Holy Week hits different

I had to help read the Passion narrative yesterday. It was a dramatic reading (almost old school radio broadcast style) of Luke's Gospel. The priest and my wife were the other readers along with myself. In the Catholic and usually the Anglican (though not always) traditions, usually the Gospel is read only by the Priest, or if there is one, a Deacon. The one exception is Palm Sunday when there can be a more dramatic reading with parts. The Priest still reads the Jesus part, but you can have other narrators at the priest's discretion.

While I have been the narrator before on previous Palm Sundays, I had never actually joint-lectored (read) the same Bible reading with my wife together before either in a public liturgy. We have both lectored at the same service a few times, but she would do one reading, and I would do the other one. So, that was an added bit of nuance. 

Also for context, we visited the Holy Land a few months ago. I had been to the Holy Land once before about 12 years prior, but my wife and daughter had never been. I had warned them both that when you hear the readings for Holy Week, you suddenly have a frame of reference to all these places that the Passion narrative talks about because you have been there. You are not just imagining what it might have looked like in your mind. You've actually been there and stood on the sites. It just hits different. It just does. 

My wife was actually the narrator. I just did the bit other voices like the crowd, Peter, Pilate, etc. If I was directing it, I would actually have had different people for all the different voices, as I have a background in radio broadcast. But, there's only so many microphones, and it is not primarily a dramatic broadcast. It's the Gospel reading at Mass, so you go with what you got.

My wife was doing good up until near the end at the point where Jesus dies. She was speaking at a back microphone usually reserved for the cantor, and I was up at the lectern proper, so I was not facing in her direction, given my parish's liturgical space. The priest was reading from the microphone at his seat on the far side of the altar. I could hear her voice crack when she got to the very end. Given my previous Anglican liturgical training, I did not want to look over in that direction to draw further attention to it, but I heard it nonetheless. She held it together, but you can hear emotion in your spouse's voice.
The Holy Land was and is a real place with real people.

When you have walked where Jesus walked, Holy Week hits different.