Tag Archives: Triduum

Mar 26 2014
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Lent Week 3

During the season of Lent, I am leading a group study on baptism and the triduum at the Church of St. Matthew & St. Timothy in New York City.  We meet on Wednesday nights in English and Thursday nights in Spanish.  I am only posting the English handouts on the blog, but can provide Spanish translations on request.

Week 3: Wednesday, March 26

The Space Between: Good Friday

The Good Friday liturgy is simply a reading of the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ according to John, followed by prayers, followed by anthems and the veneration of the cross. “The service has no formal entrance rite and no blessing or dismissal: since the church began it’s Triduum celebration on Thursday evening, the Good Friday liturgy is simply a gathering together or a focused offering of prayer at a particular moment in the course of the three days.”[1]

Story: Egeria is a Galician woman who made several pilgrimages to Jerusalem and kept precise journals, giving us an idea of early church practices:

“The pilgrim Egeria gives us the first evidence of special rites to mark the day in her description of the Good Friday rites in Jerusalem about A. D. 381-384. From eight o’clock in the morning until noon, the wood and superscription of the supposed true cross were exposed on a linen-covered table at the site of the crucifixion in the courtyard behind the Martyrium, the great church built by Constantine’s mother Helen. There the faithful came to venerate them as the bishop held his hands firmly on the cross while the deacons stood guard. At noon the people assemble in the courtyard for a service of psalms, lections, hymns, and prayers which lasted until three o’clock. They then moved into the church for a service and afterward to the tomb where the Johannine account of the burial was read (Jn. 19:38-42). A voluntary vigil at the tomb continued through the night. After a time other churches acquired portions of the true cross and conducted rites similar to those performed in Jerusalem. Eventually veneration of a cross became a practice in churches which did not possess any piece of the true cross.”[2]

  • What purpose does the cross serve in Egeria’s time? In ours?
  • The veneration of the cross is optional. The Prayer Book states, “If desired, a wooden cross may now be brought into the church and placed in the sight of the people.”[3] Our church chooses to share in this practice—why?
  • Does the cross mean something different on Good Friday than it does on Easter?

 

The cross sits atop Conejos Peak in Colorado, which I summitted this summer with my family.

This cross sits atop Conejos Peak in Colorado, taken this summer while hiking with family.

“The Christian’s participation in Jesus’ death in baptism is also a participation in his resurrection (Rom 6:5)…Baptism orients us to a future that does not end in death even while it initiates us into a cruciform pattern of life. This was Christ’s path to the resurrection, and thus it is also ours.”[4]

  • Christ cannot be resurrected without first dying on the cross. We can’t celebrate Easter without first observing Good Friday.
  • Is the cross a symbol of death? Or victory? Or…?

 

[1]Jeffrey D. Lee, Opening the Prayer Book (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 1999), 89.

[2]Marion J. Hatchett, Commentary On the American Prayer Book (San Francisco: HarperOne, 1995), 232.

[3] Church Publishing, Book of Common Prayer Chapel Edition: Red Hardcover (Unknown: CHURCH PUBLISHING INC, 1979), 281.

[4] Susan K. Wood, One Baptism: Ecumenical Dimensions of the Doctrine of Baptism (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2009), 8.

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Mar 19 2014
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Lent Week 2

During the season of Lent, I am leading a group study on baptism and the triduum at the Church of St. Matthew & St. Timothy in New York City.  We meet on Wednesday nights in English and Thursday nights in Spanish.  I am only posting the English handouts on the blog, but can provide Spanish translations on request. 

