**63. The celebration of the Lord’s passion is to take place in the afternoon, at about three o’clock. For pastoral reasons, an appropriate time will be chosen in order to allow the people to assemble more easily, for example, shortly after midday or in the late evening, however not later than nine o’clock. [67]**
Does this happen at your church, or is the service held at other times. For example, we have one at noon, at 7:00, both English, and one at 8:00 for Spanish.
Catholic Ping!
Ours
Friday, April 2
9:00am Morning Prayer
12:00pm Ecumenical Service
3:00pm Celebration of the Lord’s Passion
7:30pm Stations of the Cross
Our church begins with the 7 last words and Stations at 11:00 a.m.; then we have the Mercy Novena at 3:00 and Mass at 7:30. I lead a very sheltered life; I don’t know what the rest of the Churches in our Diocese (Galveston/Houston)are doing but suffice it to say, practically no one will be at work tomorrow.
We have Holy Thursday Mass this evening at 7:30; we were at Church last night for Confession, (it was SRO with 4 priests hearing confessions). We’ll have Easter Vigil Mass at 7:30 Saturday Night.
Actually, as my wife and I were discussing, here in Texas, Easter has slowly but surely become a bigger deal than Christmas. And.........it’s driving the Atheists NUTS! Bwahahahahahah!
Part of the reason I think is the strength of this Diocease; the growing strength and presence of both the Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches here; the near complete merger of the Roman Catholic with the “Episcopalian” Churches and a developing closeness between the “European” (we have lots of German/Italian/Anglo/Hispanic) Roman Catholic communities/Parishes and both the African-American Roman Catholic and the African-American Protestant communities/Parishes.
12:00 service with veneration, followed by indoor stations of the cross.
1:45 outdoor stations of the cross with music, procession, liturgical dancers, readers, actors, ushers, props. As Joe Biden would say, it’s a BFD (um, Big Friday Deal), lasting about 1 1/2 hours, so it does cover the 3:00 traditional time-frame.
7:00 evening service.
Our family goes to the afternoon extravaganza. Our kids actually are quite moved by it, even though it is long. True, we do get them out of school early to attend it, so that is a motivator, but they really do have some prayerful reflection and participation while they are there. My husband was a “Roman soldier” for a couple of years until he had to tell the organizers that he just couldn’t bring himself to stand there in public scourging “Christ” anymore, even if it was just pantomime.
We only have one at 3.
Ours starts at 3 pm.
Service begins at 3 pm sharp. Confessions, though, begin at noon.