Last week of Lent

Procession around
the Empty Tomb

I did go to the Lenten Vigil on Sunday at midnight and prayed for you all. The psalms were shorter this week but the readings from St. Augustine of Hippo and the Letter to the Hebrews were much longer. I decided to go up to the gallery and watch the procession around the Empty Tomb instead of joining in. It's a spectacular view and the pipes of the organ and up there so it's thunderous. I managed to take several nice photos of the procession.

It was a tiring day in all because I walked up to the Holy Sepulcher on Saturday at 11.45pm and the Vigil and Mass ended only at 2.30am. By the time I reached home it was 3am and I had to prepare my homily for the Armenian Mass at 9am. I had to go early to the Armenian Catholic church because I had no one to help me that day. My armenian seminarians and organists could not make it and the PDDM sisters had left their service ... so I had to prepare the altar, lights, microphones, books ... everything by myself. After the Mass I cleaned my room and then went out for a walk. It was such a lovely sunny day to waste it staying in the room. I walked to the Mamilla Muslim cemetery where the wild flowers were blooming profusely. There were especially numerous the wild barley and oats. I harvested quite alot of the barley to decorate our altars. The Feast of Unleavened Bread which falls on the same day as the feast of Passover, uses barley to make the unleavened bread. We usually harvest the wild barley to offer on our altars and they look spectacular.

Vase of barley on
Mary's altar

Then I had a short meeting with a student and then a dinner meeting with a professor before returning home to sleep early. That's mainly because I have class at 5am (4am real time) and it was work all through the day. Tomorrow morning I must wake up at 3am again because I must go to the Tel Aviv hospital at 5am for another checkup. That's 3 days in a row I wake up at 3am. It's exhausting. No wonder I lose my memory and get horribly confused. I think I'll move to Jaffa for Holy Week away from the chaos of tourists in our streets and the police blockades that disrupt our daily lives. So yes ... its the last week of Lent and another Holy Week is upon us. The Resurrection is waiting .....