Churches prep for Easter holiday
Easter, a major holiday of the Christian faith, means extra preparation for Butler County churches to get ready for their celebrations.
At St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in Butler, preparation for Easter began immediately after the end of the Maundy Thursday worship service.
St. Mark’s pastor, the Rev. David M. Phillips, said, “After the dismissal, when everybody gets up and leaves in silence, the altar guild strips off the purple paraments, or the liturgical hangings, on and around the altar, pulpit and lectern.
“Black paraments for Good Friday hang off the front of the pulpit and lectern. The processional cross and torches are taken from the altar and stored in the narthex,” said Phillips. A black cloth is draped over the large altar cross as well.
Phillips said, “We also have a large wooden cross we bring in before Ash Wednesday. We drape it with a long, purple sash for all of Lent. We change it to a black sash on Good Friday.”
The paraments are changed from black to white during Saturday’s Easter Vigil worship service. The black cloth is removed from the wooden cross. The processional cross and torches are brought back to the altar during Easter Sunday’s processional.
Pastor Katie McNeal of St. John Lutheran Church in Mars, said the interior of her church also is stripped of color for the 7 p.m. Good Friday worship service.
“It’s typically bare for Good Friday,” McNeal said. “It’s meant for the reading of the Passion, Jesus being tried.”
On Saturday, McNeal said her church has a 7 p.m. vigil service with Holy Communion beginning at 7 p.m. Because the Easter vigil service goes to the Resurrection, the church is decorated in white for this service.
“During the vigil service, we read different stories from Scripture, beginning with the creation and we end at the Resurrection,” McNeal said.
The Resurrection celebration continues Sunday with a community Easter sunrise service sponsored by the Mars Ministerium at 6:30 a.m. in the Veterans Pavilion in Adams Township.
St. John Lutheran will have a 9 a.m. worship service Sunday. “Everyone is welcome at any point to join the church observances and celebration,” said McNeal.
“We’ll keep the white for seven weeks to hold onto the Easter spirit,” McNeal said of the church’s paraments.
The altar cloths at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in Evans City will be changed, but parishioners also will be checking that the 6-foot-tall wooden cross the church has been custodian of for the past year is ready for the annual Good Friday cross walk.
A longtime tradition in Evans City, the community cross walk is hosted by four churches — St. Peter’s; St. John’s United Church of Christ, Evans City; Crestview Community Church, Callery; and Westminster Presbyterian Church, Evans City.
“Some form of this has been going on for as long as the congregation can remember,” said St. Peter’s pastor, the Rev. Brandon Johns.
The cross takes two to three people to carry it, he said, and bearers take turns carrying it along the route.
“It starts at noon. We begin at St. Peter’s,” he said. “We walk down the Mars-Evans City Road to the Gospel Life Church where we will stop to sing and pray.
“Then we head to Main Street to the magistrate’s office where we stop to sing and pray,” said Johns.
After two more stops, one at NexTier Bank and one at Westminster Presbyterian Church, the walkers and the cross arrive at St. John’s United Church of Christ for a Good Friday worship service. The cross will be housed at St. John’s for the next year.
The cross walk is symbolic, said Johns.
“On Good Friday, Jesus was condemned to death on the cross. He had to carry part of his cross on his way out to where he was crucified, Golgotha,” he said. “He told his disciples to take up their own crosses.
“We are literally following in the footsteps of Jesus, and we see it as a way of sharing God’s love to the world. It’s a reminder to the community that God loves them. That’s what it comes down to,” Johns said.
Following in the footsteps of Jesus also takes place on Maundy Thursday in All Saints Parish, according to Cindy Cusic Micco, communications director of the Butler parish that includes St. Andrew, St. Conrad, St. Michael the Archangel, St. Peter and St. Paul Roman Catholic churches.
During the 4 p.m. Thursday Mass of Lord’s Supper at St. Conrad, the Rev. Kevin Fazio washed the feet of 12 parishioners who volunteered to take part.
“That’s what Jesus did at the Last Supper,” said Sister Teresa Baldi, director of faith formation for the parish.
“At the end of the Mass, everything will be taken off the altar,” Micco said. “There will be a period of quiet prayer in the church.”
On Good Friday, there was a service featuring the Stations of the Cross at 1 p.m. at St. Paul.
The Stations of the Cross is a series of images depicting Jesus Christ on the day of his crucifixion and accompanying prayers. The objective of the stations is to help the Christian faithful to make a spiritual pilgrimage through contemplation of the Passion of Christ.
Micco said at each of a series of 14 images depicting the path of Jesus to the Crucifixion, worshippers stop to pray and reflect on each station.
There were also services at 1:30 p.m. at St. Paul, 2 p.m. at St. Conrad and 7 p.m. at St. Michael the Archangel. “This is the only day when there are no Masses because Good Friday is not a day of celebration,” she said.
There was a “Blessing of the Easter Baskets” at noon Saturday at St. Conrad, and St. Paul hosted a 7 p.m. Saturday vigil service, said Baldi. “That’s when we light the new Pascal Easter candle.”
Finally, on Easter Sunday there will be Masses celebrated at 8 a.m. at St. Peter, 8:30 a.m. at St. Conrad, 9 a.m. at St. Michael the Archangel, 10 a.m. at St. Paul, 11 a.m. at St. Andrew and 11:30 a.m. at St. Conrad.
View more photos of Friday’s Cross Walk below:
