Venite Prandete

  HOLY SATURDAY 3rd APRIL Father Weiser’s tells us of the history, customs and liturgy of Holy Saturday: “The original observance of Holy Saturday commemorated Christ’s rest in the tomb. In the early Church there was no service at all during the daylight hours, since the body of the Lord enclosed in the sepulchre shared the fate and humiliations of the human burial. Just as Christ rested in the grave for the whole Sabbath, so the faithful waited in prayer until the evening star announced the beginning of the Easter Vigil. In ancient days a strict fast called ‘the Passion Fast’ was kept until the morning of Easter Sunday; not even children were dispensed from observing it. The Holy Saturday Vigil was restored by Pope Pius XII to night time, leading directly into Easter Sunday. In the early centuries, the catechumens would assemble in the church during the afternoon, the men on one side, the women on the other. After an instruction by the bishop, the priests performed those rites whi...

  HOLY THURSDAY - THE NEW PASSOVER Fra Angelico, "Communion of the Apostles", (1440-1441). Holy Thursday is the celebration of the Last Supper and the institution of the priesthood. It is the presence of all of us at the new Passover instituted by Christ which was united by His suffering on the Cross so as to be a sacrifice for the expiation of our sins. Christ spoke of giving us His flesh to eat: It was a ‘hard saying’ that many of His disciples refused to countenance. Many left Him and refused to follow Him because of it. What was the flesh of Christ? And why this particular means of expiating our sins? This post is taken from Dr Brandt Pitre, “Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist – Unlocking the Secrets of the Last Supper” (1). “The first covenant between God and His chosen people took place when the 12 tribes of Israel arrived at the foot of Mount Sinai during the Exodus from Egypt,.. the primary objective of which was so that the Israelites could freely worship Go...

  GOOD FRIDAY HOT CROSS BUNS Hot cross buns were first made by Brother Thomas Rodcliffe, a 14th century monk at St Alban’s Abbey who, in 1361, developed the recipe, originally called the ‘Alban bun’ and distributed them to the poor on Good Friday. [That story explains the eating of sweet buns on Good Friday, in case you, like me, never made sense of it. It doesn’t explain, however, why Baker’s Delight sell Hot Cross Buns from Christmas and all through Lent]. The Benedictine monastery of St Albans was dedicated to England’s first saint who was martyred by the Romans. The monastery was originally endowed in 793 AD, the first Abbot appropriately named Wiligod, and by 1163, it was recognised as England’s premier abbey. It did not, of course, survive the reformation -the monastery and all the monastic buildings were destroyed, the offices sequestered, the gold and silver plate seized and the monks banished. The town purchased the monastery church as a parish church (C of E) and the Lady...

  PALM SUNDAY PROCESSION AND ST MATTHEW’S PASSION 28th MARCH Today is a great and holy day, as the liturgy starts with celebrating Christ’s entry into Jerusalem, beginning with the blessing of palms, then a procession carrying the palms – starting with St Matthew's Gospel (Matthew 21.1-9), where Jesus entered into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, reflecting His humility in accordance with the prophesies: “Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying: Tell ye the daughter of Sion: Behold thy King cometh to thee, meek and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of her that is used to the yoke.” In the traditional rite, when the procession leaves the church, the door is closed. The church represents Christ. Benedict XVI described it in a homily for Palm Sunday in 2007 thus: “In the old liturgy for Palm Sunday, the priest, arriving in front of the church, would knock loudly with the shaft of the processional cross on the door that was stil...