What's On?

This time of the year is one of the most exciting times of the year. It's the time when Maltese religious culture comes out fully alive to the wonder of the many tourists who happen to be around. Inside churches, celebrations come to life as they make an exception and take a different approach where colours, ornaments, flowers and an unusually high dose of emotions take place.

Holy Week commences with the procession of Id-Duluri. The procession with the statue of the Virgin Mary of Sorrows is held on the Friday, two days before Palm Sunday. People pace and pray, some walking through the way barefoot. On that day, many devoted people fast, literally on bread and water, to join in a tangible mode in the sorrows of the Blessed Virgin.

On Palm Sunday the people convene in a chapel in the vicinity of each parish church. The celebrant blesses palm fronds and olive branches with holy water, then, after incensing them, distributes them to the congregation. This is done to recall and represent in dramatic form the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jeruslamen before His death. Afterwards, the fronds and olives are taken home and placed in a prominent place to ward off evil.

The people gather again in church on Maundy Thursday in the evening. At the end of mass, the celebrant carries the Blessed Sacrament from the high altar to the Altar of Repose, locally known as Is-Sepulkru. The Altar of Repose is lighted by row upon row of candles, each rising from a multitude of spring flowers and plates of sprouting grain. It is a very popular tradition that people from every rank and class, in couples or in groups, visit Is-Sepulkru to pray. As there is beautiful Altar of Repose in every church and chapel, many make it a point to visit not one but seven altars, reciting prayers intermittently as they move from one church to another.

The most sought after event of Holy Week is the procession on Good Friday. The main attraction are seven life-size tableaux representing the principal moments of the passion and death of Jesus: Christ at Gethsemane; The Scourging at the Pillar; The Crowning with Thorns; The Fall with the Cross; The Crucifixion; The Procession to the Tomb; and Our Lady of Sorrows. The statues are papier mache` models, most of them richly dressed in velvet clothes, just like those in Seville.

St. George's Parish in Victoria has kept the traditional Maltese format of the Good Friday procession for generations, with the participation of 'Fratellanza' and with various chain bearers following the statues. The chain bearers, usually men disguised in hoods, drag chains attached to their heels as an act of penance or for a vow that they might have pledged. The statue of Our lady of Sorrows is carried at the end of the procession with numerous devotees following behind.

Other Gozitan parishes also portray their own form of Good Friday procession. Worth mentioning for the spectacular atmosphere created are those of Xaghra, Nadur and Xewkija parishes, with the latter regularly displayed on Friday preceding Good Friday.

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