How We're Doing Holy Week

Well, emotions for me are very high right now. I'm currently jamming out to soundtracks from various musicals to distract myself from the creeping depression I'm feeling from not being able to go to mass this week.

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I think this is probably the best visual representation for this Lent.

It's so strange, because it's something I'm genuinely struggling with, yet I feel God moving through my life very strongly right now as well, more strongly than I have in a long time. I feel like He's doing something with this-- or at least, I have hope that He is.

Anyway, in the meantime we're stuck away from church and Jesus right now (at least Mass), so here's what we're doing to keep the season holy at home this year.

Palm Sunday

Trust me, I did the bare minimum of sewing on these. 

I actually started preparations for it on the Saturday before by cutting and hemming shrouds for our statues and holy pictures out of an old light purple bed sheet I bought for a Halloween costume from a thrift store years ago (once in a great while, being a packrat comes in handy).

I put these up the next morning before we started our 'home church', and they'll stay up through Holy Week. 

It's actually a little unsettling how ghostly the statues look.

Then I set up our home altar; a coffee table placed on top of our entertainment center and draped with a bed sheet, a red dish towel, and some wide red and gold Christmas ribbon I had in my craft stash. 

On top of that, we placed some candles and a branch from a bush brought over by my in-laws a few days before, and we attached a few coloring pages the kids did on top of the TV. 

We didn't have access to palms (which, not going to lie, not having to deal with toddlers waving those things around and poking me in the face with them in a pew was one of the very few silver linings to not getting to go to church yesterday), but I still really wanted to keep the opening procession aspect of Palm Sunday with the kids.

I cut a couple banana leaves from a tree in our yard and tied them with some of that Christmas ribbon.

We read the story of the triumphal entry into Jerusalem from a children's bible, and then walked down and placed the leaves on our gate. 

Then we came back in and read the first two mass readings, the psalm, and an account of Christ's passion from the children's bible (the gospel reading from Matthew seemed much too long to ask little ones (ages 4 and 2) to sit through in our living room). We prayed for a few intentions, said an Our Father, made a spiritual communion, and that was it. 

We let the kids go play while Chris and I took down the altar, made breakfast, and watched the local broadcast mass from our bishop. 

All things considered, I think it went alright. There was a point where my children decided to stand on their heads on the couch and then dramatically fall on top of each other, and my youngest decided to crawl around on the floor  impersonating a kitty cat for some weird reason halfway through, but there were no temper tantrums and we more or less got things back on track. 

The Rest of the Week (Or, at least Triddum and Easter)

Holy Thursday-

We started the tradition last year of doing a Seder-ish meal at home. I don't try to replicate all of the aspects and traditions, but I do try to serve lamb or cabrito (goat) with hummus and some matzoh I make with the kids. We talk about what Jesus ate at the Last Supper, and what the significance of Passover was/is. It seemed to go over really well last year,

We don't currently have any goat or lamb in the house though, so if we can't manage to get some by this Thursday (an odyssey that will involve Chris driving 30-45 minute drive into town, a LOT of hand sanitizer, and him wearing a mask if we pull it off) I'll sub in something involving ground beef and parsley (both stuff I already have on hand). It'll be even less "authentic," but hopefully it'll still work as a conversation starter and as a reminder.

This year, we're planning on watching The Prince of Egypt in the afternoon before we eat. I'm hoping it will help teach the Passover story to the kids and be spiritually edifying.

 It's also one of the top five animated movies of all time, so it's totally worth watching for its own sake.  

Good Friday- 

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I'm planning on doing Stations of the Cross with my husband, and I'll have a children's book of the Stations and some appropriate coloring sheets available for the kids while we pray, and we'll explain the significance of what we're doing at a level the kids can understand.

I'd also really like to keep off of screens that whole day (no phones, TV, or computer) for me and the kids, but I'm going to have to run that by Chris before I commit to it. I think we could pull it off though...I suppose we'll see ((gulp)).

It'll definitely be penitential. 

We contacted our parish priest and asked if we could have adoration in a parking lot or something for the parish during the course of Holy Week, and that somehow morphed into the Church being open for adoration this Good Friday from 3-4, so long as we can promise at least one person will be in there the whole time. My sister-in-law in the city is lucky enough to live near a parish that's kept it's doors open for adoration (though not for mass) throughout this thing, so her and her family will probably make a holy hour that day too (or at least a few holy minutes, depending on how their kids do). 

Holy Saturday-

Well, I'll be doing a LOT of baking. Since we can't see family, we're planning on doing a 'goodie swap' where we'll all deliver food to each other's houses to celebrate. There's this obnoxiously pretty braided Easter egg bread thing I've made with varying degrees of success in years past that I'll probably do a couple of this year for that. 

I saw an idea in a book for making a paschal candle at home. If Chris makes it out of the house to get stuff for the Seder meal, I'll also have him pick up one of those plain white column candles, sort of like one of these...

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and we'll put the symbols on it and light it and pray in candlelight before supper. I'm not sure what the prayer will be yet though (maybe part of the antiphon from vigil mass?). Suggestions appreciated! 

Supper is going to be 'party food' (chips, dip, popcorn, wings, etc), and we'll set up their little picnic table in the living room and watch The Miracle Maker  (in my opinion, one of the best 'Jesus movies' ever made) as a family while we eat. 

We'll read the account of Mary Magdalene discovering the risen Christ at the tomb for their bedtime story that night, and I'll take all the shrouds off the pictures and statues after they go to bed, and set up the altar for our home church the next morning.

Easter Sunday- 

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I've managed to store away some odds and ends for Easter baskets, so I'll set those out for the kids to find when they wake up. 

We'll do our 'home church', making sure that we sing Alleluia, and then probably turn on the mass from our local cathedral as we eat breakfast.

Sometime during the morning after all that, we might make the drive into town and drop off baked goods for family.

In the afternoon, we'll dye Easter eggs together and make resurrection rolls (basically any bread roll recipe wrapped around an marshmallow dunked in butter and cinnamon sugar and baked as normal. Surprisingly easy and tasty, and the marshmallow vanishes during baking, leaving an empty 'tomb' in the middle of the roll), and for supper we'll have a ham that we've been saving in our freezer for awhile with some nice sides. 

And...that'll be it for Easter.

Pentecost this year, however, is going to be AWESOME. I'm thinking huge family get-together, big white paper birds flying everywhere, maybe set something on fire, the works. 

Assuming we can go to Church again by then. 

If you'd like some more ideas for celebrating Holy Week at home, Haley Steward over at Carrots for Michaelmas has written this lovely blog post with some fantastic ideas.