However, punctuating that period, as if out of nowhere, is the festal white of Maundy Thursday. From an emotive perspective, it always feels a bit like coming up for a bit of light and a deep breath before the plunge of the stripped altars and somber tones of Good Friday, not to mention the quiet of most of Holy Saturday.
White, of course, makes manifest sense when you consider that Maundy Thursday marks the institution of the Mass and the Eucharist, but to my mind, what I have always appreciated about this particular day are those white vestments which are not forgetful of where we are in liturgical time. We are not in a regular day of festal joy nor is it yet Easter; instead, we are in the period of the calm before the storm.
From a vestural perspective, this can be a challenging balance to strike, but some excellent approaches have indeed been made, the very most striking approach of which are the so-called 'Arma Christi' vestments; vestments featuring symbols and images of the Passion and Death of Christ. To my mind, these are the most ideal sorts of vestments for this particular day because while they give us the white aspect the liturgy demands, they do not fail to acknowledge where we are at in the overall narrative of liturgical time.
To help inspire a resurrection (no pun intended) of this type of vestment today, I thought I would share a couple of examples that have come across my desk over the years.
Our first is a chasuble coming out of the Cistercian Abbey of Zwetti located in Austria. This particular chasuble is dated to the second half of the eighteenth century and features all of the symbols one would expect such as the cock that crowed at Peter's betrayal, the twenty pieces of silver paid to Judas, the various instruments of the Passion, as well as depictions of Christ's piercings and the chalice (often depicted as collecting the Blood of Christ, thus bringing in those Eucharistic connotations).
 |
| © Institute for Conservation and Restoration, University of Applied Arts, Vienna |
Another such example comes from the Latin rite church within Lviv, Ukraine; it too contains the various instruments of the Passion, as well as a full figured image of Christ after his scourging and mocking; "Ecce homo" as Pontius Pilate declared to the seething mob; "behold the man."
Now, if the Arma Christi variety of chasuble is not to your own particular tastes and liking, another option for this day could be that taken by famed gothic revivalist and Watts & Co. founder, G.F. Bodley, who, in 1882, produced this beautiful chasuble (in what the English tend to call the "continental shape") that features a wide y-orphrey with a full figured embroidery of Christ crucified upon the cross. To this have been added Tree of Life elements in form of lilies and other flowers -- a wonderful nod to the life-giving power that comes from the Passion and Death of Christ as well as a nod to Easter and the Resurrection.
 |
| Chasuble, 1882, G. F. Bodley (Hoare Gallery, Liverpool) |
We wish all of our readers a very blessed and profitable Easter Triduum.
-------
