described as sitting on the donkey and the colt (verse 7). The Evangelist has apparently misunderstood Zechariah 9.9, in which one animal is described as “a donkey and a colt the foal of a donkey.” This form of speech, called parallelism, is very common in the Hebrew scriptures. The passage appointed ends with the inhabitants of Jerusalem asking who it is that rides by, and the crowd with Jesus replying, This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth. Then it goes on to tell of his cleansing of the temple and his healing blind and lame who were there. It tells us, too, that children in the temple took up the cry of Hosanna (21.15), at which the priests took offence. It is because of this reference that the hymn All glory, laud, and honour says “to whom the lips of children made sweet Hosannas ring”. After the Gospel is The Blessing of the Palms and The Procession. At a suitable place a Station is made: the Procession stops and the priest sings or says the Collect on page 299.

THE LITURGY OF THE PASSION

When all have arrived at their places, the celebration of the Holy Eucharist begins with the Collect of the Day and proceeds as usual, except for the reading of the Passion Gospel at which the usual acclamations are omitted. The Creed and Confession and Absolution may be omitted at the liturgy. The First Reading: Isaiah [50.4-9a]: Isaiah prophesied In Judah and Jerusalem between 742 and 687 BC, at the time when the northern Kingdom, Israel, had fallen to Assyria and Judah continued in uneasy “freedom”. Many scholars conclude from differences between chapters 1-39 and 40-66 that the latter part should be attributed to one or more other authors (“Second” and possibly “Third Isaiah”), who wrote at the time of the Return from Exile (ca. 538 BC). A significant feature of Second Isaiah are four passages referred to as the Songs of the Servant of the Lord. This reading is the Third Song of the Servant. It is not clear whether the prophet intended the figure of the Servant to be Israel as a collective person; a king of the past; or a coming individual Servant. (Note Acts 8.34, where the Ethiopian eunuch asks of one passage whether the prophet “says this about himself or about someone else”). In any case the Christian community very early applied these hymns to Jesus – indeed he seems to have seen them as applying to his vocation as the servant (slave) who frees all people. In Holy Week they are used as a commentary on the passion narrative. The first of the four songs [42.1-7] describes God's selection of the Servant who will bring justice to earth. The second song [49.1-6], written from the Servant's point of view, is an account of having been called by God to lead the nations; The third song is darker than the others, with a first-person description of beating and abuse of the Servant. The fourth song [52.13-53.12] declares that the Servant intercedes for others, taking the punishments and afflictions of others. In the end, he is rewarded with an exalted position. It is the first reading for Good Friday. In the third Servant Song, although those to whom God has sent his Servant have rejected him and abused him, the Servant is confident that God is with him. He can set his face like flint [v. 7], and know that he will not be put to shame. We see the like confidence in Jesus as he goes before the Council and before Pilate, as he is mocked and scourged. Setting one’s face is an image common in the writings of the prophets (see Isaiah 48:4, “... I know that you are obstinate, and your neck is an iron sinew and your forehead brass”; Ezekiel 3:8-9: “I have made your face hard against their faces, and your forehead hard against their foreheads. Like the hardest stone, harder than flint, I have made your forehead”; also Luke 9:51 “When the days drew near for him [Jesus] to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem”); it is all the more effective here in describing a face covered with spittle. [NJBC] The song ends with a statement of unshakeable confidence in te Lord as vindicator against any accusation. Psalm [31.9-16] One of the categories of Psalms scholars identify as “lament”, by which is meant not a song of mourning but “a song in which an individual seeks deliverance from illness or false accusation, or the nation asks for help in time of distress” [New Oxford Annotated Bible, p. 656] Today we use the psalmist’s cry for deliverance from his personal enemies and the his final expression of confidence in God as a reflection on the first reading, which is in itself a companion to and reflection on the Passion narrative. Compare verse 13, “For I have heard the whispering of the crowd; fear is all around; they put their heads together against me; they plot to take my life,” with Jeremiah 20:10. The prophet has prophesied the people’s doom as the Lord commanded, and says: “I hear many whispering: ‘Terror is all around! Denounce him! Let us denounce him!’ All my close friends are watching for me to stumble. ‘Perhaps he can be enticed, and we can prevail against him, and take our revenge on him’”. The enmity of personal friends is an important theme in Holy Week (see the opening of the Passion Gospel). A Reading from Paul’s Letter to the Philippians [2.5-11]: In this passage St Paul quotes an early Christian hymn (to which he has added v. 8b), which beautifully describes our Lord’s self-giving, even to the utterly humiliating death on the Cross. Other fragments of early Christian hymns on the subject of Christ’s work may be found at Philippians1:15-20; Ephesians 2:14-16; 1 Timothy 3:16; 1 Peter 3:18-19, 22; and Hebrews 1:3. In Philippians 2.1-4, Paul had urged the Philippians, to at one, “of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord ...”. Now he explains that this one mind is not his own clever idea: it is the mind of Christ, which we begin to share and display when we replacing self-interest with concern for others. We tend to interpret the words “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow” as referring to the name “Jesus”. While showing reverence at the holy Name is good, that is not what St Paul means here. The “name that is above every name” which God has given Jesus in his exaltation is “Lord”, in Greek Kyrios, which is used in the Old Testament to translate the (unpronounceable) name of God. He means that God has given the Risen Christ the authority which, in the Old Testament, he reserved for himself. (See Isaiah 45:22-25.)

