If we enter fully into Holy Week our observance of Lent and our celebration of Easter will be deepened beyond measure, writes Fr Martin Browne OSB
I got a promotional email from a hotel during the week, trying to interest me in some of their seasonal special offers. It loudly proclaimed that “Easter is for eating and sleeping-in”. I hope they didn’t pay a copywriter much money for this headline because it’s a pretty poor advertising tagline. It’s crass. They might as well have announced that “Easter is for stuffing your face and slobbing around in sweatpants!”
Of course, for many people, this image may be a very accurate description of Easter – little more than a long weekend with good social and sporting events…and chocolate. But for Christians, Easter isn’t just any holiday or festival. It is the festival. Christians are an Easter people – and Alleluia is our song.
For some, even people who take their faith very seriously, Easter can seem like the party at the end of the much more important season of Lent. That is to get things backwards. It isn’t that Easter is the feast that concludes the sacrifices of Lent. Rather, Lent is the fast that prepares us to celebrate Easter. Marking Lent without having Easter in view, while it may have many positive aspects, doesn’t ultimately make sense. And of course, Easter isn’t just Easter Sunday or Easter Monday. It’s a season of 50 days. In between the 40 days of Lent and the 50 days of Easter come the days of the Sacred Paschal Triduum. If we enter fully into these days, our observance of Lent and our celebration of Easter will be deepened beyond measure.
Paschal mystery
So, what do we mean when we speak of the Triduum? The word means three days. But which three days? Many people think that the three days are Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday, and that the Triduum is a sort of three-day preparation for Easter. They are incorrect! The Triduum isn’t a preparation for the celebration of Easter. It is the celebration of Easter – the liturgical celebration of the paschal mystery of the Lord Jesus, recalling his passion and death, his rest and his glorious resurrection.
In Jewish tradition, the day began at sundown on the evening before. The Church has preserved this understanding when it comes to liturgical feasts. And so, the Triduum begins on Thursday evening, with the celebration of the Mass of the Lord’s Supper. The first day continues right through to Friday evening. Thus, both the Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord’s Supper and the Good Friday Celebration of the Passion of the Lord belong to the first ‘day’ of the Triduum. The second ‘day’ begins at sundown on Good Friday evening and lasts until Saturday evening. You might say that this is odd, because there isn’t any major ceremony between Friday evening and Saturday evening. But that’s the point. The Church keeps still because we are recalling the Lord’s rest in the tomb. The third ‘day’ of the Triduum begins at sundown on Saturday night and the celebration of the most important liturgy of the year, the Easter Vigil in the Holy Night. It continues right through to Sunday evening.
The first day of the Triduum is the Day of the Lord’s Passion and death; the second day is the day of rest; and the third day is the day of resurrection. It is a single celebration of the saving work of the Lord Jesus – what the Church calls the paschal mystery. None of these days makes sense without the other two. While each person’s circumstances, schedules and commitments are different, the Triduum will make most sense if we experience something of each of the three days. If you can at all, do try to participate in the three main liturgies.
The Mass of the Lord’s Supper recalls the Last Supper, at which Jesus instituted the mystery of the Eucharist. But this ceremony isn’t about the Eucharist as such. Above all, the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday night is the beginning of the Triduum. It is the beginning of our celebration of the paschal mystery of the Lord Jesus.
The official entrance antiphon in the Missal for Holy Thursday sets the tone: it doesn’t refer to Holy Communion, priesthood, foot-washing or other such things. It says: “We should glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom is our salvation, life and resurrection, through whom we are saved and delivered.”
That is what the words, sacraments, rituals and symbols of the next three days are about. The Triduum is, in a real way, a single celebration with a single ‘theme’.
In 2016, though many places had been doing it for years, Rome finally permitted the washing of both women’s and men’s feet on Holy Thursday. The argument that only men’s feet should be washed at this liturgy because Jesus only washed men’s feet at the Last Supper is very weak one, on several levels.
The liturgy isn’t play-acting. The washing of feet on Holy Thursday night is not a historical re-enactment or a mime. In fact, the Missal no longer even specifies that the number of people involved should be twelve. It’s not the sex or number of the people involved that matters. It’s what is done to them. The ritual is a response to the Gospel reading and its commandment: ‘I have given you an example so that you may copy what I have done to you’.
Some people don’t like the washing of feet on Holy Thursday, because they find feet a bit gross and icky. But surely that’s the point! It was an unpleasant task normally done by servants which Jesus chose to use as an example to his friends. I have read about and experienced many variations on the foot-washing and most of them leave me cold. It is hard not to be moved when the priest simply washes the feet of a group of people, with care, reverence and humility.
Whereas the Holy Thursday Mass begins with festivity and the ringing of bells, it ends much more soberly. The ciborium containing the consecrated hosts for Friday’s liturgy is carried to the Altar of Repose. But there’s a lot more to this than being prepared for tomorrow. The procession also commemorates the journey of the Lord and his disciples to the Garden of Gethsemane. If done with care, and the place of repose is set up well, the procession is particularly beautiful and evocative. It draws us into the reality of the Passion and the lonely agony of the Suffering Servant. There is no blessing or dismissal. Just silent watching and waiting, prolonging the prayer of the liturgy.
