All We Like Sheep

That's always been my favorite part of The Messiah. I love the idea that if you just look at the words, it seems like we're saying that we like sheep when really Handel (and an Old Testament prophet) is comparing us to sheep that go astray only to be found by The Shepherd who will break their legs and carry them around on His Shoulders until they learn to stay close to Him.

Well, it's Holy Week. I suppose it's fitting that it would be during Holy Week that I would have to spend most of my time writing papers. Today I have a paper about the effects of divorce on children due. Tomorrow, I have a paper about "A Room of One's Own" by Virginia Woolf due. And a week from today, I have my huge child development paper due. My goal is to have it done by Thursday so I don't have it distracting me when I should be focusing on praying and church services.

This year, my brother was asked to help cantor the Thursday evening service at the church we attend in Grand Rapids. He agreed and so we will be attending the "Twelve Gospels" service at St. Michael's Ukrainian Catholic Church in Grand Rapids. I've never been to this service before because most Byzantine Catholic parishes hold this service during the day on Good Friday and I'm always helping my mom with things around the house then. However, St. Mike's is holding the service on Thursday night and so Greg and I will be attending the service. Basically, it's a service that consists of reading St. Matthew's Passion, then St. Mark's Passion followed by St. Luke's Passion, and just for good measure, St. John's will conclude the evening. There are a few other prayers during the evening but the primary focus is on the Passion accounts in the Gospel.

Greg and I will be heading home after the 12 Gospels. Friday night, we will be back at our home parish, Sacred Heart Byzantine Catholic Church in Livonia. Here we will attend Good Friday Vespers with Burial Procession, an Eastern tradition. The basic idea behind this service is that it is Christ's funeral. At the end of service, we "inter" the Shroud of Christ in a "tomb" at the front of the church. The Shroud will remain there until Resurrection Matins on Sunday morning. The Shroud has an icon of the Body of Christ; around the edge of the shroud is written "The noble Joseph took down Your Most Pure Body from the Cross and wrapping it in clean linens laid it in a new tomb." The evening concludes with the veneration of the Shroud by the faithful while the cantors sing "Having suffered passions for us, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us."
After this, Greg and I along with our friends Mark, Susanna, and Charlotte will head home to explode Peeps in the microwave.

Saturday morning, my dad, Greg, Mark, Charlotte, Susanna, and I will head to St. Nicholas Byzantine Catholic Church in Detroit for Jerusalem Matins. This is primarily a service meditating on Christ's saving act of salvation and how he is the fulfillment of countless Old Testament Prophecies.

Sunday morning, we will attend Resurrection Matins, which obviously celebrates the Resurrection of Christ. This is followed by the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, which is pretty much normal except for a few things. The Gospel, which is John 1:1-18, is read in English, Greek, old Church Slavonic, Arabic, and Latin as a symbol of the proclamation of the Gospel to all the nations. After the Gospel, the deacon proclaims St. John Chrysostom's famous Easter homily. After this, we all go over to the parish hall, where the priest blesses our Easter baskets filled with traditional Slovak Easter foods such as egg bread, egg cheese, sausage, and hard-boiled eggs. (Okay, so we might like eggs.)

At some point next week, I'll try to put up some pictures of what this looks like.