When Egeria arrived to Jerusalem, the Christian worship of Holy Week had acquired a characteristic pattern dictated by the Holy places. The fact that Christians could gather for worship in the loci where the sacred mysteries took place, leaving a profound impression upon local worshipers and pilgrims:
Among all these matters this takes first place, that proper Psalms and antiphons are always sung, so that those sung at night, as well as those sung in the morning, and those sung throughout the day, whether at the sixth hour, the ninth hour, or at vespers, are proper and have a meaning pertinent to what is being celebrated. (Eg. 25:5) [And] at each hour Psalms and antiphons are sung which are appropriate both to the day and the place. (Eg. 29:2)
Egeria, through her feminine sensibility, also focused attention on the way Christians prayed, and to speak of the “impulse (impetus) of piety” she used terms that express Christian devotion and its manifestations, “she draws from it with full hands” says A. Bastiaensen. In Eg. 36:3 and Eg. 37:7 we find the Latin terms rugitus and mugitus, that is, “moaning and groaning with weeping”; and then fletus and gemitus, that is to say, “tears and lamentations [emotional groaning],” and by reading these passages one realizes how great the fervor of piety was great in Jerusalem and specially around the holy places, as one also finds in many pilgrims today. To this extent Egeria describes this emotion when speaking of the liturgy of Good Friday:
On arriving in Gethsemane, a suitable prayer is first said, followed by a hymn, and then the passage from the Gospel describing the arrest of the Lord is read. During the reading of this passage there is such moaning and groaning with weeping from all the people that their moaning can be heard practically as far as the city. (Eg. 36:3)
Also, during the mystagogy of the Easter octave, Egeria tells this fascinating fact passed at the Anastasis:
… only the neophytes and the faithful who wish to hear the mysteries enter the Anastasis. Indeed, the doors are closed, lest any catechumen come that way. While the bishop is discussing and explaining each point, so loud are the voices of praise that they can be heard outside the church. And he explains all these mysteries in such a manner that there is no one who would not be drawn to them, when he heard them thus explained. (47:2)
There is talk here, as F. Cabrol says, of a “singular influence exerted by the liturgy on the faithful of Jerusalem”. The author gives a fascinating and, we believe, a “true”, description of this attitude of the faithful which we personally have experience when we celebrate Holy Week in Jerusalem:
It seems that we are witnessing a live drama in which spectators follow all phases with a sustained and ever-increasing interest, which sometimes goes to anguish. The faithful take part in the ceremonies which trace the life and death of the Savior to the very places that are a witness to them; they easily grasp their meaning; these rites speak at the same time to their eyes and their hearts.
The liturgical commemorations in the Holy places are therefore more than mere proof and a mere testimony of the Christian faith; they are typoi (types) of evangelical events. In the Mystagogical Catechesis attributed to Cyril, but also his successor John II, he addresses the neophytes, reminding them of their immersion in the baptismal waters that occurred in the complex of the Holy Sepulcher during the Easter Vigil, by which they became the typos of Christ buried but also typos of the risen Christ, let us turn to this beautiful catechesis:
O strange and inconceivable thing! We did not really die, we were not really buried, we were not really crucified and raised again; but our imitation was in a figure, and our salvation in reality. Christ was actually crucified, and actually buried, and truly rose again; and all these things He has freely bestowed upon us, that we, sharing His sufferings by imitation, might gain salvation in reality. (Myst. II:5)