HOLY WEEK

Differences Are What An Exchange Is About

Holy Week here was very very different from Holy Week at Cuddesdon last year - but that kind of experience is the whole point of an exchange! I realised I've taken it for granted that our school holidays deliberately fall around Christian holidays in Britain, so that Holy Week usually falls in the Easter Holidays. (I don't know what happened this year back home.) In the US, students are almost always at school throughout Holy Week. Apparently many have school on Good Friday too. So having classes throughout Holy Week here (except Friday in CDSP) was normal for an academic institute. People had assignments and mid-term papers and exams due in throughout the week. People have explained to me how that was an unfortunate coincidence of Holy Week falling in the week before Spring Break. So my experience of Holy Week was an experience from within an "academic institute". I didn't go to my two evening classes last week. I've yet to hear how much trouble I'm in with the instructors. I'm not sure how acceptable wanting to go to a service because it's Holy Week is.

The idea at CDSP was that people would go to their regular places of worship on the evening of Maundy Thursday and on Good Friday. For that reason, there was no special Holy Week liturgy planned for CDSP to observe as a community. I understand from talking to a large number of people last week that it's not as common here as it is in Britain to do anything on Monday to Wednesday of the week. Some churches have Tenebrae on Wednesday evening but it seems from what I saw on church websites and talking to people that Holy Week is more understood as "Thursday onwards" here.

Brian, my next door neighbour, planned an all night vigil in chapel for Thursday night so that we did something for Holy Week as a community. People signed up for hour-long slots. He transformed the office end of the chapel into a garden of repose and it was beautiful! I wish I'd taken a photo.