After Crucifixion. Craig Keen

On Ash Wednesday a sponsor is assigned to provide the baptizand with support and guidance, meeting with her weekly or more often. Although this is a church that ordinarily invites all, baptized or not, to feast on the body and blood of Christ, she is asked to postpone her celebration of the eucharist on subsequent Sundays until she is baptized. Just after the Ministry of the Word each service from Epiphany through Holy Saturday she is invited to stand at a temporary distance from the rest of the assembly to meditate on the catechetical instruction she has received, attending in particular to Genesis 1–3, the Beatitudes, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Apostles’ Creed. Holy Week services are given to the remembrance of Christ’s bloody baptism on the cross. Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday services call the church to meditation on the abasement of Christ as the pattern of its discipleship. The congregation looks on these days to the baptizand as the icon of all the children of God, lost sheep found on Christ’s journey to the cross. Holy Saturday is in particular devoted to explicating the significance of baptism.

120. Cf. Barton, “Dislocating and Relocating Holiness,” 206; also Cavanaugh, Torture and Eucharist, 266–68.

121. Cf. Song, Jesus, the Crucified People, 216; and Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, 236–37.