Holy Week at Home

Two weeks ago, at the beginning of the Luzon Lockdown, my nephew thought in advance and asked me

“Tita, what will happen to Holy Week? Will it also be locked down?”. I paused for a while and asked myself can one
really lock down an experience, especially a faith experience? Maybe a lot of us are sad as we approach Holy Week

as we usually look forward to

celebrate this week in its many traditional activities. Maybe some of us feel that like a thief
in the night, Jesus entered our lives and robbed us of our most important possessions as
church - our liturgies and rituals - especially in this most holy of weeks! Maybe most of us
feel lost, not just because of not being able to celebrate liturgies but because this crisis has
rocked the ground we are standing on!
A s we approach Holy Week, the churches remain closed, but only if we refer to Church as
a building. If we look at church as a community of believers living their faith, then no force
can lock that down. As we have perhaps experienced the past weeks, our faith is an inner
energy that keeps our hope alive and gives us also the love needed to be in solidarity with
others, especially with the most needy among us.
A crisis indeed has the capacity to help us us see things from a different perspective and
perhaps force us to do
things in a different way. If we cannot gather in the church, do we cease being church? When
there is no priest among us, can we celebrate a Holy Week liturgy? When we cannot
participate in Holy Week rituals, can we not experience Holy Week? When people risk their
own lives to serve others, isn’t that the most holy of acts? Is another form of liturgy
happening in the streets?
More than two thousand years ago, at the beginning of the Christian faith, believers gathered
in their homes - called house churches - to celebrate their faith, to listen to the teaching of
the apostles, to spend time in fellowship, to help the needy, to minister to one another. Now,
a crisis has brought us back to the beginning of the Christian Tradition. Perhaps, this crisis
T wo weeks ago, at the beginning of the Luzon Lockdown, my nephew
thought in advance and asked me
“Tita, what will happen to Holy
Week? Will it also be locked
down?”. I paused for a while and
asked myself can one really lock
down an experience, especially a
faith experience? Maybe a lot of us
are sad as we approach Holy Week
as we usually look forward to

HOLY WEEK AT HOME:

Liturgies in the Time of COVID
provides us a way of reinterpreting this tradition we have
received so that it continues to be relevant to our most
challenging times. From here on, being church, celebrating
liturgies, leading a faith community, becoming a faith
community, communion and mission will never be the
same again. This crisis, like any crisis, reshapes our
identity. We know we are at the threshold of something
new.
With this spirit, we at Bukal offer you some simple liturgies
that you can celebrate at home. We hope these can
supplement the online Eucharistic Celebrations we can
participate it. These home liturgies are short and
participatory. There is one for Palm Sunday, Holy
Thursday, and Black Saturday. We also tried different ways
of doing the reconciliation ritual, the traditional Pahalik sa
Krus, the Bisita Iglesia and the Stations of the Cross.
Hopefully these liturgies will provide a space to help you
encounter Jesus in a new way and help us live the faith as
individuals and as families right in our homes. Hopefully,
they will help us also reflect on this ongoing crisis and what
is God telling us through it. Hopefully, these home liturgies
bring us ‘out’ of our homes and into the hearts of our
extended family – our brothers and sisters and kababayans,
especially to the most needy among us.
“THE 10TH COMMANDMENT: THOU SHALL NOT
COVID THY NEIGHBORS’ GOODS!”
We laughed when someone mentioned this as we were thinking of a
title for these home liturgies. Indeed this sentence made us see that
what we are facing makes us innovate and find new and different
ways of praying and celebrating and missioning. We look forward to
celebrating Easter with you and we hope we keep connected online
and in our hearts