Memories of Christ’s Passion – Joe Zammit Ciantar

I was listening to the rendering of the passion extract from the Gospel of St Luke (Chapter 19: 28-40), during mass, last Palm Sunday, at the Divine Mercy Sanctuary in San Pawl tat-Tarġa, Naxxar.

As the celebrant and the two accompanying readers started to read the narrative, in my memory I recalled moments in my life when I was involved with the Passion of Our Lord.

Good Friday procession

In Victoria, Gozo, the only Good Friday procession that was held in my childhood was that organised by St George’s parish.

My younger brother Anton and I – and later our youngest brother Giovanni – used to take part in this procession carrying cushions with a cross on them, a lantern fixed to one-and-a-half metre long stick, and as a ‘knight’ in front of the effigy of Our Lady of Sorrows.

I used to feel in the seventh heaven when, a week or so before Holy Week, I used to go and see the bodies of the Passion effigies placed in the church and have their papier mâché hands, feet, and heads fixed in place, and dressed up with real rich, velvet, colourful clothes.

I can still hear the sound made by heavy iron chains, tied to bare feet, being drawn all along the way of the procession, by devout men...