Passiontide
This evening our Lenten pilgrimage enters into a new phase. Traditionally, this Sunday marks the beginning of Passiontide, when we walk with Christ on the way to Jerusalem.
Since the liturgical changes of the 1970s, this is no longer celebrated as a sort of sub-season of Lent. Even so, the character of these two weeks is subtly different from the preceding weeks. The idea of walking to the passion is still very much in evidence.
By your help, we beseech you, Lord our God,
may we walk eagerly in that same charity
with which, out of love for the world,
your Son handed himself over to death.(Collect for the Fifth Sunday of Lent)
There is a relatively modern custom, dating back to about the 17th century, of veiling all of the crosses and statues of a church on this day. These veils remain until Easter.
When I say “modern”, of course, I mean as applying to the Universal Church. In various localities, the veiling was practiced as early as the 9th Century. In medieval Germany, a cloth known as the Hungertuch or Fastentuch hid the altar during Lent and was not removed until the reading of the Passion at the words “the veil of the temple was rent in two.”
The veiling of crosses and images is a sort of “fasting” from sacred depictions which represent the paschal glory of our salvation. Just as the Lenten fast concludes with the Paschal feast, so too, our fasting from the cross culminates in a veneration of the holy wood on which the sacrifice of Calvary was offered for our sins. Likewise, a fasting from the glorious images of the mysteries of faith and the saints in glory, culminates on the Easter night with a renewed appreciation of the glorious victory won by Christ, risen from the tomb to win for us eternal life.
(United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, BCL Newsletter, March 2006)
I’ve never actually been in a parish that kept this custom, which like so many other pious customs fell out of favour in the 1970s. Imagine how it would deepen the impact of the rite of unveiling the cross on Good Friday!
Let us continue to take up our cross (veiled or not!) and follow Christ as he rides toward His triumphant entry into Jersusalem, and then to His Passion.