My Easter was very busy, full of church and writing papers for my retreat in Kraków on May 2-4. I sneezed and coughed and blew my nose a lot. Two more papers and some Easter baking to go. I am sorry I didn't get my baking done for actual Easter Sunday, but I had these papers, and my cold, and Easter is 40 days long anyway. Thank heavens.
Imagine if I had children on top of that. I don't know how working mothers do it.
I was too sick to go to Holy Thursday Mass, but I went to the Good Friday service, and then to the Easter Vigil (shorter in the Extraordinary Form, believe it or not!), and the next morning to Easter Sunday Mass. Then it was the usual Cup of Tea of Peace in the parish all, and then the Gin and Tonic of Brotherly Love, and an Easter Sunday Lunch Blowout in Morningside, featuring a large number of lifelong Singles, plus Mr and Mrs McAmbrose, who danced a waltz as the Master of the Men's Schola played the piano. We were totally outnumbered, as usual, but this strikes us as entirely normal.
Feel free to report on your Easter in the combox; I have to go back to writing papers and bewailing my inability to master Polish.
8 comments:
I went to Vigil. Usually Mass is a trial every week, because we think it's important to bring the kids and so it's sort of like lion taming. Or maybe monkey taming. But this time I put the kids to bed, left them with my husband, and trotted off ALONE to Mass. I was able to stay INSIDE the church the whole time! And even pay attention!
It was lovely. Even worth staying up till 11 pm for, which is saying a lot. The man of the house went in the morning, so he too got the treat of a kid-less Mass. Not something I'd do all the time, or the kids would never get in the habit of going, but they're little enough they won't be hurt by a week off. And Palm Sunday was such a nightmare .... an hour's Mass is all they can handle!
And then we went to a friend's house for ham and green beans and sweet potatoes and salad and plum cobbler. Then a bonfire and an Easter egg hunt! The best Easter I've had in awhile. :)
I had a lovely Easter with my family, but a bit of a liturgical nightmare. My brother's well-intentioned pastor wasn't happy with how we sang the three verses of the opening hymn, and so made us sing them all again…he kept lamenting "all this Easter bunny crap" from the altar…rambled on about nothing for 30 minutes in his homily…named every person by name who'd had an Easter lily decorating the altar in their honor (10 minutes)…used the Roman canon with all its optional inclusions (which I wouldn't have objected to except that we were pushing 2 hours at this point and every child in the place was screaming in utter meltdown)…gave a second homily after Communion to the Poinsettia & Lily Crowd about how they were welcome anytime, oblivious to the fact that they had all left once they received communion. He was trying really hard to remind us that the focus of Easter is the Resurrection of Jesus, but he went about it in all the wrong ways. (This is the same priest who made "Human Trafficking" the theme of Lent a few years ago, and since everything from the Stations of the Cross to the Sunday homily centered around this theme, church involvement was a little dicey for families with young children.) I felt like my Good Friday had been prolonged.
But my nieces & nephews were delighted that I was with them, and between their joy and the beautiful weather, I had quite a lovely Easter.
And happy Dyngus Day!
I work full time so I was unable to go to any masses or services during the week. I did hold my Good Friday tradition of watching the Passion of the Christ movie. When I was younger we'd always watch the BBC Jesus of Nazareth on Good Friday. I also slept a lot on Good Friday.
Holy Saturday I went to my career coach meeting to get myself out of a terrible work environment as fast as I can, then started preparing deviled Easter eggs. :)
Sunday, I went to mass by myself at a very crowded church then went to some friends to enjoy Easter Dinner ham, green beans, potatoes, chickpea salad, fried beets, and my deviled eggs. ^^ Also jelly beans. I got to play with my friend's young son who they found out is completely deaf only a couple weeks ago. Also saw a guy I had a crush on but is now married. And chatted with a guy I went on a couple dates on but it never grew into anything. I still like him and we have a lot in common, but I think he's more of a Pretty Nice, Mostly Catholic man. I always end up in an awkward conversation at some point and embarrass myself. (Somehow we ended up talking about NFP and he's very much not into it. Which is a definite detractor on my part.)
Just released a lot of comments from moderation prison! And just finished my third paper. Quelle relief! One more to go, and then I can stuff myself with Polish like food into the Christmas goose!
By the way, if there were any C & E's left standing on either Easter Vigil or Easter Sunday morning, my hat's off to them (outside the church, of course). Can you imagine being a C&E and showing up at the EF by accident? Ah ha ha ha!
I left after only three verses of "Christ the Lord is Risen Today" and felt like a heathen .... there wasn't a seat empty. Nobody leaves early at our church! I guess I was the only one who had to rush back to my babies .... the place was packed to the gills with sleeping toddlers sprawled on the pews.
I don't listen to sermons much anymore. I wish I could, but sometimes they do me more harm than good. I wish more priests would listen to Pope Francis' advice -- keep the sermons brief and spiritual, and not let it be the focus of the Mass because the priest's opinion and personality aren't important.
I thought the Easter Vigil looked very empty, but it turns out that a lot of people went outside early, so we all processed in. The only liturgical oopsie was that we couldn't hear the Deo Gratias so we didn't reply. But they had stationed people right inside the nave to light candles, so we were all lit as we entered the church, which seemed like a living metaphor. :-) I love all the baptisms, too, and skipping half the psalms (but not the prayers) and being efficient in the best way (not rushed) somehow made the vigil less than 3 1/2 hours. Also, the family next to me left after communion - and they left all their candles. I looked to see if they were collecting them back and didn't see it, so I walked out with half a dozen beeswax candles - the pysanky-maker's dream. :-)
I had probably 12-15 people drop by at various points for an Easter feast from my ethnic tradition yesterday afternoon, and my Russian-style mead also tasted good (improvement over last batch). I'm still pretty pooped but happy... now on to exams! :-)
I was traveling for work most of Holy Week so that made attending most anything a challenge... that said, I did make to Easter morning Mass in Polish (!) in Istanbul - the Mass was celebrated in the crypt of a church, it started 15 minutes late (ah Polish people! the same everywhere) and the music was a saxophone, keyboard and violin. Still, it was a beautiful Mass, not less because the friendly pastor made everyone feel welcome and there were plenty of nice young Polish people around with their Easter baskets waiting to be blessed. Plus, they sang most of my favorite Polish Easter hymns. Then I was off to an Easter Sunday Turkish breakfast brunch with friends and finally spent the afternoon on an island on the Sea of Marmara. A tad unconventional, perhaps, but it was a beautiful happy day!
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