PERRYVILLE, Md. — Good Shepherd School went into the Easter break with its annual celebration of the season.
Middle-school students presented the Last Supper, and this year, for the first time, it included an actual meal. Students, parents and others gathered on April 1 for a traditional seder, with more than 120 people in attendance.
Led by eighth-grader Odin Migliaccio as Jesus, the group of middle-schoolers dressed as apostles entered the auditorium in front of a stage set up for the Last Supper. With classmate Kate Cox narrating, the group went through the events of the Passion of Jesus, including washing the feet of Simon Peter.
“We also made the food,” said Lucy Tapera, an eighth-grader who portrayed Mary. “We’re serving matzah ball soup, charoset, which is kind of kind of similar to apple sauce, and we’re serving bitter herbs, chicken and hard-boiled eggs.”
Migliaccio, as Jesus, had explained before the meal what each item of the seder represented. A shank bone or chicken neck symbolized the outstretched arm of God and the paschal sacrifice. The egg — in this case, they were hard-boiled — symbolized the sacrifice in the Holy Temple and its destruction. They also had bitter herbs; a sweet paste made from a mixture of fruits, nuts, spices and wine; a vegetable dipped in saltwater; and matzah, the unleavened bread the represented the quickness with which the Israelites left Egypt.
“This is our first year doing the meal. I think it makes it more fun and interesting,” Tapera said.
After the meal, the students performed the Stations of the Cross before the school dismissed for the Easter break.
Elizabeth Cartier, who teaches science and religion to fourth- through eighth-graders at Good Shepherd, said the tradition has grown over the past few years.
“We’ve expanded it over the last two years. We’ve added the Last Supper scene to the students’ Stations of the Cross. This year, we threw in the meal,” she said.
The group started working on the event in February.
“We designed the stage, find different props to use. They picked out their costumes,” Cartier said. “We started off with practice with two days a week” and worked their way to four days a week.
Cox said she has been the narrator since she was in sixth grade. “I’ve been the narrator since I was in sixth grade. I just do a lot of readings at church.”
She said the experience has taught her more about the Last Supper.
“It made me realize that there were a lot of parts to it. I never knew the Last Supper was so complicated. I never knew that they said all the prayers,” she said.
Tapera, who, like Cox is a parishioner at Good Shepherd, also found the entire event to be a learning experience.
“I learned more about Jesus and what happened to him,” she said. “I wasn’t very clear on that, so doing this helped my knowledge of what happened to Jesus during Holy Week.”
Cartier said the Good Shepherd tradition is a good way for the children to get a deeper understanding of what Jesus went through in the last days of his life.
“It gives them a chance to really understand really what Jesus went through,” she said. “As part of the learning cycle of this, we watched pieces of ‘The Chosen, so they could see what actually happened during that time period. It really reinforced their ability to understand the period historically and then also to understand what Jesus was really about.”
The younger students, she added, get to see the story in action. Also, for the eighth-graders, it is among the final activities they have at the school as a group before they go their separate ways for high school.
Photos by Mike Lang.
