The Funeral of Christ in the Holy Sepulcher

Most Catholics will be familiar with the multi-part reading of the Passion Gospel during the liturgies of Holy Week in the Roman Rite. In previous centuries all throughout Europe, elaborately staged, mimetic enactments of the Passion took place in and out of the liturgy, but especially during the Gospel of the Liturgy of the Presanctified.

The Good Friday Procession for the Burial of Our Lord survived in the Rite of Braga, even after the general adoption of the Roman Rite and the various Tridentine prohibitions regarding these florid Passion dramas of the Middle Ages. The ceremony has also survived in the Holy Sepulcher by a similar accommodation.

For the liturgy of Good Friday, the Tridentine Missal prescribed the three-part recitation of John’s Gospel, and nothing more. The Franciscans of the Holy Sepulcher faithfully adopted the Tridentine reforms, but preserved the Funeral of Christ (Processio funebris Feria IV in Parasceve) by transferring it out of the Liturgy of the Presanctified to the evening of Good Friday.

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