The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ.

In Year A we read the account of the Passion according to St Matthew. Many Notes can be found at the RCL Site. This year we are adding an Outline of the Passion to our notes:

I. Jesus is betrayed by Judas: 26.14-16. Parallels: Mk 14.10s; Lk 22.3-6; Jn 18.2-5

II. Two disciples are sent to prepare for the Passover: 26.17-19. Parallels: Mk 14.12-16; Lk. 22.7-13

III. The Last Supper: Jesus indicates his Bretrayer 26.20-29. Parallels: Mk 14.17-25; Lk 22.14-23; 20-25: Jn 13.21-20

IV. The Institution of the Lord's Supper: 26.26-29. Parallels: Mk 14.22-25; Lk 22.15-20; also 1 Cor 10.16; 11.23 26

V. Iesus goes out to the Mount of Olives with his disciples; he predicts Peter’s denial: 26.30-35. Parallels: Mk 14:26-31 Lk 22:39; 22:31-34 Jn 18:1; 13:36-38; 16:32

VI. Jesus prays in Gethemane: 26:36-46. Parallels: Mk 14:32-42; Lk 22:40-46; Jn 18:1; 12:27; 14:31; 18:11

VII. Jesus is arrested: 26: 47-56. Parallels: Mk 14.43-50; Lk 22.47-53; Jn 18.3-12

VIII: He is questioned by the High Priest and Council: 26: 57-68. Parallels: Mk 14,53-65; Lk 22.54f, 66-71; Jk 18.12-24

IX. Peter denies Jesus: 26:69-75. Parallels: Mk 14.66-72; Lk 22.56-62; Jn 18.15-18; 25-27

X. Iesus is brought before Pilato: 27.1-2. Parallels: Mc 15.1; L.23.1; J.18.28

XI. Judas repents and kills himself 27.3-10 [see Acts 1.16 20].

XII. At the tribunal of Pilate: 27.11-31. Parallels: Mc 15.2-15; L 23.2-5, 13-25; Jo 18.29-19.1

15-18: The people ask for Barabas. 19: Pilate’s Wife . 20-23: The people still demand Barabbas. and that Jesus be crucified. 24-26: Pilate washes his hands and delivers Jesus, flogged, to be crucified. 27-31: The Soldiers mock Jesus and lead him away to be crucified. ParallelL Jn 19.1-3.

XIII. The Crucifixion of Jesus: 27.32-44. Parallels: Mk 15:21-32; Lk 23:26-43; Jn 19:17-24

XIV. The Death of Jesus: 27. 45-50. Parallels to 45-61: Mk 15:33-47; Lk 23:44-56;n Jn 19:25-42

XV. The Reaction: 27: 51-56

51-53: Earthquake; the Temple veil rent; bodies of the saints rise. 54: The Centurion. 55-56: The women at the Cross

XVI. The Burial of Jesus: 27.57-61

XVII. The Tomb is sealed and placed under guard: 27.62-66.

It is an old custom that the acclamations before and after the Gospel are omitted in the readings of the Passion.

