After the altar has been stripped on Maundy Thursday, parishioners at St. Margaret's Episcopal Church in Little Rock will begin an all-night vigil. They call it The Watch.
They will sit in silence as the disciples of Jesus remained with him in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before his arrest and crucifixion. The disciples fell asleep as Jesus prayed, as related in Matthew 26:40: "Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. 'Couldn't you men keep watch with me for one hour?' he asked Peter."
The Rev. Cindy Fribourgh, deacon at St. Margaret's, said the disciples likely had good intentions of staying awake, but they fell short.
"I think their hearts and intentions were good, as I think humans are created good, but our intentions and actions don't always match up," she said. "Our own engagement as followers of Christ is sometimes like that. We want to be aware and awake in Christ and sometimes we fall a bit short of that."
Parishioners at St. Margaret's plan to remain awake as they silently pray in the Arkansas House of Prayer on the church grounds. Some will stay for an hour, others longer as the vigil continues until noon on Good Friday.
Fribourgh said the watch is a good time to reflect on what Christ experienced that night in the garden.
"He was aware of what was ahead of him," Fribourgh said. "This is an opportunity to reflect on what is about to happen, to remember the agony, the passion of Christ and to do our part to remain engaged and be with Christ in the remembrance of that."
Fribourgh said she has participated in the watch through the years and finds it to be a moving experience.
"It's a very, very powerful time," she said. "As you are coming and going in the silence, to see others and be involved with others in that way is a powerful remembrance of who we are as a community that is pulled together and doing the work of Christ and keeping alive what is alive in him and what is alive in us today as we do Christ's work in the world."
Parishioners at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Little Rock will also have an all-night time of prayer on Maundy Thursday.
"After the Maundy Thursday service, we actually strip the altar. The vestments, trappings, everything comes down so the church is stark bare," said the Rev. Len Griffin, deacon.
The vigil will be held in the chapel, which will be transformed to resemble a garden.
"We fill it with plants," Griffin said. "People bring in ficus plants and cactus and we fill it up and it seems like a garden."
Griffin said the vigil that re-creates the time that Jesus spent in the garden in prayer is a tradition many Christians have followed for centuries. It has been a tradition at St. Mark's for several years.
"It's more than a re-enactment. We are trying to become one, to remember and rejoin the act of sitting in the garden," he said.
Griffin said someone will be in the chapel in prayer constantly from 8 p.m. Thursday until the Good Friday liturgy at noon.
"Some will come in for an hour and a lot come in and spend two or three hours," he said. "It's a very, very personal, meaningful experience."
Information is available online at stmargaretschurch.org and st-marks.com.
Religion on 03/28/2015