Great Friday-Vespers with Procession & the Guarding of the Grave

On Great Friday evening we have a vespers service that is very similar to a funeral service. At this point, Christ has already died. We take on the role of Joseph of Arimathea and the women who were with him.

During the service Fr Tom takes the

plaschanitza, or burial shroud from the altar and a procession, led by the altar servers and deacons, begins. The lights are all turned off in church and the faithful are given candles to carry. Normally, we will process outside around the church. This year, however, it was very windy and chilly so Fr. Tom decided to stay inside. When I first heard Fr. Tom say this I was really disappointed but, then, I got over it. The atmosphere inside of the church was almost eerie. I was so moved that I felt it would inappropriate to take pictures. The one above is from last year. Just picture this: You are in a darkened church, there is incense filling the air around you, giving the church a smoky, foggy feel, the funeral procession is winding its way through the crowd of people gathered in the church. We have a large area in church where people can stand instead of sitting and they part, like the Red Sea as Fr. Tom carries the body of Christ to his tomb. All this time, the cantor is leading the congregation in singing a hymn :"The noble Joseph, took down from the cross Your most pure body. Anointing it with spices, he wrapped it in pure linen and laid it in burial in a new tomb." We sing this over and over again until the procession ends and Fr. Tom places the shroud on the tomb.

At this point, the priest usually gives a homily. On Great Friday this year, Fr. Tom's cousin, Fr. Joe Loya (a Byzantine priest who teaches at Villanova) gives the homily. He told a story about a young rabbi's son who would always go into the forest to pray. Everyday, he would go deeper and deeper in the forest until, one day, his father loses sight of him. He calls out to the boy and, when he finds him, he chastises him and asks him why he has to go so far into the forest to pray. The boy says that he experiences God differently there. The rabbi calls him a fool, "don't you know that God is the same everywhere?" he asks. "Yes Father, I know God is the same everywhere, but I am different when I am there. I experience God in ways I don't experience him anywhere else."

Those words struck me so much because that is exactly how I feel every year when I come home to church for Holy Week. I could stay at school. I could be anywhere else, but I don't think I could ever get the same experience anywhere else. Fr. Tom and I were talking one day while taping the radio show and he even told me that he had been to the Holy Land during Great Week and still did not experience Christ's Passion the way he does when he is at home at our parish.

Once the homily is over, the faithful, come up to venerate the shroud, shuffling up there on our knees. We kiss the wounds of Christ while the cantor sings a couple of songs. One song is "Having suffered the passion for us, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy, have mercy, have mercy on us." He also sang "Now do I go to the cross. No where else, shall I find you, Jesus Lord,Peace of my soul. There shall I find, the Mother of God, sorrow and pain, piercing her heart. Sorrow now is all I feel."