On Palm Sunday, palm fronds are blessed with an aspergilium outside the church building and a procession enters, singing, re-enacting the entry into Jerusalem. The procession may include the normal liturgical procession of clergy and acolytes, the parish choir, the children of the parish or indeed the entire congregation as in the churches of the East. At the early service we process to the altar rail and receive our palms, whereas at the later services, they have the procession. It was a glorious day and the beginning of Holy Week. We attended services daily during Holy Week as part of our Lenten discipline. I also have given up alcohol for Lent and have a perfect record! For some reason, Lent this year for us has been full of social activities bit I haven't slipped a time. It has been hard, but it was a true sacrifice as I do LOVE my martinis!
Monday was St. Patrick's Day and Ian's band, "Save the Assassins" played at J. Gilligans, which is a local pub.
His dad used to play there regularly all through high school and college.Franklin's band was called "His Boy Elroy" and they were very popular and always drew a hugh crown. Now his son is following in his footsteps! Ian played at Gilligans with his Dad's band when he was 7 years old, once again on Beth's 40th birthday, and now, at the grand age of 10, he and his group have been invited to come back for another gig after their amazing performance Monday night! They're really good and we had a great time. You can see more photographs of the evening in the slide show that follows this entry.
Tuesday morning we went to the hospital to sit with a good friend while his wife was having knee surgery. They have been friends for many years. Look at our dreadful hairdos that we had way back when (and to think we thought we looked cute!) Talk about big Texas hair!!!
We were hosting a Mother/Daughter luncheon at our house for the Miss Cinderella candidates which is a charitable event held each year in Arlington. This was when it first started. They used these photographs in the newspaper to let people know about the event.
Our kids had plans to go to Six Flags for the day since it is Spring Break, but the weather turned out to be dreadful, so we took them to Cabela's instead.
Cabela's has a distinctive look to their retail operations, a look which turns them into tourist attractions as well as retail stores. The stores are more like cavernous showrooms, bringing the outdoors inside. They feature museum-quality displays of taxidermied wildlife,
large aquariums,
(Frank would like to claim that he caught this fish)
indoor mountains, and archery ranges. They have polar bears ,
and even a real airplane inside!
Well, they had a blast! The Hudson youngsters had spent the night with Ian and Connor, so we asked them to join us.
Beth took a second car and went with us as well. I told her that if she got any smaller, she wouldn't be able to handle this skillet to fry chicken in!
It was raining so hard, that we nearly turned around and came back home. It was very scary driving in this, especially when we had so many young passengers with us. The store is about 40 minutes away in good weather and with torrential downpours, it took much longer to get there. They sat in Kayaks,
tried out one of the Pawley Island Hammocks (which I'd love to have again. When we had 2 large trees in the back yard, we always had one of these hammocks there in the summer time. Unfortunately, one of the trees died and that was the end of that :-(
They visited the fish in the aquariums twice,
and even attended a lecture where the guide at the store talked to them about the different kind of fish and how they were fed and why.
We then watched them feed them and even got to handle some of the live bait!
At one point when we were looking at the fish in the stream, I thought Connor was going to join them!
After we watched them feed the fish, we headed for the second floor and the shooting gallery.
We gave all of them some coins so they could play as we tended to the main reason we made this trip on such a dreadful weather day.
If you remember, I was blessed with a Porta-Potti for my studio for Christmas, and the blasted thing wouldn't flush. I don't know which is worse, no potty at all, or one that doesn't flush! It's a toss up!!!
We took it back and they graciously replaced it with a new one, so now I'm in business when I need to tend to business ;-)Cabela's has everything a sportsman would ever dream of from fishing rods and reels by the hundreds (or maybe thousands)
to mailboxes that look like fish.
Ian put on his Davy Crockett hat and went hunting,
but I think that the face he was making frightened the Moose nearly to death!
As a last resort and a last hurrah, they decided to go for the big game and ran into this elephant. It was time to hurry home to safety and call it a day!
We attended mass that night and then on Wednesday, we attended the service again and helped with the preparation for the Seder Dinner which is Thursday night. Frank and I prepared squash and apples for 100+ people. We cut, chopped and peeled until our hands were numb. We have had the privilege to help with meal for many years and we always look forward to it. This meal commemorates Christ's Last Supper and the initiation of the Eucharist.
On Maundy Thursday, we have a Seder Dinner each year at St. Alban's. As scripture says, Jesus came to Jerusalem or rather a small town adjacent to Jerusalem called Bethany, some time earlier. His disciples had followed Him, convinced that this return to Jerusalem would mean their deaths. It was at Bethany that Jesus restored to life, a man who had been dead and buried for three days.When the Sanhedrin, the religious ruling body of Judea, heard of this miracle, they reaffirmed that Jesus must die in order to safeguard their positions and that of Judea in the Roman Empire.We celebrate the response of Jesus to this decision every year as Palm Sunday, the day Jesus Triumphantly entered Jerusalem on the back of a donkey. "With fervent desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer." Luke 22:15 "this Passover..." was The Seder Dinner, or in Christian terms, "The Last Supper".
The word "Maundy" comes from the Latin word mandatum, meaning "command." This stems from Christ's words in John 13:34, "A new commandment I give unto you." It is the first of the three days known as the "Triduum," and after the Vigil tonight, and until the Vigil of Easter, a more profoundly somber attitude prevails (most especially during the hours between Noon and 3:00 PM on Good Friday). The Last Supper took place in "the upper room" of the house believed to have been owned by John Mark and his mother, Mary (Acts 12:12).
After the Mass, the priest takes off his chasuble and vests in a white cope. He returns to the Altar, incenses the Sacred Hosts in the ciborium, and, preceded by the Crucifer and torchbearers, carries the Ciborium to the "Altar of Repose," also called the "Holy Sepulchre," where it will remain "entombed" until the Mass of the Presanctified on Good Friday. Then there follows the Stripping of the Altar, during which everything is removed as Antiphons and Psalms are recited. All the glorious symbols of Christ's Presence are removed to give us the sense of His entering most fully into His Passion. Christ enters the Garden of Gethsemani; His arrest is imminent. The joyful signs of His Presence won't return until Easter begins with the Easter Vigil Mass on Saturday evening.
At our Seder, We reenact the Jewish meal and Ian will take part in it this year. He will be one of the readers as the "family" sits around the Passover table.
After the service tonight, we will leave the church in silence and someone will keep watch at the Altar of Repose until after the Good Friday services tomorrow. I will be the reader at the 7:00
a.m. service in the morning,
This is a very holy time in our church. We feel very pleased to have the privilege to take part in it. I pray that each of you has a very Happy Easter. I will write more after Easter Sunday.
XOXO, Pcasso
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