Ritualism in the Holy Week Liturgies of the Early Church

In the previous article, I mentioned how ritual has not always been uncontroversial in Anglicanism; but here I want to point out that it has always been a part of the wider Christian tradition. Jesus Christ, on Maundy Thursday, instituted as the means of his remembrance a ritual meal as well as the Christian priesthood, when he told his Apostles, “Do this in remembrance of me.”

From the literature of the early Church, we know, more or less, how the early Christians celebrated the Paschal Mystery of Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection; and we have a woman named Egeria to thank for this. She went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land between 381 and 384 AD and wrote extensively about the ceremonial used by the Christians of Jerusalem; and there is much that remains unchanged to this day.

For instance, Egeria says that on Palm Sunday, the bishop would lead the people in procession, the children carrying palms. So the Palm Sunday procession is at least sixteen-and-a-half centuries old. On Maundy Thursday, the Christians kept vigil, with “over two hundred church candles,” and prayer lasting all night, with the description “not a soul withdraws from the vigils until morning.” (We will keep vigil with our Lord after the Maundy Thursday service.) On Good Friday, a wooden cross is displayed and venerated by a kiss (just as we will do here).

I bring these things up to say that this Holy Week, we will be uniting our prayers not only with each other and other Christians today, but also with the saints who have gone before us.

We use ceremonial in our worship, not only because it is helpful in impressing on our hearts the emotional content of what we read, but also because it is an especially Christian thing to do, going back to the beginning.

There may be a lot that’s new to you this Holy Week, but I encourage you to approach it with emotional openness and a posture of curiosity. If things feel awkward because there’s a song you don’t know, or because you’ve never seen anyone venerate the Cross before, or because you’ve never sat before the Blessed Sacrament in adoration, just try to be open and see if the Lord might show up there for you in the lyrics or in the spaces of silence.

Holy Week is not very seeker-friendly, because it’s very somber and highly symbolic. But it is in this place of walking through, in real time, Jesus’s last week on this side of his Resurrection, that you may find some real closeness with him through his suffering. But this requires periods of silence. This requires that we actually sit with the reality of our sins and the pain that they caused our Lord to suffer for their remission. This is the time. For as many as will walk with him through his suffering, so many will experience the joy which accompanies his Resurrection on Easter. “Heaviness may endure for a night: but joy cometh in the morning.” We must prepare ourselves for joy by first taking on his heaviness; and that is what we will endeavor to do through these services.