It is Easter Monday. In Rome and all over Italy, everything is pretty much closed up for what they call “Pasquetta” (Little Easter) and also “Lunedì dell’Angelo” (Angel Monday), which calls to mind the exchange between the angel and the women at the empty tomb.
They shut down everything the day after Christmas and the day after Pentecost too.
In any event, we are in the Octave of Easter!
We still use the beautiful Sequence. Here’s what it sounds like in my native place, at my home parish. In the chant version (I am one of the schola, btw) note well the fine dynamics and phrasing. The Cantor at St. Agnes in St. Paul, Paul LeVoir, is quite simply one of the best singers of Gregorian chant I’ve ever heard. I owe a lot to him.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Loading ...
When my father and my uncle came back from WWII, they opened a small grocery store/butcher shop that catered to the Polish community where we lived. The store was always closed for Easter Monday (Dyngus Day). I still remember helping my Dad make extra large batches of home made fresh Polska Kielbasa in anticipation of the two great Holy Days. It wasn’t uncommon for us to crank out over 1,000 pounds of the stuff, prior to both Christmas and Easter.
I also remember when the priests from our ethnic Polish parish, St. Mary of Ostrabrama, would visit the house on Holy Saturday and would bless the Easter food. My mom always had a small card table set up in the corner of the living room (we called it the parlor). On it would be the ham, the kielbasa, butter sticks formed into a cross with five cloves inserted, as well as a Lamb cake (with “wool” made from coconut shavings), Easter eggs and red horse radish. The custom with the eggs and horse radish was that anyone who came over on Easter Sunday to either eat or just visit would have to take and eat a piece of Easter egg with horse radish – thereby celebrating the Resurrection, but also remembering the bitter Passion.
Thank you LarryW2LJ for sharing such a beautiful memory. My memory of Pasquetta is of growing up in rural Northern Italy where on this day we would walk (no one had cars) to the shrine of the Madonna della Rocca (literally a huge high hill that was more like a rock with a beautiful church dedicated to Mary on it, Our Rock), after attending Mass, we would have a picnic on the hill and have the specially made focaccia cake. Great traditions and memories!