Greek Style Good Friday
April 17
I am sitting in bed watching yet another film about Jesus. That makes around five or six, I would say, that have been on over the last 24 hours. I even got to watch a movie about St. Paul while eating in a fast food restaurant. Greeks are BIG on holy week.
Today was spent visiting lots and lots of churches. It is Greece, and Holy Week, and I am with a theology student and a priest/theology professor, so what can I expect to be doing? I visited St. Demetrius and Hagia Sophia, and the church of St. Gregory of Palamas. My favourite was St. Greogory;s, as teh animated cantoring amused me, but was also very well sung.
In the evening, churches were packed for Good Friday services. I ran into a marching band and crowds of people on the street at about five, well before any services would have started, I thought, but it was already a procession through the streets with the shroud, surrounded by military, priests, schoolgirls in uniform, and women in regional traditional costume. I have videos and canàt wait to show them. As the procession passed by the very commercial parts of town, shop workers came to their doors, stood reverently, and crossed themselves as the shroud was carried past them. Definitely a first for me to see this degree of popular and outward expression of piety. That being said, teh stores WERE open for business.
Later in teh night, there were many processions and marching bands on intersecting streets, and it was a veritable zoo at times, with people running from one street to the next to catch different processions. People stood on their balconies with candles lit to watch as the band and the shroud and the thousands of people walked by.
Tags: Greece
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