The way that the holy days of the church year connect me with the celebrations everywhere past, present, and future is my favorite part of Holy Week. We’ve been able to attend more of the presanctified liturgies than Sunday services because unlike the Sunday services which fill up quickly, there have always been openings for us on the Wednesdays we were free to come. When I think of pre-sanctified liturgy, I picture prostrations and vegan cakes. The orange and chocolate wacky cakes we used to bring to potluck dinners before the pandemic put an end to them. The prostrations during the Prayer of St. Ephraim.
This Lent, the presanctified liturgies have been made special by my friend Mila’s one-year-old son Eamon. Last Wednesday watching him kiss the ground with his diapered baby bottom sticking up in the air in a baby prostration melted my heart and brought me into a timeless moment. Memories flooded me of myself prostrating with little children climbing on my back and visions came of future grandchildren prostrated in half summersaults threatening to go over. I saw myself as a child yearning to know God and generations that came before and will come after. Mom was near too. Mike, Sophia, Basil, Jonah, Xenia, and Justin stood or slept beside me. I thought of Esther worshiping in a church far across the country tied to me over the distance through the liturgy and gave thanks.
Since then, I’ve been looking for other moments in life that tie memories of the past and the future into a present moment. There are many of these. Sophia, Basil and Lorena dressed up in suit and fancy dresses for the school dance last week and the expectation of seeing Sophia and Anthony decked out for prom this weekend. My own prom, a night when I was beautiful and happy, wearing a borrowed dress from Eva and going to dinner and the dance with Eva’s sons and my girlfriend Melanie. That night a Cinderella experience.
Yesterday I came upon the evidence of play. A collection of Little People houses and a plastic jungle were inhabited by dinosaurs. A trio of rhinoceroses conferred outside the house with a pink roof. My sister Ellen and I used to turn our Little People homes on their sides so that they could fit on the stairs going up to the second story. Boards strung with yarn with holes drilled the right size were helicopters for transportation among the mountain chalets. Imaginary play a human connection.
So many experiences are shared by people. We are wired for the same desire for connection and play. That’s wonderful but different from the experience that comes from the church services of Holy Week. Today is Lazarus Saturday when the kids hear me harp on what Fr. Al always said. “There couldn’t be a Palm Sunday without Lazarus Saturday.” If we can help it, we never miss a Lazarus Saturday service. It is the day Jesus resurrected his friend and set the scene for his reception into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. “By raising Lazarus from the dead before Your passion, You confirmed the universal resurrection, O Christ God.” We will go to church and be there on the day that Lazarus’s sisters’ mourning is turned into joy. The tomb will be opened, and Lazarus will come forth. The service connects me to that place in time and space and brings me into the community of believers who commemorate that day today, yesterday and forever. I can hardly wait, and this is just the beginning of Holy Week. Eight days until Pascha, the Feast of Feasts and the Day of Resurrection.
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