Great and Holy Friday

Then shall I not be put to shame,
as I give heed unto all thy commandments.
The Master of all creation is here seen lying dead,
and in a new tomb he is laid,
who hath emptied the tombs of their dead.

The way of thine ordinances make me to understand,
and I shall meditate on thy wondrous works.
As a mortal man thou diest willingly, O Saviour,
but as God thou didst raise up the dead
from their tombs and from the abyss of their sins.

(Psalm 118/119, verses 6 and 27, with the accompanying troparia from the first stasis of the Lamentations, from Orthros of Holy Saturday.)

Give Me This Stranger

Today, which is Good Friday on the Gregorian calendar, my Byzantine Catholic e-friend Dan sent me this YouTube video of the hymn “Give me this stranger.” It is Byzantine chant sung in Arabic, and it’s about 10 minutes long. It’s not very impressive visually – just a series of very slow pans over icons of Christ’s burial – but the music is otherworldly.

This hymn is sung on the night of Great and Holy Friday at the end of the Lamentation service, which commemorates Christ’s burial. It is sung from the point of view of my patron saint, Joseph of Arimathea. Many of the hymns on Holy Friday mention St. Joseph, but this is one of only two that are sung from his point of view. (Interestingly, both of these are in tone 5, as opposed to the hymns about him, which tend to be in tones 2 and 6.) An English translation of the hymn follows.

Seeing that the sun had hidden its rays and the veil of the Temple had been rent at the death of the Saviour, Joseph did approach Pilate and did plead with him crying and saying,

Give me this stranger, who from his youth hath wandered like a stranger.

Give me this stranger, whom his kinsmen killed in hatred like a stranger.

Give me this stranger at whom I wonder, beholding him as a guest of death.

Give me this stranger who knoweth how to take in the poor and strangers.

Give me this stranger whom the Jews in envy estranged from the world.

Give me this stranger that I may bury him in a tomb, who being a stranger hath no place whereon to lay his head.

Give me this stranger, to whom his Mother, beholding him dead, shouted crying, “O my Son and my God, even though my vitals be wounded, and my heart burns, as I behold thee dead, yet trusting in thy Resurrection, I magnify thee.”

In these words the honorable Joseph pleaded with Pilate, took the Saviour’s body, and with fear wrapped it in linen and balm, placing thee in a new tomb, O thou who grantest to all everlasting life and the great mercy.

Lyrics for Holy Thursday

From the album Wandering Strange


The Last Song

After the supper was over
     and the table had been cleared away
When the last bottle was empty,
     there was nothing much left to say
Jesus started humming an old tune,
     everybody fell right in
They sang the last song, the last song

Matthew started singing the low part,
     John grabbed the high harmony
Their voices filled up the night air
     all the way to Gethsemane
Judas walked some distance behind them
     like he had forgotten the words
They sang the last song, the last song

Just before they got to the garden
Just before they all fell asleep
Just before Barabbas was pardoned
And Jesus was nailed to a tree

I reckon it was some kind of soul song,
     maybe kind of sad and slow
All about how we get weary,
     all about holding on
Only Jesus knew what was coming,
     still he never said a thing
He sang the last song, the last song

He could have made a toast to the good times
     and only the best for his friends
He could have stayed up late reminiscing
     about the long strange trip it had been
But he went just like a lamb to the slaughter
     knowing it was part of the plan
And sang the last song, the last song

Kate Campbell and Walt Aldridge
© 1999 Large River Music (BMI) /
April Music/Waltz Time Music (ASCAP)

Dating the Crucifixion

The Synaxarion readings we use at my church during Holy Week have one feature that strikes me as very odd: they assign Roman calendar dates to the days of the week of Christ's death and resurrection. Last night at Bridegroom Matins, for example, the Synaxarion that I read to the congregation said that the day when Judas agreed to betray Jesus was Wednesday, which corresponded to 21 March. Counting forward, this implies that the Crucifixion occurred on the 23rd, and the Resurrection occurred on the 25th. I have been unable to track down the source of this chronology.

I am aware of two dates that were assigned to the Crucifixion by early Christians. The first was 6 April. Later on, for some reason, this date was displaced by 25 March. (It is no mere coincidence that these dates precede Theophany and Christmas, respectively, by nine months, but the dates of those feasts were based on the date of the Christ's death, not vice versa. I'll skip that tangent for now and save it for a separate post in December.)

