Maundy Thursday
It's Maundy Thursday and I find myself alone this year. Last year I had Polifemo; on each of the two years before I had jessicaem; before her, I had fellow students from the University, and even before that a Hindu friend came with me (I believe that was 2003) as I participated in the solemn liturgy of this evening and then made my rounds to the stational churches. I've always managed to get a substitute for family on these days, but not this year. I have run out of those whom I can oblige to keep vigil with me. Lucy might join me for part of Good Friday's services, but--for the rest--I am alone. It will be rather hard leaving the festival Mass at St. John's on Sunday to come home to this empty apartment.
My lack of close friends, friends who are like me and whom I see regularly, is painfully felt.
It has always been hard on me--even long before I was Catholic--to forebear secular society on these days. Even when I was very young, I had a profound sense of the sacredness of these days and took it almost as a personal insult that there wasn't a more visible cessation of silly mortal affairs. I know I'd surely go mad in a country that wasn't Christian. Or even Western Christian--I don't know how I'd manage around all those Old Calendarists.
My lack of close friends, friends who are like me and whom I see regularly, is painfully felt.
It has always been hard on me--even long before I was Catholic--to forebear secular society on these days. Even when I was very young, I had a profound sense of the sacredness of these days and took it almost as a personal insult that there wasn't a more visible cessation of silly mortal affairs. I know I'd surely go mad in a country that wasn't Christian. Or even Western Christian--I don't know how I'd manage around all those Old Calendarists.