Maundy Thursday.

I had forgotten from where the word “Maundy” came. According to the minister at the local Anglican church, it comes from the Latin for “command” — mandatum. Which got anglicized into “maundy”… which should come as no surprise to those who know what the English have done with other foreign words they encountered. “Marie le Bon” became Marlybone … the Italian cities of Firenze and Livorno became Florence and Leghorn. So mandatum/Maundy … sure.

Anyway.

Maundy Thursday is when Easter weekend really gets cranked up. So,  having the night off, I went over to the Anglican church to see what they were up to.

I had been to the same church for a candlelight service on Christmas Eve. So I knew how to get there. A 15-minute walk on a not-so-hot night.

Christmas Eve was familiar. Aside from the few carols I didn’t recognize.

This event was less familiar.

When I was a kid, Maundy Thursday was when confirmands took their first communion. That made it a fairly upbeat situation.

The tenor here was different. It had no special congregational event tied to it and, instead,  it was a sober, forward-looking event to Good Friday. Which is the gloomiest day on the Christian calendar, of course.

Some interesting flourishes.

The two ministers, taking from the Biblical description of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet before the Last Supper,  washed each other’s feet and then went into the congregation, carrying a little tub and a towel, and washed the feet of some regular folks — mostly those who were wearing sandals, it appeared. Haven’t seen that before.

The sermon was about the origination of the Last Supper/communion, which is what makes Maundy Thursday interesting, on the church calendar. But, as I mentioned, the minister approached it as a foreshadowing of a long and rough night for Jesus, Gethsemane, meetings with the Sanhedrin, King Herod and Pilate, culminating with his crucifixion in about 18 hours.

The main minister is interesting. He reads a Gospel lesson as if he were Olivier doing the St. Crispin’s Day Speech from Shakespeare’s Henry V. Makes it all sound even more important.

I don’t know if he was born with what seems to me to be a fairly posh accent, but he has one now. It’s like the Queen is speaking. Quite. So.

During the service, during a reading, the sundown call to prayer was chanted at the mosque next door. Those are amplified by speakers, so we could hear it quite clearly, inside the church.

At the end of the service,  the lights were turned off … and the altar cleared. Candle-holders, the cloths that drape the altar. When it was bare (which it will remain till Easter Sunday, I assume), the ministers went out, and the congregation filed out after.

Interesting.

Again, had issues with the hymns. Of the six, I knew one. Apparently, English hymns just stopped making it over the Atlantic around 1900 or so. If not for “Amazing Grace,” they would have pitched a hymn-recognition shutout at me.

What makes it a bit tougher is that they don’t hand out hymnals with music. The congregation gets small books that have the lyrics … but no music. And Lutherans, at the least, expect to have their hymns with music, so even if we don’t know the tune we can follow along, reading the notes.

(Might just be a Lutheran thing. Martin Luther was crazy about hymns.)

The church is fairly small, and 75 people filled it fairly well,  I found it interesting that at least half the people there were from the subcontinent. I know about the millions of Hindus and Muslims in India, even some Catholics, but I didn’t know about Indian Anglicans.

Three-hour Good Friday service tomorrow. Two services on Sunday. Busy weekend for the church.

So, again, it was nice. And everyone couldn’t be more polite. I’m glad I went. All these sorts of things seem more meaningful when you’re in a country where Christians form a small minority.