By Susan Stevenot Sullivan, Staff Writer

ATLANTA--Since Mary Ellen Hughes’ childhood, Lent has begun the Monday before Ash Wednesday. Good Friday usually meant passing symbolically from death to life under a bier containing a representation of Jesus’ corpse and receiving a flower from the parish priest.

She fondly remembers the Easter liturgy ending in the wee hours on Sunday morning as she and other children gleefully cracked their red, hard-boiled eggs open against the eggs of those around them.

Ms. Hughes grew up in the southern United States, but her spirituality has been formed in two great Catholic traditions, one based in Rome and the other in Antioch, both of which are shepherded by Pope John Paul II.

As a child she spend much of her time in the Birmingham, Alabama, Melkite Catholic community, with its Byzantine rite, into which her paternal grandfather was baptized as an adult.

“The small community, being from the Middle East, was very child-focused,” she recalled. “There was a strong sense of belonging. I was taught culture and ways of approaching life that are still so dear to me now. I was the only blond-headed child in the parish; most of the people were of Lebanese or French descent.”

Her grandmothers, however were Irish Catholic and belonged to the Latin rite, which is the Catholicism expressed by the majority of Catholics in the Archdiocese of Atlanta.

Ms. Hughes directs the archdiocesan Office of Family Concerns. Her formal involvement with the Latin rite also includes the 12 years she was associated with the Sisters of the Good shepherd.

“In my 20s I started to sort out the differences in the rites and the spirituality,” she said.

The Good Shepherd Sisters sent her to study at what was then the Washington Theological Coalition on a graduate level, though she had not yet completed her undergraduate work in sociology and psychology.

“The dogma and the doctrine are the same,” she said. “The way we sing it, celebrate it, express it, is different. It’s the same faith with a different melody.”

The Byzantine rite incorporates the customs and languages of the countries of origin of parishioners to a degree not found in Latin-rite parishes.

Notes in the “spiritual melody” vary between Melkite parishes as well. Cultural differences and sometimes “degrees of Latinization” have been evident, she said, in each of the five Melkite parishes to which she has belonged in various parts of the U.S.

Many aspects are identical. The same readings are used in Melkite churches each year, she said, and the five Sundays before “Great Lent” begins are a structured preparation for Lent ending with the Sunday Gospel which tells the parable of the prodigal son.

The theme of reconciliation that Sunday makes it a popular time for children, deemed ready the pastor and their parents, to receive the first reconciliation (the sacrament of baptism, confirmation and Eucharist are received together in infancy).

Penances are not given, to emphasize forgiveness as a gift from God which cannot be earned in any way, Ms. Hughes said.

“Because of the death and resurrection your reconciliation is a gift to be accepted,” she continued. “It’s very difficult to accept. We humans want to earn forgiveness, to be in control of God’s gift and we can’t be.

“The priest says ‘Go in peace and never again be disturbed by the evil you have done,” she said.

Ms. Hughes said penance is the Latin-rite of being in relationship with God, geared toward cementing the reality of God’s love.

Great Lent, also called the “season of the bright sadness,” begins the following day, Monday. Daily Mass is not celebrated during Lent. Fasting, praying and almsgiving are emphasized.

Questions of fasting and prayer for Lent are answered individually, sometimes with the help of a spiritual guide in the community. Some may abstain from meat, fish, poultry, oil and dairy products for the entire period.

Most people, Ms. Hughes said, fast and abstain from meat on Wednesdays and Fridays. Sunday, the weekly observance of the Resurrection, is not included in the fast.

“Whatever it is, it is supposed to spiritually nourish you,” she said, “or you stop and do something else. The idea is to discipline the lower appetites to wake the spiritual appetite.”

In many parishes families bring a large Lenten dish to Sunday Mass, called the Divine Liturgy, to exchange with another family.

As in the Latin rite, Holy Week is a time of special liturgies.

Holy Thursday evening includes a crucifixion service, which involves the procession and display of a cross with a corpus portrayed. As many as 12 Gospels may be read. At the parish in Fairfax, Va., which Ms. Hughes formerly attended, veneration of the cross included three head-to-the-floor prostrations, two before and one after kissing the cross.

Women of the parish spend a part of Good Friday weaving a canopy from cut flowers, often red and white carnations. A descent from the cross service is usually held Good Friday afternoon at 3 p.m.

That evening a Lamentation Service is held, a corpus, or a special tapestry depicting the dead Christ (called an Epitaphios--pronounced eh-peh-TA-fee-os) is placed in an elaborate wooden container or on a special plank and covered with the flower canopy. It is often processed and outside the church. The service always includes a series of ancient chants.

Ms. Hughes recalled that in some parishes, worshipers passed under the symbolic sepulchre to recall the passage from death to resurrection. The priest waited on the other side with a cross which was kissed before the worshiper was presented with a flower from the canopy.

Daytime on Holy Saturday is a time of preparation. Multitudes of eggs are hard-boiled and dyed red, shined with a coating of oil and piled in the baptismal font. Locally, at St. John Chrysostom Melkite Parish in Atlanta, the youth group takes charge of dyeing multicolored eggs, which are then displayed in the local parish hall until after the late-evening Easter service when they are distributed.

At St. John Chrysostom the Easter service begins Holy Saturday evening at 10:30 p.m. The service begins with everyone assembled outside the church doors. Msgr. William Haddad, the pastor, repeatedly knocks on the door with a cross, commanding “Open for the King of Glory.” An “angel” inside the church responds each of the three times, “Who is the King of Glory?”

The priest then pushes the door open and the congregation enters singing ancient chants of the church in Greek, Arabic and English.

The Gospel and the homily for Easter have been the same for centuries, Ms. Hughes said. Periodically during the liturgy the priest faces the crowd and proclaims “Christ is risen!” and the congregation responds, “Truly he is risen!” This exchange is repeated many times at this and every liturgy in the Easter season and is used when parishioners call or see each other and at meal blessings during the 40 days until the Ascension is celebrated.

Ms. Hughes remembers that as a child, she tried to stay awake until the end of the service, when participants were presented with a blessed red egg, to be cracked open against that of their neighbors with the exclamation “Christ is risen!” and eaten.

The eating of the egg also symbolizes the end of the fast. A festive meal followed with sleeping children curled up here and there as the adults celebrated.

At St. John Chrysostom a Divine Liturgy is celebrated during the day on Easter Sunday morning, in addition to the Saturday night liturgy, and an egg hunt is held.

“I always felt that the whole community was brighter and happier during the 40 days after Easter Sunday.” Ms. Hughes said. “I hated the feast of the Ascension as a kid. I felt the emptiness the apostles must have felt when Jesus returned to the Father.”

Ms. Hughes said as a child she remembers discussing her sadness with a pastor, who replied sympathetically that there was no other way for events to unfold.

“Jesus returns to the Father,” he said, “so that we can return to the Father.”