Lectionary Notes

Some Notes on The Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year B

Passion Sunday and Passiontide

In the Book of Common Prayer this Sunday is entitled: “The Fifth Sunday in Lent Commonly Called Passion Sunday. The old Latin name was Dominica in Passione Domini.

The name of Passion Sunday has been given to the second Sunday before Good Friday froom time immemorial, because on that day the Lord began to make open predictions of His coming sufferings. Those sufferings also begin now to be commemorated in the Scriptures for the season. J. H Blunt, Annotated Book of Common Prayer, New edition, (Longmans, Green & Co., 1892)

This Sunday was also known as Judica, from the use of Psalm 43, Judica me, Deus. as the Introit. This is the Introit appointed in the Prayer Book. Other names for this Sunday that were used for dating documents in the old times were Isti sunt dies and Dominica mediana; I hav enot yet discovered why these names were used.
In the revised liturgy, the name Passion Sunday has been appropriated to the Sunday Next Before Easter, now known by the rather cumbersome title “Sunday of the Passion with the Liturgy of the Palms”. Nonetheless the readings to some extent continue to point more clearly towards the Passion. For a brief note on the Roman usage, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passion_Sunday.
Blunt notes that at “the last attempt to alter the Prayer Book in 1688”[1] a new Collect was proposed for this Sunday. He gives the text of the proposed Collect, which despite the rather prolix style of the time might be of interest:

O Almighty God, Who hast sent thy Son Jesus Christ to be an High Priest of good things to come, and by His own Blood to enter in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us; mercifully look upon Thy people, that by the same Blood of our Saviour, Who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot unto Thee, our consciences may be purged from dead works, to serve Thee, the living God, that we may receive the promise of eternal inheritance, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

It is the custom in some places to veil pictures, crosses, and statues at this time; in the Prayer Book rite, red may be used instead of violet from Passion Sunday. In The Ritual Reason Why Charles Walker explains this custom thus:

Veiling or covering is a sign of mourning (Isa 25.7); and in some parts of the church the crosses and pictures were accordngly veiled throughout Lent. The spirit of the Passion-tide veiling seems to be, that the Church would draw off our attention from everything except Him whose suffering she is commemorating, bidding us “consider Him that endured such contradiction of sinners.” It was also synbolical of the hiding of our Lord’s glory during his earthly life, and especially during His ignominious and bitter Passion.

In that that last point the symbolism might appear to jar with the note in today’s Gospel of the lifting up of the Lord as his glorification, “the great Johannine apprehension that the Passion is the divine Glory” (Temple). In the mystery of the Cross both glory and humility are found together and operate together, and it is a mistake to lose sight of one or the other. As with the most important doctrines (such as unity in Trinity, the union of divine and human nature in the one Christ) we are called to hold what appear to be opposites together, grasping as it were with both hands, lest we lose hold of either and fall into error. On this general principle See Eric Mascall, Via Media.

The Readings

Jeremiah 31.31-34
Jeremiah was either born or began his ministry in 627 BC; it continued until sometime after 580, probably in Egypt. He was descended from the priest Abiathar, whom Solomon had banished to Anathoth (1 Kg 2.26-27); In Jeremiah’s time, Babylon succeeded Assyria as the dominant power in the Middle East. Jeremiah witnessed the return to worship of the Lord (instituted by the Judean king Josiah), and then (after Josiah's death in battle in 609), the return of many of the people to paganism. At the fall of Jerusalem in 587, Jeremiah emigrated to Egypt.
This prophecy was written after the fall of Jerusalem. It follows the prophecy in which Jeremiah rejected the belief that descendents were punished for the sins of the ancestors (the proverb, “The father’s have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge” 31.29) and declared: “everyone shall die for his own sin; each man who eats sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge” (31.30)
Jeremiah opposes an increasingly limited concept of the Sinai covenant and affirms that YHWH will cut a new covenant inscirbed on the hearts of the people. “To cut” a covenant is the oldest expression for covenant making. See 17.1, 32.38-40; Ezekiel 11.19, Hos 2.20. (I think this note is from NOAB, and apologize if I stole it from someone else.)