Modern scholars have attempted to determine the date of the Crucifixion by reconstructing the Jewish lunar calendar for the range of years in which Christ might have died. Following Luke 3:1-2, which places the beginning of Christ's ministry with respect to the reigns of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate, Herod Antipas, Philip, and Lysanias, the range of plausible years can be narrowed to AD 29-36. In addition, St. Paul's conversion is usually dated to AD 34, which restricts the range further. Then it becomes a matter of extrapolating the lunar cycles backwards to the first century and seeing which years, if any, fit the chronology presented in the gospels. In performing these calculations, allowance must be made for the imprecision of Jewish reckoning. Sometimes the month might have begun a day after the new moon if the moon was not visible, and occasionally an error might be made in determining when to add an intercalary month (a 13th month to keep the lunar calendar in sync with the solar calendar) at the end of the year.

One complication is that the gospels present two different chronologies of Holy Week. The Synoptic gospels, which present the Last Supper as a Seder meal, imply that Jesus was crucified on the first day of Passover, 15 Nisan. John, however, tells us that Jesus was crucified on the day before Passover, 14 Nisan. So both chronologies must be considered.

The first person to do these calculations was Sir Isaac Newton, in 1733. Newton narrowed the dates down to 3 April 33 and 23 April 34. He then chose the latter date based on a correspondence between the grain-plucking episode from the gospels (Mark 2:23) and his understanding of the growing season for grain. However, his selection of AD 34 was based on rules of the Jewish calendar that were not yet in effect in the first century. Therefore, Newton's work was not taken very seriously.

Scholars of the 20th century returned to this question. They settled on two plausible dates: 7 April 30 and 3 April 33. Note that both dates correspond to 14 Nisan, and are thus consistent with John's chronology, not with the Synoptics.

For many years, AD 30 was the consensus favorite. I suspect there were two reasons for this. First, it had become accepted the Christ was born in 6-4 BC. Many people were attached to the notion that Christ had died at the age of 33. If he had died in AD 33, that would have made him nearly 36-38. Therefore the earlier Crucifixion date was favored. Second, based on the erroneous belief that Christ was born in AD 1, in conjunction with the idea that he died at age 33, it was popularly believed that Christ was crucified in AD 33. Scholars tend to enjoy the feeling of superiority that comes from dismissing such popular beliefs. (I'm not sure why they did not think, rather, to question the death-at-age-33 theory . . .)

In the last decade, however, the consensus has shifted with near unanimity to AD 33 as the year of the Crucifixion. In AD 30, Christ's ministry was still in its early stages. AD 33 has astronomy, history, and tradition going for it.

In addition, further astronomical research has found that there was a lunar eclipse on 3 April 33. This is consistent with Peter's quotation from Joel (Acts 2:20): "The sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood." In addition, the late-second-century apocryphal Report of Pilate to the Emperor Claudius claims that at the Crucifixion "the moon appeared like blood." This was a common description of lunar eclipses in that era, and it might very well record a memory of an eclipse on the day of the Crucifixion. This is the icing on the cake for AD 33.

Unless something forces us to make a radical re-evaluation of the era in which Christ lived or the correspondence of the days of his death and resurrection to the Jewish Passover, the consensus in favor of 3 April 33 is unlikely to change. In the meantime, I will continue to try to get to the bottom of the dates in the Synaxarion.

The Tao of the Cross

As I mentioned early in Lent, I have been slowly reading Stephen Mitchell’s translation of the Tao Te Ching. Actually, I’m not sure the term translation captures what Mitchell has given us. His work is often highly paraphrased, and sometimes it goes way beyond paraphrase, becoming a fresh expression of his interpretation of the gist of a chapter. Chapter 50, on the subject of life and death, is a difficult chapter, and even attempts at literal translation can vary widely. Most translations involve the number thirteen, tigers, rhinos, and armor – like these three translations. But Mitchell skips all of these. Instead he gives us a description of the Master who accepts the inevitability of death and is therefore not afraid to live. It reminds me of nothing so much as Christ in his last days. Without further ado . . .


The Master gives himself up
to whatever the moment brings.
He knows that he is going to die,
and he has nothing left to hold on to:
no illusions in his mind,
no resistances in his body.
He doesn’t think about his actions;
they flow from the core of his being.
He holds nothing back from life;
therefore he is ready for death,
as a man is ready for sleep
after a good day’s work.

