Pascha

A 2008 Easter Vatican first-day-cover. Credits to William.

Pascha?

It means Easter in Latin...

As you know it, Easter was last Sunday, which marks the end of Holy Week...

Holy Week is the last week of Lent, the week in which Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday are celebrated...

It began last Tuesday, when the Chrism Mass was celebrated in the Church of St. Francis Xavier, PJ...it is trditionally celebrated on Holy Thursday(but it was celebrated on Tuesday this year) to commemorate the Last Supper Jesus had with with disciples before his crucifixion...

The archbishop who presided over the Mass...a little blurr...not enough light...

See all those people wearing white over there? All of them are priests...

The archbishop consecrating the Chrism oil, which will be used for my Confirmation next year...

The Chrism oil in those two containers after consecration...

And recently the church had a renovation...they built a new roof and ceiling...

The new ceiling

The ceiling above the altar

Another angle

The top row is the altar and the bottom row is the entire hall with the main doors at the far end...compare the pics...before renovation, on the left(taken in December 2008) and after renovation, on the right...nice right?

A stain glass in the church depicting Mother Mary and a few other saints

And then the next event of Holy Week was on Friday, Good Friday...my dad and I only went to the Church of St. Thomas More, the church which I regularly go to...my mum didn't go because she has back problems and she can't be sitting for too long...

Went there at about 7 p.m. for the Way of the Cross(Via Crucis) prayer and Mass...it lasted til about 10 o'clock...the Mass was quite long as there was the narrative of the Passion according to the Gospel of John(the entire story of Jesus' crucifixion) and the veneration of the crucifix...and then we bought some hot cross buns after church...the next event coming up is.....Easter!

The altar in my church...note the crucifix covered with purple cloth for Good Friday...can't really see clearly...

Here's a clearer picture...taken from Wikipedia...

And on Easter Sunday, my whole family went to the Church of Divine Mercy in Shah Alam...went to three churches within a week...not something done very often...anyway, my grandmother also came along because she was officially becoming Catholic...before this she was baptised in an AOG church...so she didn't have to go for baptism again...she was officially accepted into the Catholic Church and she took Holy Communion on Easter...and she's also going to receive her Confirmation soon...so now she's officially Catholic...didn't take many pictures of the Mass because there wasn't enough time...

My grand mother, wearing white, sitting beside my mother

Grandmum

The altar in the Church of Divine Mercy

The Resurrection

That's all for Holy Week...both Holy week and the season of Lent ended as Easter begun...

God bless all of you!!!

~Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song. --- Pope John Paul II~