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Dear Sisters and Brothers in the Lord:
For priests, liturgy planners, and ministers — in fact
for all Catholics — Holy Week (next week) is the busiest week of the
church year. On four consecutive days the church will be filled for
important services of worship starting with the Mass of the Lord’s
Supper on Thursday and ending on Easter Sunday. It may seem strange then
that this period of four days is referred to as the paschal or Easter
Triduum, meaning three days. Here the church follows the Jewish method
of counting a day from sunset to sunset: so Holy Thursday evening to
Good Friday evening is the first day, Good Friday evening to Holy
Saturday evening the second, and Holy Saturday evening to Easter Sunday
evening the third day. What may seem like four days is actually three.
With people leading such busy lives and looking forward to Easter
holidays, many may be tempted to choose to attend just one of the big
liturgies of the Triduum – perhaps Good Friday because of the moving
veneration of the cross or the Easter Vigil because it’s the main
celebration of the period – though it starts later than the normal
Saturday evening Mass and lasts much longer!
But to miss any of the three liturgies of the Easter
Triduum is like missing one act of a three-act play. The Triduum is best
understood as one three-day-long liturgy, or as one liturgy with three
different moments. This is illustrated clearly when we consider how the
liturgies of this period begin and end. The Mass on Holy Thursday
evening begins in the usual way but there is no blessing or dismissal at
the end. Instead there is a procession of the Blessed Sacrament to the
place of reservation. People depart in silence. The Good Friday liturgy
begins with a silent procession, a period of silent prayer, and the
opening prayer. It finishes with the prayer over the people. Again there
is no final blessing or dismissal. Again people depart in silence. The
liturgies of Holy Thursday and Good Friday give the sense of being
unfinished. They leave us up in the air, waiting for something more. And
there is more!
At the Easter Vigil we gather around a fire in silent
darkness for the blessing of the fire and the lighting of the paschal
candle. The liturgy concludes with the joyful paschal dismissal: “Go in
the peace of Christ, alleluia, alleluia” as we process out into the dark
or Easter dawn, to the sounds of the triumphant Easter hymn. The
three-day liturgy, which began with the entrance and greeting on Holy
Thursday evening, has moved us from suffering through death to
resurrection. The whole Easter mystery is celebrated from a different
point of view on each of the three days. The Triduum is not a
re-enactment of past events separated into neat historical or liturgical
compartments. The death and resurrection we celebrate is our dying and
rising in Christ today.
May the Lord bless these remaining days of our Lenten
Journey. |
