Mount of Olives Service

Christ on the Mount of Olives, relief from the 15th century in the parish church of St. Stefan in Eggenburg

The Mount of Olives devotion or commemoration of the Mount of Olives, also known as the Mount of Olives Hour or Holy Hour , is a piety exercise that originates from the Middle Ages and is mainly promoted by the Jesuits in modern times and is practiced in Catholic parishes on Thursdays during Lent .

For Maundy Thursday, the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church provides for the holy of holies to be transferred in procession to a side altar or to a sacrament chapel after the Last Supper . This Mount of Olives hour, during which the believers remain in silent adoration for “an appropriate amount of time”, should last at least until midnight, but after the break of Good Friday it should be without any solemnity. The Holy of Holies is not exposed in a monstrance at the Mount of Olives Hour .

The devotion to the Mount of Olives commemorates the prayer and watch of Jesus on the Mount of Olives when, in view of his approaching death, he asked his father to spare him the suffering as well as the admonition to his disciples to “watch and pray that you do not fall into temptation” ( Mk 14 , 32-42 EU ). The content of prayer at the so-called Holy Grave of a church is very closely related to the devotion to the Mount of Olives.

Often times, the Mount of Olives service is combined with the sermon on fasting ; In some parishes there are elaborate replicas of the Mount of Olives scenery (be it in side altars or outside of churches). In iconography , Christ kneeling, sweating blood and water, is confronted by an angel of consolation with a chalice (cf. Lk 22.43 EU ), while the three apostles Peter , John and James are sleeping (the so-called Mount of Olives group ). In Dietfurt and Berching , a scenic play associated with the Lenten sermon has been preserved during Lent.

literature

Rupert Berger : Art. Ölberg (prayer) , in: New Pastoralliturgisches Handlexikon. Freiburg, Basel, Vienna 1999, ISBN 3-451-26603-2 , p. 370
Andreas Heinz: Olives devotion . In: Walter Kasper (Ed.): Lexicon for Theology and Church . 3. Edition. tape 7 . Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1998, Sp. 1037 .
Karl Rahner : Holy Hour and Passion Devotion, Freiburg 1955 (= Complete Works 20, pp. 190–207)
Praise to God , Diocesan part of Regensburg No. 938

Individual evidence

↑ Rupert Berger: Art. Ölberg (prayer) , in: Neues Pastoralliturgisches Handlexikon , Freiburg, Basel, Vienna 1999, ISBN 3-451-26603-2 , p. 370
^ Meditationshaus Dietfurt: Ölbergspiel , accessed on January 18, 2015.

[1] Rupert Berger: Art. Ölberg (prayer) , in: Neues Pastoralliturgisches Handlexikon , Freiburg, Basel, Vienna 1999, ISBN 3-451-26603-2 , p. 370

[2] Meditationshaus Dietfurt: Ölbergspiel , accessed on January 18, 2015.