HOLY WEEK HELP: "HELP ME!"

Our daughter and her young children have been able to help her priest husband with the Holy Week services in their empty church...

O Lord, my God, I call for help by day, I cry out in the night before You.

Let my prayer come before you; incline Your ear to my cry!

-Psalm 88 (87 Septuagint)

She sent me this sweet picture of my little granddaughter reaching up trying to give Jesus a kiss at the end of the Bridegroom Orthros service last night.  

My granddaughter couldn't quite reach and called out, "Help me!"  Out of the mouths of babes.  

Or, as Mommy noted: "Sweet and profound".

Some of you celebrated Easter (at home) this past Sunday, but those of us who are Orthodox are currently observing Holy Week (at home).  

I've been watching and praying our Bridegroom services the past couple of nights on Youtube, which is our new-Coronavirus-normal for awhile.

Earlier in the evening, I had listened to an excellent podcast on Ancient Faith Today Live, hosted by Fr. Tom Soroka: "Holy Week Under Quarantine" - link here - with guest Dr. Nicole Roccas, author of Time and Despondency.  I highly recommend the podcast and the book!

Dr. Roccas talked about trying to find positives about what we can do during this time of isolation, instead of dwelling on "what we can't do".  

She specifically brought up that this is a good time to acknowledge how we in North America (she lives in Canada) are very fortunate:  that our current inability to attend services and partake of Holy Communion is only an anomaly here, a temporary "new normal", whereas that privilege is an impossibility in many countries that are suffering persecution - or have suffered persecution in the past. She encouraged listeners that "Maybe as we grieve our inability to receive the Eucharist we can remember those around the world who are unable to gather in even the best of times."

Dr. Roccas' comments made me think of a book about a Russian priest, Fr. Arseny, which we read as a family years ago.

FATHER ARSENY, translated by Vera Bouteneff. A narrative comprised of encounters with Father Arseny, a former art historian and priest imprisoned in the Gulag. He became Prisoner No. 18736 in the brutal 'special sector' of the Soviet prison camp system. In the darkness of systematic degradation of body and soul, he shone with the light of Christ's peace and compassion. I wept, reading this aloud to our teens.  We all loved this book.

So. What else can we do during Holy Week?

-Spend time as a family while journeying towards Pascha at home.

source

-Go here to my past post with some ideas for quiet activities specifically for Holy Week.

-Listen to saints stories and Orthodox books for children read by Chrissi Hart, here on AFR's Under the Grapevine podcast.

-Decorate eggs: go here for my post, Why Eggs for Easter?

source

-Pray together and read the Psalms.

-Be thankful for smart phone technology such as FaceTime and Skype and digital live streaming on YouTube, which can bring us "virtually" to our churches and family and friends.

[Speaking of which, please share/forward this post. And if you're not a regular follower yet, please sign up on the web version of my blog for my emails. I am no longer on social media since I realized and embraced the fact that I'm pretty much a JOMO (Joy Of Missing Out) kind of person.  My readership has been down as a result of my choice to leave Facebook and not join the Instagram trend. Thank you! I appreciate your taking time to stop by!]  

Quiet Activities for Holy Friday and Saturday

[source: Pravoslavie.ru]

When my kids were young, we tried to plan a few nice quiet activities for them to engage in with us in anticipation of Orthodox Pascha (Easter), between the church services we attended during the day on Holy Friday and Saturday.  I perused my Pinterest boards yesterday, and I think I found some pretty good resources to share with you.

Make an Easter Story in an Egg Carton - go here to learn how to make this easy project.

Read Bible stories with them.  There are so many great illustrated Bibles for children.  One of my favorites is the Children's Bible Reader, available here. 

Craft beeswax candles out of eggshells to give as gifts - step-by-step instructions here.

Or decorate candles for Pascha - source here.

Bake!  Make a cake for your Pascha (Easter) basket.  Lots of traditional recipes out there, but I'm going to try this Lemon/Ricotta/Almond/Flourless Cake because it's gluten free!

Decorate Eggs - I love these beautiful Easter Eggs dyed with lace...

These last days leading up to Easter are a good time to decorate your Easter Egg Tree - we let our children choose a glass or handblown egg from our collection to hang on our "tree" each day of Holy Week, so by Pascha it was full.

