Wednesday in Holy Week

Wednesday in Holy Week is the fourth day of the week before Easter and moves with Easter's date; in Western reckoning it is the last day before the Triduum. Its Gospel tells of the chief priests' plot against Jesus and of Judas Iscariot going to them to ask what they would give him to hand his Master over. The Book of Common Prayer (2019) keeps it as Wednesday in Holy Week. No Gospel names the weekday of the bargain; the Wednesday is the church's own reckoning, and the reading of the betrayal on this day is attested in Jerusalem in the early 380s, where the pilgrim Egeria heard it at night in the cave of the Anastasis. The Byzantine churches keep the day as Great and Holy Wednesday and set the woman who anointed Christ at Bethany beside the disciple who sold him. In Ireland the day has been known since at least the nineteenth century as Spy Wednesday.

Matthew, Mark and Luke tell how, as the Passover drew near, the chief priests sought a way to arrest Jesus, and how Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve, went to them. In Matthew he asks, "What will you give me if I deliver him over to you?" (Matthew 26:15, ESV), and they pay him thirty pieces of silver. Matthew and Mark set this immediately after the anointing at Bethany, where a woman poured costly ointment on the Lord. John places an anointing six days before the Passover, before the entry into Jerusalem. None of the Gospels says on which day of the week the bargain was struck. The church's Wednesday comes from reading Mark's account as a sequence of consecutive days and counting back from a Friday crucifixion; it is a traditional harmony of the Gospels. The liturgy's attachment of the betrayal to this day has its own documentary history, independent of any harmony.

Wednesday in general carried the memory of the betrayal early. The Didache, from the late first or early second century, bids Christians fast on Wednesdays and Fridays and gives no reason; Peter, bishop of Alexandria, writing before 311, explains the Wednesday fast by the plotting of the Lord's betrayal, and says he is describing a custom already held by tradition. That is the weekly fast of every Wednesday in the year, a different institution from this one day, and it does not date it.

The earliest surviving description of the day itself comes from Jerusalem, during the episcopate of Cyril. Egeria, a pilgrim usually dated to about 381 to 384, records that the fourth weekday ran like the Monday and Tuesday before it, except for one thing. After the dismissal at the Martyrium, by night, the bishop went into the cave of the Anastasis and stood within the rails, while a priest before the rails read the passage in which Judas went to name his price. In M. L. McClure's translation, "there is such a moaning and groaning of all the people that no one can help being moved to tears at that hour." The blessing that followed was given first to the catechumens, days from their baptism, and then to the faithful.

At Rome in the middle of the fifth century Leo the Great preached the Passion twice in Holy Week, on the Sunday and again on the Wednesday; the edited headings assign four of his surviving Passion sermons to Wednesday. In them he asks for the fast kept without lapse, for works of mercy, and for purity of mind and body. The Gelasian Sacramentary, in H. A. Wilson's edition, provides five prayers for the day, and an appendix heads its Mass , so that the Roman station at Santa Maria Maggiore is attested in the sacramentary tradition itself; when the station was first assigned is not known.

The Book of Common Prayer (2019) appoints the same readings for Wednesday in Holy Week in every year: Isaiah 50:4-9; Psalm 69:6-14, 21-22; Hebrews 9:11-28; and as the Gospel Matthew 26:1-5, 14-25.

Isaiah gives the Servant, who is struck and shamed and does not turn back, and who can say, "He who vindicates me is near" (Isaiah 50:8, ESV). The psalm is a lament. Hebrews presents Christ as the high priest who enters the holy place with his own offering once, and closes on his appearing a second time. The Gospel begins with the chief priests' plot two days before the Passover, passes over the anointing at Bethany (Matthew 26:6-13), and continues with Judas's bargain, the preparation of the Passover, and the Supper at which each disciple asks whether he is the one; Judas asks, "Is it I, Rabbi?" and is answered, "You have said so" (Matthew 26:25, ESV). The Byzantine day keeps the anointing and builds on it; the Anglican day, by omitting it, holds the reader to the betrayal.

