Holy Week and Easter celebrations during lockdown
No access to our usual places of worship, no gathering with our Parish Community, no direct contact with our Parish Priest, except through virtual links. How were we to celebrate this most holy season of Holy Week and Easter?
Here at Howe Close we were blessed with being a group of eight people so could devise liturgies, based on the patterns of those in the Missal and exercising our imaginations and creativity to reflect more deeply on the mystery of the fundamental priesthood of all the baptised.
We were aware that we would be without what we had been accustomed to, the leadership of our priest, the music group the traditional way of celebrating the various days. However, we saw this as a wonderful opportunity to explore in some depth what we mean by the presence of Christ in Bread and Wine as we gathered for our various meals, being constrained by outside circumstances, over which we had no power to change, just as Jesus could not escape from his fate once he had fallen into the hands of his enemies; our waiting in hope during Holy Saturday just as we wait in hope for the ending of the lockdown and the emergence eventually of the new world which will inevitably be evident.
We used not only our dedicated Prayer space for our liturgies, but certain outside locations in the garden, as we did on Good Friday afternoon and very early on Easter Sunday morning, just as the sun rose to celebrate our Easter Vigil, followed by a hearty breakfast to enjoy the reality that ’The Lord has truly risen alleluia!’