The Psalm
There is a choice of Psalms today. Psalm 51 is the Miserere, the greatest of penitential Psalms. (It might be good to listen to the splendid setting by Allegri in preparation for Sunday.) The superscription, which is not in the liturgical psalter says that it is a Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba. It was recitred on Ash Wednesday and is repeated again at Matins of Holy Monday, and in the traditional service of Tenebrae. Used today, it is linked to the first reading by the verse Cor mundum crea in me, Deus, et spiritum firmum innova in visceribus meis, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me”. The mediaeval rabbinic commentator Rashi added to “Create for me a pure heart, O God” the words “so that I do not stumble again.”
The other choice is 119.9-16, which may also be understood as a prayer for a new heart.

The Epistle

Hebrews 5.5-10 speaks of the suffering of Christ, the Son of God and the true Priest. On Melchizedek, and indeed for an expansion of the meaning of this passage, see Hebrews 7.1-22: 7.22 ties the whole complex of ideas back to the reading from Jeremiah: “accordingly Jesus has also become the guarantee of a better covenant;” a better, and hence a new one.
This reading also recalls the Lord’s agony in verse 7, “he offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.” The NOAB comments that his prayer was heard in the sense that he learned obedience by submitting to the divine will, which involved death.

The Gospel, John 12.20-33.
The fourth Gospel does not recount the agony in the Garden, going straight to the betrayal and arrest (John 18.1-3). However, verses 27 and 28 of today’s passage incorporate the essence of Jesus’ prayer in the Garden). “Here we find the substance of the prayer then offered, though at a less pitch of tension, as befits the moment. What took place in the Garden was not an isolated crisis; it was the focus of a lifelong temptation and of a lifelong ictory over temptation.” [William Temple]
This, then is the hour for which we have been waiting since the sign at Cana (John 2.4: my hour has not yet come). As at the Agony in the Garden, Jesus fully accepts the Father’s will and offers himself to be lifted up for the life of the world. Therefore, in this hour is the judgement of the world and the casting out of its prince. Though it will seem to be the triumph of the world —of Caiaphas and the priests, of Pilate and his master of Rome, of the fickle crowd thirsting maybe for little more than excitement— all these are judged and condemned by the one condemned to the Cross. Indeed, recalling that the Greek for judgement is κρίσις (krisis), we realize that this is the Crisis of the world, the hour of choice to which all who look on the uplifted Son of man are called and in which the healing of the world is offered (see John 3.14-15)
We need to note that in verse 25 the word “life” is used for two different words in the original, and that the distinction which is missed is important for understanding verse 27.

25 Those who love their life [psychē] lose it, and those who hate their life [psychē] in this world will keep it for eternal life [zōē].
27 Now my soul [psychē] is troubled. And what should I say, 'Father, save me from this hour'? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.

Archbishop Temple’s comments on these verses are helpful: "There are two Greek words here, and we have to use ‘life’ for both. The ‘life’ which we must not love, the life in this world, is the animal life with all that goes with it of sentience and its pleasures. The other word, used in the phrase Life eternal, is the vitalizing enrergy itself." And a little further on, “Life comes through death, but it is real death, and the soul shrinks from it. In Greek the word for soul is that which is translated ‘life’ in life in this world. His whole human nature, His natural humanity shrank from what lay before Him."
Finally we return to the beginning of the passage. The coming of Jesus’ hour is marked by the request of “some Greeks” to see Jesus, that is, to meet him and speak with him. This passage follows immediately the account of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem (John 12.12-19), which ends with the Pharisees’ observation, “You see that you can do nothing; look, the world has gone after him.” It has been suggested that the Evangelist mentions the Greeks as a confirmation of these words.
It is sometimes said that the request of the Greeks that opens this passage should be written on every pulpit so that that preachers may see them and be reminded of their task: “Sir, we would see Jesus.” Perhaps it should be memorized by all Christians so we may always be prepared to represent him to the world.

That is all the time I have this week. Please note, it is likely that rather than producing new notes for Palm Sunday and Holy Week I will simply refer you to the archived postings from last year, since the readings are for the most part the same in all three years..





[1] This date may suggest, at least in part, why the liturgical revisions of recent years were overdue.