The selection is recent. The older Western books read the whole Passion through the week, one evangelist a day. As Adrian Fortescue summarized the Roman use, "In our rite the Passion according to St. Matthew is read on Palm Sunday, St. Mark on Tuesday, St. Luke on Wednesday, St. John on Good Friday." A Sarum missal of the early fifteenth century gives the day Luke's Passion, ending at Luke 23:49. The English Prayer Books from 1549, and the American book of 1928, kept Luke 22 as the Gospel, with Hebrews 9:16-28 as the Epistle. In the Roman rite the reform of Holy Week promulgated on 16 November 1955 cut the first thirty-eight verses of Luke 22 from the day's Gospel, and the Roman lectionary of 1969 replaced the Passion with Isaiah 50 and Matthew 26:14-25. The Book of Common Prayer (2019) keeps Isaiah 50 through verse 9, takes Psalm 69 where the Revised Common Lectionary has Psalm 70, widens the older Epistle to begin at Hebrews 9:11, and reads Matthew's account of the plot and the bargain.

In the Book of Common Prayer (2019) the day is kept with a celebration of the Holy Eucharist, with the Collect of the Day, the readings appointed above, and the Proper Preface of Holy Week. The collect is the prayer first appointed for the day in the American book of 1928. The Episcopal Church's Book of Occasional Services provides a Tenebrae service appointed for Wednesday in Holy Week.

The day asks the worshipper to hear of a sale and not look away from it. The Gospel does not leave the betrayer at a distance: Judas sits at the table, and each of the Twelve in turn asks whether he is the one. Around that reading the other lessons set the Servant who is struck and does not turn back, trusting that the one who vindicates him is near, and the high priest who offers himself once and will appear again. The price Judas took is read inside a larger account of what was paid, and by whom.

In the Latin West the evening of this day long carried Tenebrae, though the office was never Wednesday's alone. Before 1955 the Matins and Lauds of Thursday, Friday and Saturday of Holy Week were each sung on the evening before, so that the first Tenebrae of the three days fell on Wednesday night. Candles on a triangular stand were put out one by one through the psalms until a single candle remained, which was hidden and then restored. The Catholic Encyclopedia judges it highly probable that the extinguishing of lights goes back to the fifth century, and the number of candles varied widely by use; Sarum used twenty-four, with a twenty-fifth hidden. The decree Maxima Redemptionis nostrae mysteria of 16 November 1955, in force from 25 March 1956, forbade anticipating Tenebrae on the evening before. The office is now frequently kept as a single condensed evening service, often on this Wednesday.

In the Byzantine churches the Matins of Great and Holy Wednesday is sung on Tuesday evening, because the liturgical day begins at sunset. Its most celebrated hymn is the hymn of Kassia, a ninth-century abbess and hymnographer, sung once a year in the plagal fourth tone; in it the woman who anointed Christ speaks in her own voice, and in the English text issued by St John Orthodox Cathedral, Eagle River, Alaska, she says, "I will tenderly embrace those pure feet, and wipe them with the hair of my head." The tradition tells a legend about the hymn, that the emperor Theophilos found it unfinished and added the line about Eve; it comes from later chroniclers, and the parish sheet that prints the hymn offers it only as one story of its origin. The Bridegroom Matins of the first evenings of the week is often omitted on Wednesday, and in Greek and Antiochian practice Holy Unction is celebrated that afternoon or evening for the whole congregation, not only the sick; when the rite came to this day is not established. In Coptic practice, which reads the four Gospels across the week, Mark falls to Wednesday.

In Ireland the day had its own name long before the English one. The Leabhar Breac, written in 1411, sets a homily on fasting under the title Cédáin in Braith, Wednesday of the Betrayal. The English name, Spy Wednesday, appears in Samuel Lover's novel Handy Andy (1842), as a household word, and in a notice of Tenebrae in the Bengal Catholic Herald of 30 March 1844. Children collecting their elders' memories for the Schools' Collection in 1937 and 1938 recorded it as one of three black fast days, with bread made with water and a herring for dinner, and with customs against throwing out water or putting out the ashes; they recorded too that the fast had already changed. Two of their transcripts also attach anti-Jewish legends to the day.