Siculiana – March 29 to 31
Holy Week in Siculiana
One of the most heartfelt religious events in the town of Siculiana, in which the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ is re-enacted, is the ritual of Holy Week. In Siculiana, the earliest records of Crucifixion and Deposition rites date back to 1600 because of the presence of a Calvary whose exact location is unknown. More certain news comes from the last two decades of the nineteenth century, when the archpriest at the time, Don Giovanni Moscato, had a series of objects made for the performance of the rites of the Sacred Triduum: the majestic Cross of 1891, the wooden burial urn of 1877, the statues for the sermons of the Seven Parts of 1913, the Tabernacle of Repose and the Virgin of Sorrows of 1884.
The Maundy Thursday procession, with Ecce Homo and Our Lady of Sorrows, and the Friday procession, with the Redeemer and Our Lady of Sorrows, are placed in the first half of the 1900s, most likely at the turn of the two wars. Today’s conduct of the Sacred Triduum has not undergone any major transformations, apart from the proliferation of young Confraternities. In fact there are currently six Confraternities engaged in Holy Week.
Sisters Mary of Sorrows: at first the Our Lady of Sorrows was carried on the shoulders of men, but in the 1960s a group of girls present in the church did their best. From that year the Confraternity of Our Lady of Sorrows was established.
Brotherhood Ecce H omo: Very old is the brotherhood of Ecce Homo, certainly coeval with the founding of the primitive Calvary, of uncertain location.
Confraternity St. John, Confraternity Mary Magdalene, Confraternity St. Peter, Confraternity St. Michael the Archangel: confraternities established in the 1990s under the archpriesthood of Fr. Joseph Silver.
Holy Week opens with Palm Sunday in which Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is celebrated. This moment is commemorated with a procession, starting from the 18th-century Church of St. Antonino to the Mother Church, in which the faithful holding large intertwined palm leaves and olive branches symbolically welcome Jesus.
Holy Thursday is the day on which the Church, recalling Jesus’ Last Supper, celebrates the institution of the Eucharist and the washing of the feet is commemorated to renew the memory of that act of humility by which Jesus washed them for his Apostles. In our community these moments are relived with “the washing of the feet,” in which the priest washes the feet of engaged couples who have completed the premarital course. Immediately afterwards, Jesus in the Eucharist is placed in the Tabernacle in the side altar adorned with flowers, plants and pots with wheat seeds sprouted in the dark called“lavureddu.” Late in the evening the procession of Ecce Homo and Our Lady of Sorrows begins, with the participation of the respective Confraternities.
This procession represents a moment of great emotion and recollection, in which Our Lady of Sorrows goes in search of her imprisoned son, a search that ends with the touching encounter in Piano Square.
