So in a effort to keep you in the know on various religions, I want to talk about my faith and one of our holiest of holy weeks, in fact we call it Holy Week and this year ir starts on March 24th and ends on March 31st this year. Why do I say this year. Well like Ramadan, Easter does travel through our secular calendar.
The reason is that it follows the lunar calendar. Holy Week ends with Easter Sunday and Easter Sunday is traditionally the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox. Now in twist due to the adoption of calendars, one of the major Christian denominations, Eastern Orthodox, actually will start their Holy Week as the others end it with Easter. So Holy Week is preceded by Lent. This is for many Christians a time of preparation. Lent is 40 days, not counting the Sundays before Easter. It starts with Ash Wednesday, where people make a commitment often to some kind of spiritual discipline for the whole of Lent. Most Catholics for instance don’t eat Meat on the Fridays of Lent, hence a whole bunch of parishes with fish fries. Now I can tell you I am lawyer, married to a pastor, who got about six years of good Catholic education to, so I know the Lent Loophole. You can take a break from your Lenten practices on the Sundays of Lent. By the way, if you don’t know, Mardis Gras or Fat Tuesday is the day before Ash Wednesday, hence the one last party before the preparations for Lent. On Sunday March 24th, Holy Week began with Palm Sunday. In the biblical story, Jesus who was known as a teacher to most, is at the peak of his popularity during his life. People were very much starting to follow his teachers in larger numbers, with growing enthusiasm. And when he went to Jerusalem, he was greeted by cheering crowds waiving palm fronds aka leaves. Some of those palms will be kept by the church if they can, as they are burned next year to make the ashes for Ash Wednesday. Now in the biblical story, this didn’t do good things for Jesus health and safety. The religious and civilian leaders of the area were none to happy with his popularity and growing claims he was the Son of God, a promised savior or messiah, so they began scheming to end his threat. On Thursday we celebrate Maundy Thursday or Holy Thursday. Jesus was Jewish, and he and his followers celebrated the Jewish holiday of Passover with a large meal. At the end of the meal, knowing his time was about up, he gathered them and created a ritual now called communion. A ritual where believers share bread and wine in memory of Jesus life and later sacrifice. This was the last meal for Jesus with his followers, hence the name the Last Supper. That night, in the middle of the night, aided by one of Jesus’ inner circle or disciples Judas, the authorities arrested Jesus. There is a great story of Jesus telling one of his followers to put away a sword they had used to try to defend him and even performing a miraculous healing of one of the people there to arrest him that had been injured. By Friday morning, Jesus had been paraded back and forth to the secular and religious leaders, found guilty of crimes, mocked and tortured the whole time. He was then force to carry the instrument of his death, a wooded cross of crucifix to the place of his execution. Crucifixion was a form of execution in the Roman Empire and it was not pretty. You get nailed by your wrists, not hands as in most depictions and feet to the large wooden cross and left to die there, slowly, due to blood loss and other causes. And by later in the day, Jesus had died. His body was placed in tomb, but wasn’t fully prepared as Sunset began the Sabbath and per the strict adherence of the Jewish faith, work was not to be done. So the body was there Friday night and Saturday Night. On Sunday morning, a group of women in his inner circle went to the tomb to finish the proper burial rituals of their faith. Per our faith, when the women arrived the large stone closing the tomb off had been moved, and the body of Jesus was gone. The women saw someone and asked where the body had been moved, not realizing they were talking to Jesus who had risen or resurrected from the dead, on the third day, as the Jewish scriptures said would be the case. In the past Easter has been used as a time to bring new followers into the faith. It is usually a time of great celebrations with large displays of flowers at churches, large family meals, people dressed up in new spring clothing, etc. So, for my brothers and sisters in the Christian faith, I wish you all a blessed and meaningful Holy Week as travel from the joy of Palm Sunday, to the reverence of the Last Supper and pain and sacrifice of Good Friday to the Resurrection, both for those of us who start the journey this coming Sunday or the Sunday after.
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