LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH. 333 years ago, quite close to this tomb, by a king of Jerusalem; when it is after eighteen hundred years of useless leagues and plots, that one hears them resounding on the same spot, like a shout of triumph; when one has lived one's self in an age of iniquity, when the efforts to break and to cast off the yoke of the Lord and his Christ have been more violent, more obstinate, more artful, than those of all preceding ages, and yet quite as vain ; when, like me, one has witnessed the last leagues, the last plots; when one has seen the rulers of the earth bent on putting an end to the worship of the Most High, and how the Lord has laughed at their designs, and spoken to them in his wrath-then say, my friend, if it is possible to suppress those feelings which seize the soul, which sway, transport, and ravish it. After this astonishing succession of thoughts and emotions, so rapid and so various, produced by the psalms of the office of the Darkness, it would seem at first, that the powers of the soul must be in a manner exhausted,' and that, wholly absorbed, it could not be susceptible of any feeling more intense, more sad, more soothing. Yet what a new, what a still more energetic and more powerful action is soon exercised upon it, by the Lamentations of the most touching of the prophets of Israel, whose moanful complaints the Church associates with the canticles of David! It was a very ancient custom with the Hebrews to deplore, in funeral songs, public and private misfortunes ; the death of kings, princes, warriors, heroes, or great calamities, inflicted by Heaven upon the Jewish cities and nation. Several instances of this kind are to be 334 LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH. found in the prophets; nay, it is very rarely that the denunciation of the evils with which they threaten the people is not followed by complaints of this sort, or by songs of lamentation on the fate of those who are about to be visited with the chastisements of Heaven. But, by the gravity of his effusions or predictions; by the excessive grief which he expresses; by the vehemence and energy of his lamentations; by the feeling which animates the most trivial of his phrases; by the beauty, the grandeur, of the images; by the truth of the delineations; by the compassion, the pity, the terror, the hope, which they excite― Jeremiah seizes more forcibly upon the soul than any of the others, stirs it, troubles it, terrifies it, softens it, afflicts it, casts it down, raises it up, soothes it, and, without any of those ingenious means which art furnishes, and which rather betray the weakness than reveal the talent of man, hurries it, in some measure, along with him, whithersoever he is himself carried by inspiration, and transports it into all those states, all those situations, through which the divine spirit, whose organ he is, has caused him to pass. And if this is the case every where, under what circumstances soever one reads or listens to Jeremiah, consider what must be the effect when, on the anniversary of the greatest crimes and the greatest calamities of Jerusalem, you find yourself on the spot where, his "eye running down with water," that prophet seated himself and poured forth his lamentations, sighing in the bitterness of his soul; when you hear him, as it were, lifting up his voice and crying: "How doth the city sit solitary that was full of people! how is she become as a widow! she LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH. 335 that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary! She weepeth sore in the night, and the tears are on her cheeks! among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her." Is it possible, my good friend, to suppress our sighs, to restrain our tears, at so heart-rending a picture of that city, once the queen of nations, now sitting forlorn, in affliction and widowhood; forsaken by her friends, betrayed by her kindred, stretching out her hands in vain, and finding none who deigns to comfort her! And what images again for him, who at this day sees here at Jerusalem what the prophet saw, the ways of Zion that mourn, because none come to the solemn feasts; those priests who sigh, those virgins who are afflicted, those gates destroyed, and herself in bitterness; her adversaries prevailing over her, and her children gone into captivity before the enemy." O how much more quickly and painfully does this cry so tender, so piercing, penetrate to the recesses of the heart: "All ye that pass by, behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger." Admirable song of lamentation, in which is written, under the dictation of the holy spirit, the history of the wrath of God against backsliding nations; in which rulers and subjects, who have transgressed against the supreme Majesty, may learn that those to whom they attribute the strokes which alight upon them are merely the instruments of the anger of that great God who himself smites, and chastises, and punishes, through them. 336 HOLY THURSDAY. At the conclusion of the Darkness, first, the officiating Father and then the other monks give a signal, by striking upon the benches with their books; and, in a moment, as with us in Europe, the boys in the church, or kept at the door, deafen us with rattles and other instruments with which they are provided, and then go to make the same racket before the houses of the catholics. This clatter, to which more than one signification is attached in the western Church, is here generally interpreted as a memorial of the earthquake, the crash of the rocks, and the convulsion of nature, at the death of Jesus Christ. Holy-Thursday, the anniversary of the institution of the Lord's Supper and the foot-washing, is more particularly designated in Palestine by the appellation of the day of the Mysteries. Kept by the whole catholic universe, and especially by the eastern Church, till the period when the special festival of Corpus Christi was established, it is still celebrated at Jerusalem with more pomp than anywhere else in the world. On that day the church was decorated as for the greatest solemnities. The concourse of catholics from Jerusalem and Bethlehem, of pilgrims, of curious spec-tators, Armenian or Mahometan, was still more considerable than on Palm-Sunday: and every one strove to get nearest to the sacred tomb. The solemn mass began at nine o'clock. The officiating Father, and the priests who assisted him at the altar, were attired in garments of black velvet, set off by embroidery in gold, of such beauty that I do not recollect to have ever seen any thing richer and more magnificent. HOLY THURSDAY. 337 No other dresses than these were worn during the last three days of the Passion week. They were a present, I was told, from an archbishop of Valence, who paid ninety thousand francs for them. When mass was over, six monks, dressed in copes glistening with gold and silver, went to receive beneath a magnificent canopy the most reverend Father warden, who brought in great pomp the holy sacrament to the sepulchre. Ranged in two rows, the Fathers of the Holy Land, and after them the congregation, accompanied him, carrying torches, singing hymns, and manifesting by a slow and respectful pace, and by deep devotion, the firmest faith and the warmest gratitude for the august mystery. In this manner the procession went thrice round the Holy Sepulchre, and then stopped at the door. The officiating priest, followed by the others, entered; the interior was lighted by a great number of tapers and lamps; he deposited the host in a portable tabernacle of silver, of beautiful workmanship and great value, placed on the marble slab which covers the Sepulchre ; and, after adoring it for some moments, he went forth, and on the threshold began singing the vespers of the day, and the altars in the church were meanwhile stripped. The host is left thus upon the tomb till the service of the following day. During the intermediate time, two Fathers come successively to pass an hour there in adoration. Admittance is refused to laymen, and even to pilgrims who are not ecclesiastics. At half-past two, the foot-washing took place. This ceremony, which commemorates in so touching a manner the deep humiliation of our Saviour, is performed at the VOL. I. |