Midnight at noon
John Zmirak on Good Friday

We like to attend a Byzantine Catholic service called the “Burial of Christ,” which ends with parishioners coming up in silent procession to kiss a burial shroud emblazoned with Jesus’s corpse.

Those using the Orthodox paschalion will do this on the 25th April this year (Orthodox Easter is always after the Jewish Passover).

Samer al-Batal writes from Beirut of his Melkite Church:

‘So is your church locally on the Western paschalion?’

Within Antiochian boundaries, yes; not so under Jerusalem or Alexandria (though there might be a chance that this is not the case everywhere throughout the Palestinian territories).

‘And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.’

Oremus et pro Judæis*: ut Deus et Dominus noster auferat velamen de cordibus eorum; ut et ipsi agnoscant Jesum Christum Dominum nostrum.

Oremus. Flectamus genua. Levate.

Ecce lignum crucis, in quo salus mundi pependit.

Venite, adoremus.

Popule meus, quid feci tibi? Aut in quo contristavi te? Responde mihi.

Quia eduxi te per desertum quadraginta annis, et manna cibavi te, et introduxi in terram satis optimam: parasti crucem Salvatori tuo.

‘Αγιoς ‘o Θεóς. Sanctus Deus.
‘Αγιoς ’Iσχυρóς. Sanctus fortis.
‘Αγιoς ’αθανατoς, ’ελεησoν ‘ημας. Sanctus immortalis, miserere nobis.

The only day of the year the trisagion and the Mass of the Presanctified are used in the Roman Rite.

An Iraqi Catholic

From Damian Thompson.

*This blog on the subject.