Observing the Culmination of Lent and Celebrating Easter At EHS, because of the Good Friday and Easter Monday holidays as well as our weekday schedule, we miss some of the most moving liturgical observations of Holy Week and Easter. You and your families don’t have to miss them, however! The following material is information we hope will enrich your observance of the Paschal Triduum (“three days” from the evening of Maundy Thursday to the evening of Easter Sunday). • • • • •
Maundy Thursday and how it’s observed - p. 1 Good Friday and how it’s observed - p. 2 Holy Saturday and how it’s observed - p. 2 Easter Sunday and how it’s observed - p. 3 Worship service times observing the Paschal Triduum at a few Episcopal churches in town - p. 3-4
Maundy Thursday: On Wednesday, April 5, we will observe Maundy Thursday a day early, so we can celebrate the Eucharist. Maundy Thursday is the day when we remember Jesus’ Last Supper. Three of the Gospels tell the story, describing how Jesus told his disciples to remember him whenever they ate bread and drank wine, explaining that the bread was his body, broken for them, and the wine was his blood, shed for the sins of the world. The Gospel of John, however, tells instead of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet and giving them a new commandment (mandatum in Latin, which is where the strange word “Maundy” comes from). I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:34-35) After his Last Supper with his disciples, Jesus went outside to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray and to offer God his submission and obedience to the death that was to come. The Temple guards came to arrest him; Judas betrayed him with a kiss; and Jesus was taken to his trial before the Sanhedrin Court, accused and found guilty of blasphemy, claiming to be God. At church on Maundy Thursday, you will typically have a celebration of the Eucharist and/or a commemorative foot-washing. At the end of the service, the altar is stripped, symbolizing our bereavement. There will be no more celebration of the Eucharist until Easter.