It’s a strange thing when everyone dashes off to visit family grandparents and friends for Easter. Something so familiar as a child suddenly feels rather empty and quiet and small in the absence of grandparents and family. It sucks to be honest. Across Europe Easter is a spectacular show of faith and tradition. But here it’s all rather lacklustre and commercial. Add to this that Joseph hates chocolate and it’s tricky to find a way to make it feel festive at all. Nevertheless I do my best. I’ve made little mum and son traditions and ventured into my Polish and Jewish roots to find some more.
On Good Friday mass is usually at 3pm rather than the morning because Jesus died at 3pm in the afternoon. Stations of the Cross are said in the morning but instead this year I chose to take kiddo to the very special medieval church I posted about yesterday instead. Right or wrong I don’t know - it’s altogether much harder to impart any faith to anyone when you’re finding your way rather tentatively yourself having had your faith waver and in some small way wrecked.
I felt very much in tune with these words on a substack I stumbled across recently A Catholic Pilgrim (this quote taken from his pinned post about his journey to faith) -
I said earlier that I lost my faith for a while. One of the reasons for this (there were several) was that wherever I went, whatever church I went into, I felt like I didn’t belong, I was a visitor or interloper, pretending to be someone I wasn’t. So I kept moving on, always searching for something I could never quite find.
And in particular this piece on Saint Thomas Becket also caught my attention.( It’s a great read for medieval church history in general)
The cult of St Thomas Becket was vigorously suppressed by Henry VIII and the reason is simple - he was a symbol of the resistance of the Church to the secular powers, in the form of the king
I can’t find a parish I feel settled or even welcomed in. And I crave it. It’s weird because I knew no one in France and yet felt that Latin Mass I attended which was packed to the rafters every Sunday was exactly where I needed to be. And I was immediately reminded of that bizarrely in that empty teeny tiny medieval church yesterday.
The mass I love is virtually banned by the Pope and when you consider the country I live in now is faithless how do you pass along any understanding of faith at all to a child so bombarded by a ruthless secular world. How do you maintain your own faith as an adult?
When surrounded by beauty and the dedication of men who have laboured to create something of the reverence they feel for God I feel at home and at peace. The building the surroundings and the mass itself is integral to that. I feel the communion of saints.
I think oddly enough Simon Jenkins in the Guardian (!) described the little church we visited best
The sensation lies in the chancel, composed of the most complete set of Romanesque frescos in northern Europe. Christ sits in the middle of the ceiling on a rainbow, his feet on a globe. He is attended by sun, moon, stars, candelabra, a winged ox and seraphim with books and scrolls, the complete Book of Revelation. Below him sit rows of sepia apostles gazing up at Him from a Romanesque arcade. No inch is left untouched. Here is a bishop, there lay pilgrims heading for a heavenly Jerusalem. Everywhere is chequerboard and zigzag decoration. England's Sistine Chapel lies lost in the western reaches of Gloucestershire. It is smaller, to put it mildly, and older by 350 years. But what it lacks in grandeur it adds in serenity. I would exchange five minutes in the chancel of Kempley church for an hour in Rome. And I would have it to myself!
I dialled up the colour on one of the photos from yesterday and I think the imagery is more distinct? And I forgot to show you the gates of Jerusalem around this window.
Anyway, a few years ago my neighbours who are Polish invited me to an Easter Saturday basket blessing. Learning my father was Polish the woman seemed keen to teach me this tradition they have every Easter. I loved it and try to keep it up.
The Easter Feast and basket concludes the fasting during Lent, and the food that is to be blessed is shared on Easter morning. It is blessed with joy and gratitude. It’s also really rather special and makes a change from chocolate. There are several Polish stores around here so it’s not even hard to get hold of the various Polish foods and I enjoy taking myself off for a potter around them.
Today feeling a little cast adrift as always at Easter I texted and asked if I may go with her this year. I’ve no longer the pressures of Llamas my cafe to tend to after all. She was very welcoming. (I decided on this rather than the Vigil Mass tonight as Joseph has a stinking cold and is already exhausted. Shame because I do love the Vigil. My neighbours son and Joseph are close friends too so that helps).