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Just as there is no blessing or dismissal on Thursday night, there is no greeting at the start on Friday afternoon. Instead, the celebration begins with the priest lying face down before the altar. The gesture itself speaks more powerfully than any commentary ever could. The Good Friday liturgy isn’t hugely long. But it is demanding. There’s a lot of standing and a lot of kneeling down and getting back up again. I find that this bodily effort helps focus my mind and heart. (Just like the fasting I didn’t do enough of in Lent was supposed to do….)
It’s a stark ceremony. There are no flowers, cloths, candles or decorations. But the liturgy brims with dignity and majesty. Listening to the readings, one simply knows that this is truly about the Son of God.
Whatever the biblical scholars may say, I never fail to be moved by the line in St John’s Passion that “this is the evidence of one who saw it – trustworthy evidence, and he knows he speaks the truth – and he gives it so that you may believe as well”.
The sense of dignity and majesty and of cosmic victory is underlined in the Adoration of the Holy Cross. Three times we are invited to behold the wood of the Cross – “on which hung the salvation of the world”. Three times we respond with adoration. And then, in turn, we come forward to kiss the Cross.
This wordless communion with the Crucified One is such a beautiful moment. Each person brings his or her own story, thoughts and sorrows and in the simple and short encounter at the Cross can experience the divine solidarity with our human condition that was made visible at Calvary. Our Irish tradition has many beautiful laments and airs for Good Friday, but I really love the official song texts in the Missal too, because they speak of the wonderful paradox, so clear in St John’s Gospel, that the Cross was not just the place of Christ’s death, but the place of his victory.
For all its starkness, Christ’s victory is present in the Good Friday liturgy too. “Holy is God. Holy and Mighty. Holy and Immortal One, have mercy on us.”
Focus
Even though the focus is on the Cross, the ‘theme’ of the Good Friday liturgy is the same as all the other Triduum liturgies – the paschal mystery of the Lord Jesus.
“Behold the blessed Sabbath, the holy day of rest, on which the Son of God has rested from his works.”
Just as the Good Friday liturgy ended in silence, so does the Easter Vigil begin in silence. Again, the sense is that we are continuing the single Triduum liturgy that we began on Thursday evening. The full name of this ceremony in the current Missal is a helpful one – The Easter Vigil in the Holy Night. The word ‘night’ is important. It should be dark outside. The practice in many places of having the Vigil at the same time that weekly Saturday evening Masses take place is not a good one.
The Easter fire and the ceremonies with the Paschal Candle make no sense unless it is dark. Over and over again, the Exsultet, the Easter Proclamation, rings out: “This is the night…” So, we shouldn’t be singing it in the early evening!
The Easter Vigil is long. It should be. That’s what a vigil is – a time of keeping watch. We should be tired after it. If we trim all the optional bits, and skip all but the obligatory readings and end up with a liturgy that’s only a few minutes longer than our usual Saturday evening Mass, then I’m not sure it qualifies to be called a vigil. Vigils take time…
Like the other Triduum celebrations, the Easter Vigil is not a play. Jesus died once for all and lives for all eternity. He doesn’t die every Good Friday and rise every Easter. He is always alive, gloriously. And so there isn’t a single “moment of resurrection” in the liturgy. It is mysterious. No-one saw Jesus rise from the dead. As we hear in the Exsultet, only the night itself knows: “O truly blessed night, worthy alone to know the time and hour when Christ rose from the underworld!”
Darkness
Jesus was in the tomb throughout that Sabbath day, but somehow, when the women arrived on Sunday morning, the stone had been rolled away and his body was gone. Likewise, we begin our Vigil in darkness, but by the end of the Vigil, as the seventh day gives way to the first day of the week, it has become Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of the Lord. “He is not here; he has risen!”
When celebrated with care and energy, the Easter Vigil is a magnificently powerful proclamation of the saving love of the Father revealed in the rising of Jesus from the dead. The fire should be big. The Paschal Candle should be beautiful. Paying due regard to health and safety, everyone should have a real candle. Who cares if it’s messy? There are 50 days on which the church can be cleaned!
The Exsultet should be sung. The readings should be many and well-prepared. In parish churches, there should be baptisms. There should be water everywhere! The air should be heavy with the scent of chrism and incense. Communion should be distributed under both kinds. And there should be Alleluias. Lots of them…and then some more!
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Easter joy isn’t about faking a happy face or pretending that I don’t have worries or problems. It is about believing, trusting and knowing that despite my worries and problems, Christ has conquered death and sin and is alive.
As the instruction at the opening of the Vigil reminds us: “If we keep the memorial of the Lord’s paschal solemnity in this way, listening to his word and celebrating his mysteries, then we shall have the sure hope of sharing his triumph over death and living with him in God.” And that is cause for joy indeed.
We are an Easter people and Alleluia is our song!
Martin Browne OSB is a monk of Glenstal Abbey and along with Luke Macnamara OSB is author of The Glenstal Companion to the Easter Vigil which has just been published by Dominican Publications.