Recapping Holy Week: Great and Holy Saturday

In the Byzantine Rite, all of the services of Holy Week occur about half a day early. Thus, the evening service each day is Matins, the morning office, of the following day. I suspect there was a practical reason for this at one time, now forgotten, but a frequently heard explanation is that we do this because the events we are commemorating – and in which we participate – turn the world upside down.

On the morning of Holy Saturday was the Vesperal Liturgy of St. Basil. I have attended this service regularly for several years, since it was the one Byzantine service that did not conflict with any of the services of the Triduum as observed at my old Anglo-Catholic parish. A Vesperal Liturgy begins with about two-thirds of Vespers, the evening office, which then merges into the Divine Liturgy, beginning around the point of the Little Entrance. The Vesperal Liturgy of Holy Saturday is a baptismal service, equivalent to the Easter Vigil of Western liturgical churches. Like the Easter Vigil, it includes the reading of the prophecies. At Holy Cross we read three prophecies, but some parishes read more. After the second reading, one of my fellow catechumens was baptized and chrismated. Taking the name of her patron saint, she will hereafter be known as Katherine. In the first picture, Fr. Gregory blesses the water in our makeshift baptismal font – a large plastic horse trough (the Orthodox Church prefers to baptize by immersion). In the second photo, the newly baptized (but not yet chrismated) Katherine kneels before Fr. Gregory as her sponsor and Deacon Mark look on.



After the Liturgy, at which the newly illumined Katherine received communion for the first time, we all went downstairs for the traditional Holy Saturday snack of dates, figs, nuts, and sweet wine before resuming a strict fast in preparation for the Pascha Liturgy that night.

Recapping Holy Week: Great and Holy Friday

Today was the first day since Thursday 29 March that I have not attended at least one church service. I was so exhausted that I slept until 2 PM!

I'm pretty sure I have attended every Orthodox Holy Week service except the Palm Sunday Liturgy at least once before, but this was the first time I have done it all. I found the Lenten fast much easier than I expected, but remaining on my feet through most of 36 hours of liturgy in the past 11 days was a much more rigorous discipline. Trevor has already blogged on the relief that prostrations bring to an aching back, so I'll say no more on the subject.

I took Friday off work and spent the whole day at church. We began at 9 AM with the Royal Hours, which concatenates the offices of the First, Third, Sixth, and Ninth Hours. Each office consists of a few psalms, a hymn sung by the chanters, and three readings – Old Testament, Epistle, and Gospel. Compared to the Royal Hours of Christmas and Epiphany, the Gospel readings were longer and seemed more central. The Gospel reading at each office was a large part of the Passion story from a different Gospel, proceeding in canonical order through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Shortly after the Royal Hours we began the decoration of the bier. It is customary to place an embroidered icon of Christ's preparation for burial, called the epitaphios, inside an elaborately flowered tomb or bier. About ten of us helped to place flowers and greenery into blocks of oasis, fastened to the top of the bier until it looked something like this:


Given that my patron saint is Joseph of Arimathea, I thought it was especially appropriate that I should participate in the decoration of the bier.

The next service, at 3 PM, was Vespers of the Removal from the Cross, also known as the Unnailing Service, since the nails holding the icon of Christ to the cross are removed. Two of my fellow bier-decorators were selected to remove the nails and place the near-life-size icon of Christ in a shroud before it was placed on the altar. Then the epitaphios was brought out and placed in the bier, where we venerated it, each in turn, by doing a double prostration, kissing it, and doing a third prostration.

The final service of the day, at 7 PM, was my favorite Byzantine service, the Lamentation service. We sang three long, beautiful hymns of lamentation for our Lord's death, also recounting the actions of Joseph, Nicodemus, and the myrrh-bearing women. Then we inserted poles into the bier and carried it in procession around the church as we sang the Trisagion. I served as one of the eight pall-bearers, who took turns carrying the heavy bier. When we returned to the church, we held up the bier above the door between the narthex and the church. After everyone had passed under it, we replaced it in its original position at the front of the church. At the conclusion of the service, after we venerated the epitaphios again, Fr. Gregory handed out flowers taken from the bier.

This service was followed by an all-night vigil, sponsored by the youth of the parish. The vigil began with the reading of Matthew. I stayed to listen to the gospel until I heard the verse, "My yoke is easy and my burden is light," at which point I decided it was time to loosen my yoke. So I venerated the epitaphios again, took another flower for my icon corner, and went home to get a few hours of sleep.

