Passiontide: Why are crosses and statues covered during Lent?

Описание: During the last two weeks of Lent, you might notice that your church covers the crosses, statues, and religious images with purple cloths throughout the building. These coverings are the Passiontide veils.

While this is not required, the Catholic Roman Missal suggests that veiling the crosses and images throughout the church from the Fifth Sunday of Lent until the Easter Vigil may be observed.

On the Fifth Sunday of Lent, there are two more weeks until Easter. These final two weeks of Lent are often called the Passiontide. "Tide" in this case is used to refer to a specific time, season, or festival in the Church. So, a Passion-tide is the season of Jesus's passion and death on the Cross. The last two weeks of Lent are a special time of meditation on the suffering and death of Christ.

It might seem strange then that we veil the crosses, crucifixes, statues, and religious images. Shouldn't this be a time of meditating on those images even more?

Instead we veil the images to heighten our awareness of this very important time of year. Anyone walking into a church with veiled images would understand this. Without the images and statues, we are offering up a little extra sacrifice by fasting from the beauty in the church. Finally, the removal of the visual images force us to focus on other senses namely hearing the Gospel and other readings proclaimed at Mass.

Just think of the heightened joy of the Easter celebration when the veils are removed and the altar is adorned with beautiful signs of spring and the Lord's Resurrection!

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