Easter Egg Symbolism and Trivia:

• The dyeing of Easter eggs comes from the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic tradition of coloring eggs red to represent the blood of Christ. The egg's shell represents the tomb of Christ, and after the Paschal liturgy parishioners crack their eggs against each other's proclaiming, "Christ is Risen!"
• Historically, as part of the Lenten Fast, eating eggs was forbidden. But this didn't stop chickens from laying, so households hard-boiled the eggs to keep them from spoiling and ate them quickly after Easter arrived.  
• In the Ukraine, during Holy week, women traditionally blew out the egg insides, and decorated the empty shells with dyes and wax, a beautiful folk art known as "Pysanky".
• Started by Dolley Madison in 1814, the annual "Easter Egg Roll" on the White House's South Lawn is a race in which children push an Easter egg across the grass with a spoon. However, rolling Easter eggs traces its origins to Europe as a symbol of the rolling away of the boulder from Jesus' tomb before the Resurrection. 
• The famous Fabergé eggs were intricately jeweled and gilded pieces created for Russian royalty before the 1917 revolution. The House of Fabergé crafted the first in 1885 by request from Tsar Alexander III as an Easter gift for his wife, Empress Maria.  The tradition was famously continued by the Romanov family, most notably, Nicholas II and Alexandra.                         [source]                                                        

HOLY WEEK: THE MIRACLES OF CHRIST

[note: I'm saying good-by to the blogopshere for about a week. If you are a Catholic or Protestant Christian, I realize you'll be observing Good Friday tomorrow, but in the Eastern Orthodox Church, Holy Week is just ahead of us.  Our Easter - Pascha - is April 15th this year.]  

Holy Week is the perfect time to focus on the miracles of Christ. The last Saturday of Lent (just preceding Passion Week - or Holy Week) is focused on Jesus' miracle of the Raising of Lazarus.  Of course, Holy Week itself, our journey with Christ to Pascha, ends with the ultimate miracle of the Resurrection, as Jesus frees the dead from Hades.

In my home, I display an Easter Egg Tree every year.  I made my own last year with pussy willow branches stuck into florist foam, which I nestled down into a pretty tin. (In Europe, pussy willow branches are used in place of palm branches on Palm Sunday, since palms are not available in that region.) When our children were young, during Holy Week they looked forward to hanging beautifully decorated eggs on our Easter Egg Tree each day.  By Easter - Pascha - the tree would be full.

This year I thought I would do it a little bit differently, decorating the tree for Holy Week with icon cards of "The Miracles of Christ" hung from the branches, and eventually adding in my Easter Egg collection for Pascha.. 

Pack of 18 cards. I got them here.

To all my readers:  I'll be back after next week. Blessed Pascha (Happy Easter)!

HOLY WEEK: JOURNEY TO PASCHA

During this last week leading up to Easter (we call it "Pascha" in the Orthodox Church), I won't be posting much about books, since Holy Week is in full swing!  Beginning over the weekend with Lazarus Saturday and then Palm Sunday, the week continues with many more services to attend, baskets to prepare, goodies to make, and an Easter Egg Tree to decorate...

When our children were young, during Holy Week they looked forward to hanging beautifully decorated eggs (that I had collected) on our Easter Egg Tree each day.  By Easter - Pascha - the tree would be full.  I made my own last year with pussy willow branches stuck into florist foam, which I nestled down into a pretty tin.  In Europe, pussy willow branches are used in place of palm branches on Palm Sunday, since palms are not available in that region.

A variation of this Easter Egg Tree would be to hang these beautiful little "Miracles of Christ" icon cards on the branches at the beginning of Holy Week (Lazarus Saturday).  Each card is about 31/2 by 4 inches and would just need a hole punched at the top with a ribbon threaded through it in order to tie it to a branch.  On each successive day of Holy Week, your children could take down a card, read the story from Christ's life on the back, and replace the icon card with an Easter egg.

"Miracles of Christ" icon cards are
available HERE at Orthodox Marketplace  

Tonight we will be attending the Bridegroom Matins.  Christ the Bridegroom is the central figure in the Parable of the Ten Virgins (Matthew 25: 1-13); Christ is the divine Bridegroom of the Church as described in the Book of Isaiah (chapter 54), as well as the primary image of Bridegroom Matins. The title is suggestive of his divine presence and watchfulness (“Behold the Bridegroom comes in the middle of the night…”) during Holy Week and his selfless love for his Bride, the Church.

"Behold the Bridegroom comes at midnight, and blessed is the servant whom he shall find watching, and unworthy is the servant whom he shall find heedless.

Beware, therefore, oh my soul. Do not be weighed down with sleep, lest you be given up to death, and lest you be shut out of the kingdom.

But rouse yourself, crying, Holy, Holy, Holy are Thou O God."

To hear this beautiful Orthodox hymn, “Alleluia, Behold the Bridegroom”, click HERE.