Lyrics for Holy Saturday

I've spent so much time in church this week (22 hours so far, with about another 4 to go) that I haven't had a chance to listen to most of my usual Holy Week music, like "Jesus Christ Superstar" and Handel's "Messiah." Right now I finally found an hour to listen to Kate Campbell's album of hymns and gospel tunes, "Wandering Strange," while I catch up on my e-mail. But it doesn't look like I'll get to U2's "Achtung Baby."

Yes, you read that right. While Bono's lyrics often draw on Christian terms and symbols, this album contains a song that is both subtle and explicit, "Until the End of the World." I had probably heard this song a dozen times, half-listening, and classified it as just another rock song about love, either unrequited or gone-bad. Then one time I popped the tape into my tape deck as I was leaving work for a Melkite Epitaphios service on Good Friday. With my mind focused on the events the Church was celebrating this day, I finally heard the real meaning of the song: During the Harrowing of Hell, Jesus encounters Judas, who sings this song.

Haven't seen you in quite a while
I was down the hold, just passing time
Last time we met it was a low-lit room
We were as close together as bride and groom
We ate the food, we drank the wine
Everybody having a good time
Except you
You were talking about the end of the world

I took the money, I spiked your drink
You miss too much these days if you stop to think
You led me on with those innocent eyes
And you know I love the element of surprise
In the garden I was playing the tart
I kissed your lips and broke your heart
You, you were acting like it was the end of the world

In my dream I was drowning my sorrows
But my sorrows they learned to swim
Surrounding me, going down on me
Spilling over the brim
Waves of regret, waves of joy
I reached out for the one I tried to destroy
You, you said you'd wait till the end of the world

Where the Vultures Are Gathered

And they asked him, "Where, Lord?" He said to them, "Where the body is, there the eagles will be gathered together." – Luke 17:37

Since November, when my institute moved to new quarters, I have had a view from the eighth floor of the second tallest building in Calverton, Maryland. For the most part, the view is disappointing – I can gaze down upon the rooftops of all the other buildings in the office park, which are not designed to be attractive from above. But it has also proved to be an excellent perch for watching birds. I have seen as many as 30 Canada geese gathered in and around the little pond in the middle of the office park, along with a few ducks. On other days I can watch big flocks of crows. Today I saw two big crows searching under rocks on the roof ledge just two offices down. Since that office is currently unoccupied, I was able to camp there and watch them up close. Their search turned up something interesting and they flew away, one of them doing some fancy aerobatics on its way to the ground.

But my favorite birds to watch from here are turkey vultures (or, as we used to call them back in Indiana, turkey buzzards). Most days I don't see them at all, but on a windy day like today they are out in force. At one point today I could see 10 of them in the air at once! I think the wind must interact with the tall building to create currents that the vultures find useful. One day they kept flying directly at my window, only to swoop straight upwards at the last second before impact. Vultures know how to use the currents to gain speed and elevation.

The sight of so many vultures reminded me of the verse from Luke quoted above. While translators invariably give eagles as the primary translation, interpreters prefer the alternative translation, relegated to a text footnote in the RSV: vultures. As scavengers, vultures will gather wherever they find a dead body to feed on.

The disciples are pestering Jesus, wanting to know the time and place when the Kingdom of God will appear. And the Lord, characteristically, gives an indirect answer that demands their deeper engagement with the question, rather than something they can write on their pocket calendars. Could he be telling his disciples that they should watch for some commotion that signals the Kingdom, just as a gathering of vultures signals the presence of a carcass? Probably not, since he had just told the Pharisees earlier in the chapter, "The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; nor will they say, 'Lo, here it is !' or 'There!' for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you." Perhaps he is warning them to be prepared, because the Day of Judgment will find them just as vultures find a dead body.

Today was Holy Wednesday. According to tradition, this was the day when Judas agreed to betray his Master to the Jewish leaders. The vultures are already gathering, sensing that Jesus is vulnerable.

But this is also the day when the Orthodox Church commemorates Jesus' anointing by the sinful woman, who proceeded to wet his feet with her tears and wipe them with her hair. In contrast to Judas, she prepared herself for the coming of the Kingdom by repenting of her sins, and she thereby anointed the King himself before he was crowned with thorns and ascended the throne of the Cross to begin his reign.