Passiontide

Today is Holy Thursday, also called Maundy Thursday, the first day of the most solemn and sacred time in the Church's year. It was on this day, during the Last Supper that Jesus Christ instituted the Blessed Sacrament. And today His Passion began with the dreadful agony in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Tomorrow is Good Friday, the day of His suffering and died, to free the us poor sinners, and win for us our salvation.

Holy Saturday is the last day of Lent, a day of sorrow for the death of the Hero Christ, and of expectation of His glorious resurrection.

My sisters and I were busy earlier this week, weaving the palms we received on Sunday into various shapes and designs:

ROSES

CROSSES AND A CROWN OF THORNS

I WAS PARTICULARLY PLEASED WITH THE CROWN OF THORNS.

 During Christmas, I checked out a CD of Christmas music, sung by Julie Andrews. It was a lovely album, and rather different from the general run of Christmas CDs. Amongst other things, it had a haunting little song called the Lamb of God Carol. I had never heard it before. Nor can I find much information in it at all. It is, I think, more of a New Year's carol, than a Christmas carol. But the words are particularly suited to Passiontide, so I am posting it here. As a bit of a digression, it was not uncommon for older Christmas carols to make reference to the death of Our Lord - the middle verse of What Child Is This is an example. After all, He came into this world to die for us, so it does make sense. Furthermore, there was time when the new year was celebrated on March 25th, which falls during Lent, so the references to the Passion would have been natural. However, the beginning lines of the Lamb of God carol, definitely fit more into the Christmas tradition, so this song is just a bit of an oddity to me.