Passiontide

A week ago we celebrated Lætare Sunday, a burst of joy in the midst of Lent. This week, the week before Holy Week, we double-down on Lent. Traditionally, today’s Fifth Sunday of Lent marks the beginning of Passiontide, when we walk with Christ on the way to Jerusalem.

In the Ordinary Form this is no longer celebrated as a sort of sub-season of Lent, though it is still celebrated as such in both the Extraordinary Form and Benedictine calendars.

Even so, the character of these two weeks is subtly different from the preceding weeks. The idea of walking towards 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)

This week, we enter even more strongly into the desert with Christ. The images in our churches are veiled, and our liturgies begin to focus on the Lord’s Passion.

The custom of veiling the images is relatively modern, dating back to about the 17th century or so. 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)