142. Processions, Places and Faces

Sarmede, Easter Sunday 2009

During the Easter period, there’s quite a few things people get up to... It’s Spring and it’s a holiday. Some people take advantage of the break to empty cupboards, scrub out bathrooms, pull up weeds, cut the grass, change the bed linen, send coats and winter clothes to the cleaners, change appearance, have a haircut, even a perm; put boots in the basement and take out the slip ons if you are not one to wear trainers all year round.  This Spring break always makes people want to be on the move, do something different, change...

During this time I take down the curtains for a wash, clean the windows full of cat paws and throw the dogs in the bathtub for a rinse.  But if you are a Catholic, live in Italy, especially in a village, then you will find yourself in the midst of processions, places and faces for the best part of Holy Week.  

One of our parish priests was off limits this week, though you would have had to chain him to his bed in order to recuperate from his ills, however we were lucky because we had Fr. Anthony who is nearing the end of his degree in Rome and came up for a “break” as he calls it- but boy did we kidnap him!  And so we have kept him all through Holy Week, right from the triumphant entry of Palm Sunday to the washing of feet on Maundy Thursday, to the unveiling of the Cross on Good Friday with the Via Crucis (stations of the Cross in the open air) and tonight the Easter Vigil...

Jesus washed the feet of his disciples on Maundy Thursday

The Unveiling and Veneration of the Cross on Good Friday at 3.00 

Pictures of each of the 14 Stations of  the Cross are hung around the village

On Easter Saturday the incense, the water, the oil is blessed- the fire is made to burn from which the Pascal candle is lit, symbolic of the Light of Christ from which all other lights are lit.

The choir on the steps of the side-altar 

Fr. Anthony may have been apprehensive to have to do this complex and long service in Italian, for him a foreign language, but he did pretty well, so well that he no longer read the homily but spoke it out loud as if he were talking to people in a normal way. 

And to think, before this Fr. Anthony was hearing confessions all afternoon-  Villagers like a visiting priest to tell their misdemeanours to as they don’t have to live with him for the rest of the year! 

The final blessing

And just in case anyone thinks we are always in Church.... off we all go to the bar...

But next morning the villagers were back in church- in their hordes- serenated not only by guitar and organ, but also by the natural expression of those who’d probably would like to be elsewhere... 

And as we say goodbye to Fr Anthony our Parish Priest was able to recuperate enough to be with us on this Easter Sunday- Happy Easter Everyone.