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Good Friday commemorates the death and burial of Jesus and is the most solemn fast day of the year.
For some Christians, the evening of Holy Saturday begins the great Easter Vigil, a lengthy service containing twelve readings and canticles, baptisms, confirmations, and the first Eucharist of the Easter season concluding in the early morning hours of Easter Sunday. The traditional Protestant celebration begins with a sunrise service Easter morning.
Easter Sunday begins the commemoration of Jesus’ resurrection which will extend until Pentecost for a total of fifty days. This year’s Easter date causes a rare but significant juxtaposition within the Christian Calendar; the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin—the date that commemorates the archangel Gabriel announcing to the Blessed Virgin her pregnancy—which is celebrated on March 25, falls on Good Friday. John Donne (Anglican poet and priest) poignantly captures the juxtaposition of the young mother expecting new life and the older mother watching her son die on the cross in his poem “Upon the Annunciation and Passion falling on one day” written in 1608.
TAMELY, frail body, abstain to-day ; to-day
My soul eats twice, Christ hither and away.
She sees Him man, so like God made in this,
That of them both a circle emblem is,
Whose first and last concur ; this doubtful day
Of feast or fast, Christ came, and went away ;
She sees Him nothing, twice at once, who's all ;
She sees a cedar plant itself, and fall ;
Her Maker put to making, and the head
Of life at once not yet alive, yet dead ;
She sees at once the Virgin Mother stay
Reclused at home, public at Golgotha ;
Sad and rejoiced she's seen at once, and seen
At almost fifty, and at scarce fifteen ;
At once a son is promised her, and gone ;
Gabriell gives Christ to her, He her to John ;
Not fully a mother, she's in orbity ;
At once receiver and the legacy.
All this, and all between, this day hath shown,
Th' abridgement of Christ's story, which makes one—
As in plain maps, the furthest west is east—
Of th' angels Ave, and Consummatum est.
How well the Church, God's Court of Faculties,
Deals, in sometimes, and seldom joining these.
As by the self-fix'd Pole we never do
Direct our course, but the next star thereto,
Which shows where th'other is, and which we say
—Because it strays not far—doth never stray,
So God by His Church, nearest to him, we know,
And stand firm, if we by her motion go.
His Spirit, as His fiery pillar, doth
Lead, and His Church, as cloud ; to one end both.
This Church by letting those days join, hath shown
Death and conception in mankind is one ;
Or 'twas in Him the same humility,
That He would be a man, and leave to be ;
Or as creation He hath made, as God,
With the last judgment but one period,
His imitating spouse would join in one
Manhood's extremes ; He shall come, He is gone ;
Or as though one blood drop, which thence did fall,
Accepted, would have served, He yet shed all,
So though the least of His pains, deeds, or words,
Would busy a life, she all this day affords.
This treasure then, in gross, my soul, uplay,
And in my life retail it every day.
Source:
Donne, John. Poems of John Donne. vol I.
E. K. Chambers, ed.
London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1896. 170-171.
첫댓글 thank you.
감사합니다..^^