Do you know that it’s been a while since I socialised and I think I struggled to find any words today. She didn’t seem to mind and we set about the baskets and made them pretty.
The original foods blessed were those prescribed for the Passover Meal; lamb, bread, wine and bitter herbs. Other foods have since been added which Christianised the blessing I guess and also adapted them to traditional Eastern European foods (a lot of pork!). And it certainly seems the list has grown significantly over time. Either way it feels somehow right for me to be able to invite Jewish and Christian together as I struggle to order my own faith and heritage in my own mind.
The basket is lined with white linen. Colourful ribbons are added to the handles and some sprigs of greenery.
The eggs are finished with transfers which are clever little sheets of shrink wrap you place around an egg before boiling it. They’re traditional beyond Poland of course and I bought mine from an Orthodox Russian shop online. I just like to make the eggs pretty to be honest.
The foods in the baskets have a symbolic meaning:
Maslo (butter) this is often shaped into a lamb or a cross. This reminds us of the goodness of Christ that we should also feel toward all things.
Babka (Easter bread) - a round loaf topped with a cross of a fish, symbolic of Jesus, who is our true bread of life.
Chrzan (horseradish with grated red beets) - symbolic of the passion of Christ still in our minds but sweetened with some sugar because of the Resurrection.
Ajka (eggs) and pisanki (decorated with the symbols of Easter, of life, of prosperity) - indicate new life and Christ's Resurrection from the tomb.
Kielbasa (sausage) - a spicy sausage of pork products, indicative of God's favour and generosity.
Szynka (ham) - symbolic of great joy and abundance. Some prefer lamb or veal. The lamb also reminds Catholics that the Risen Christ is the 'Lamb of God'.
Slonina (smoked bacon) - a symbol of the over-abundance of God's mercy and generosity
Sol (salt) - so necessary an element in our physical life, that Jesus used its symbolism:
You are the salt of the Earth.
Usually when I come back from the Vigil I light a candle on the table and decorate some branches with bits and bobs mostly purchased at Prinknash Abbey near Cheltenham.
I suspect the colourful display will lose its appeal as he moves into his teenage years. Who knows if I’ll keep it up. I just like to feel a connection with something. I like the details of tradition and think that God does too.
God is really good at the details. Nothing is lost to Him. I could write an entire week of emails about this day alone, could talk about how Jerusalem is often called Zion but it’s also Mount Moriah… built on the mountain where a father and son walked up up up before the son (who was not a little child by then, but a teenager or even possibly a man in his 20s/30s) allowed himself to be bound to the wood he himself had carried. Yes, this is where God told Abraham to sacrifice his only son, Isaac. This is where God provided a ram in Isaac’s place. This is the place Abrahram named “The LORD will provide.”4
A Happy Easter to all.
Christos Anesti
Xxx
Thanks for your quote! I still feel like an interloper and think I always will. If I might offer you some encouragement- at Mass this morning our Traditional priest told us about the parish he grew up in ( in the USA) and the photos of first communions on the school wall. They declined from 30 per year in the 1990s to a handful, or even none, now. Whereas in the Traditional (ICKSP) parish he is a part of they are going exactly the other way, starting from none to this year with over 10 so far and more in the pipeline. The world is changing and God is in charge, not the Pope or anyone else. So hang in there and happy Easter!
Beautiful. Thank you.
<<I said earlier that I lost my faith for a while. One of the reasons for this (there were several) was that wherever I went, whatever church I went into, I felt like I didn’t belong, I was a visitor or interloper, pretending to be someone I wasn’t. So I kept moving on, always searching for something I could never quite find.>> Are you sure those aren't my words? :-) And I thought that at last I had found a church where I thought I belonged -- Christ the King Anglican Church of Ocala, Florida. I was there for five years as a musician for three services, worship leader for one of them.
And then I was totally betrayed.
Today I feel like never again.