Preparing for Lent and Easter 2012

[Southern Comfort]

Possibly not, given that Christ is risen? The symbolism of the Cross, the empty Cross, is peculiarly powerful. I think I said in another thread that Good Friday is not a Requiem Mass for Jesus, but a liturgy in which we move from a meditation on the Passion towards a celebration of Christ's victory over death.

But I am sure that there is room for a wide variety of tastes and opinions here.

[alan29]

Possibly not, given that Christ is risen? The symbolism of the Cross, the empty Cross, is peculiarly powerful. I think I said in another thread that Good Friday is not a Requiem Mass for Jesus, but a liturgy in which we move from a meditation on the Passion towards a celebration of Christ's victory over death.

But I am sure that there is room for a wide variety of tastes and opinions here.

Tell that to my PP who played a CD of the Pie Jesu from Andrew Lloyd Webbers Requiem during the veneration.

[NorthernTenor]

I don't think there's anything hard & fast about this. My own approach is that the liturgy of Holy Week and Easter Sunday is grounded in the events of the Passion. Our Lord was nailed to the cross on Good Friday; the veneration of a cross with the figure of Christ on it represents this to us, in the same way that an empty cross in procession on Easter Sunday (and other Sundays) proclaims the Risen Lord.

[NorthernTenor]

Well; that was a conversation-killer.

[John Ainslie]

...in the same way that an empty cross in procession on Easter Sunday (and other Sundays) proclaims the Risen Lord.

'Empty cross in procession'? Tell us more, NT. I like the idea, but I've never come across a processional cross in liturgical usage without a figure...

[Southern Comfort]

...in the same way that an empty cross in procession on Easter Sunday (and other Sundays) proclaims the Risen Lord.

'Empty cross in procession'? Tell us more, NT. I like the idea, but I've never come across a processional cross in liturgical usage without a figure...

Yes, you have. Think of Clifton Cathedral....

[festivaltrumpet]

One must presume that Northern Tenor is referring to a para-liturgical celebration taking place on Easter Sunday. Both the Institutio Generalis and the Cæremoniale Episcoporum presume that the liturgical processional cross is one upon which there is a corpus.

[NorthernTenor]

Whoops - I was thinking patrimony again! Comes of still singing Anglican, I guess (perhaps that would come under FT's "para-liturgical celebration" ). It seems a very natural idea to me. On Sundays we celebrate the Risen Lord - tho' that's not to suggest their should be no representation of Christ on the Cross, too, as we are also in the presence of the great sacrifice.