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Monastery Ceremonies
For the past four years a procession has taken place on the evening of Good Friday to the tomb of Our Lord, built and decorated every year for the purpose on Papa Stronsay. In Britain, Germany and Slovakia as well as the countries of Eastern Europe these Easter Sepulchres have a time-honoured tradition, one which we are proud to uphold.
In pre-Reformation England at the end of the Liturgy of the Presanctified of Good Friday, the priest put off his Mass vestments and, barefoot and wearing his surplice, brought the third Host consecrated the day before, in a pyx. The pyx and the Cross which had been kissed by the people during the liturgy were wrapped in linen cloths and taken to the north side of the chancel, where a sepulchre had been prepared for them. This was normally a timber frame, probably the shape and size of a ‘hearse’ which, covered with a pall, formed the focus of the normal obituary ceremonies at funerals and ‘month’s minds’. Like those hearses, the sepulchre was covered with a rich cloth often stained or embroidered with scenes from the Passion and a picture of the Resurrection, and candles burned before it. The Host and crucifix were laid within it while the Priest intoned the Psalm verse “I am counted as one of them that go down to the pit,” and the sepulchre was censed. A watch was then kept before it continually till Easter. Early on Easter morning, before Mass was rung, the clergy assembled, all the lights in the church were lit, and a procession formed to the sepulchre, which was censed. The Host was removed without ceremonial to its normal position on the high altar. The crucifix was then solemnly ‘raised’ from the sepulchre and carried triumphantly round the church while all the bells were rung and the choir sung the anthem Christus resurgens. In many places, especially cathedrals and the great town churches, the image used in this ceremony was often not a simple Crucifix, but an image of Christ which had a hollow space in the breast covered with a crystal in order to form the monstrance for the Host. Throughout the week the empty sepulchre remained a focus of devotion - candles burned before it during service time and it was solemnly censed at vespers each evening, before being finally removed before Mass on the Friday in Easter week. Although our Easter Sepulchre does not include the Blessed Sacrament, it is built each year with devotion on this particular island named Golgotha. We remember that the Jerusalem Golgotha is the place both of the Crucifixion and the Entombment of Our Lord. The sepulchre was once a central part of the official liturgy of Holy Week, designed to inculcate and give dramatic expression to orthodox teaching, not merely on the saving power of Christ’s Cross and Passion but on the doctrine of the Real Presence. With its abundance of lights and night watches it constituted an especially solemn form of public worship of the Blessed Sacrament, in many communities far more elaborate even than the Corpus Christi procession. Since every church was obliged to provide one for the Holy Week and Easter ceremonies, expenses for the making, maintenance, lighting, and watching of the sepulchre feature in most surviving church-wardens’ accounts. In most places it was a movable wooden frame, which was adorned with drapery and carved or painted panels. Such structures could be immensely elaborate. Sadly the so-called Reformation swept this devotion away from the English-speaking world. The heretic Cranmer carrying out a ‘visitation’ of his ‘own’ diocese in 1548 included detailed queries about the destruction of all images (not merely their removal). He asked whether any of the ‘abrogated’ ceremonies - had been performed and he included among these forbidden ceremonies the Easter Sepulchre. This had not been forbidden in any injunction or other document, but Cranmer seems to have taken the view that the prohibition of the other Holy Week ceremonies included that of the Sepulchre. May God grant that this beautiful custom one day return to the devotion of all the faithful. †
Giving the Monastery Away! On 31 May 2005 we celebrated the 6th anniversary of the purchase of Papa Stronsay by giving the monastery away! The members of the monastery council united with the Congregation solemnly consecrated the island to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, giving it to Our Blessed Mother as her very own property. Firstly a Mass was sung in honour of the Queenship of Our Lady and then the consecration was read aloud. Thereafter it was signed and witnessed in a special book by all those present. Heaven had granted us a beautiful morning and the statue of the Immaculate Heart of Mary was carried in procession around the entire coast of Her new protectorate.
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