The Procession on Great and Holy Friday: A Literary Recollection
Introduction The Byzantine Rite's Vespers for Great and Holy Friday ends with a beautiful and solemn procession with the shroud, with has an image of the dead Jesus lying in the tomb; the procession ends by placing the shroud in a replica tomb. The faithful then approach the tomb—traditionally, on their knees—to venerate the shroud. Below is a description of this procession, which I wrote in 2015. At the time, my parish was housed in the basement of a former convent; as we walked through the darkened halls with the shroud, we would pass an old mural of a deer in the forest ("As the hart panteth after the fountains of water, so my soul panteth after thee, O God" (Ps 42:1, Douay-Rheims)). This is my literary recollection of this experience. Great and Holy Friday For that night, we were outside the gates of Jerusalem, accompanying a bloodied corpse. That Missouri basement faded away as the penumbra enwrapped us and angels’ wings carried us to that...