Week 2: Wednesday, March 19

The Triduum Begins: Holy Thursday

Read John 13: 1-15. Then read the following explication of our Maundy Thursday liturgy:

“The Three days of the Christian Passover begin with simple familiarity; the rubric opening the liturgy for Maundy Thursday directs: “The Eucharist begins in the usual manner” (BCP 274). On this night we share the meal that Jesus filled with the meaning of his death and resurrection, the meal that reconstitutes the church in that same paschal mystery week by week. The Eucharist is a fundamental means by which we are incorporated into the dying and rising of Christ, by which we renew our baptismal identity. The meaning of that identity in Christ is expressed in additional ritual actions on this night. The Maundy Thursday celebration allows for the ceremony of foot washing—from which the day actually takes its name. In Latin the word “commandment” is mandatum. At the last supper Jesus says to his disciples, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another” (John 13:34). Jesus takes the role of a servant by washing the disciples’ feet, revealing his identity as servant of all; servanthood was to be the sign of those who follow him. The washing of feet is meant to be a ritual identification with the servanthood of Christ, a declaration of who we are by baptism. At one time another mark of the liturgy of this day—expressing the same identification with Christ’s servanthood—was a special collection of gifts for the poor. Those who have been fed at the table of the Lord must become food for others.”[1]

  • In what ways does this liturgy make the Gospel come alive?
  • How important to our faith is Jesus’ command to love and serve one another?
  • Have you allowed someone to wash your feet? How did it make you feel?
  • Have you washed the feet of another? How did that make you feel?
  • What does Lee mean by, “Those who have been feed at the table of the Lord must become food to others”?

Story: Read “Gaining a Dose of Humility, One Washed Foot at a Time” from The Washington Post[2]

  • How do you feel about foot washing after hearing this story?
  • Does this story challenge or inspire you?
  • If we are united to Christ in our baptism, and we remember and experience this unification in the Eucharist, how do we express that unification in our service to others?

 

[1]Jeffrey D. Lee, Opening the Prayer Book (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 1999), 88.

[2] William Wan, “Gaining a Dose of Humility, One Washed Foot at a Time,” The Washington Post, April 2, 2006, accessed December 8, 2013,   http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/01/AR2006040100617_pf.html.

 

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Mar 12 2014
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Lent Week 1

During the season of Lent, I am leading a group study on baptism and the triduum at the Church of St. Matthew & St. Timothy in New York City.  We meet on Wednesday nights in English and Thursday nights in Spanish.  I am only posting the English handouts on the blog, but can provide Spanish translations on request.

Week 1: Wednesday, March 12

Water and Spirit: An Introduction To Baptism

Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.” John 3:5

Story: Read A Rite Of Passage by Aidan Kavanagh [1]

  • What do you think and feel upon hearing this story?
  • Have you ever thought of baptism as initiation? Initiation into what? How does it compare to other initiations you have experienced?
  • Euphemius and the other candidates never even see a Eucharist celebrated before their baptism—what does this mystery create?
  • What are the symbols used in the story—what do they symbolize?
  • This story describes the tradition that shapes our liturgy. But the tradition and liturgy (then and now) are based on certain beliefs we hold to be central. How does our baptism illustrate our beliefs?
  • Does your baptism shape your identity? How so?
This is me celebrating the excitement of baptism in an early church baptismal font outside Ephesus, Turkey.

This is me celebrating the excitement of baptism in an early church baptismal font outside Ephesus, Turkey.

What about this “Triduum” thing?

Triduum means “three days” and it begins when Lent ends on Thursday evening, lasting through Sunday evening, encompassing Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil. “The Triddum, the very soul of our year, is what it is because of the baptizing: there is the passion, the dying and the rising of the Lord Jesus, met in our midst. There is the encounter with these death-dealing yet life-giving waters that forever define each of us as Christian and all of us as church.”[2]

“Even more than the participation in any of the liturgies…the manner in which this time is kept by individuals and by households will establish the Triduum as a holy time and will make the Vigil with its baptizing the center of our year. Fasting, praying (alone or with large or small groups), freedom from work when possible, time for the reading of scripture, an atmosphere of quiet: these being to make the Triduum presence in our lives, a presence to be received and honored and attended to. Likewise, the hours of Sunday need to have something more than “it’s all over” to them. The element of feasting, of some once-a-year foods, of another kind of restfulness filled with the sounds of the Vigil’s alleluia bring Easter Sunday into the home.”[3]

  • What traditions did you practice in your home or church growing up leading up to Easter? Who passed them onto you, and what did they mean to you?
  • What traditions do you continue to practice today—why?
  • How might celebrating the Triduum shape us?

 

[1]Gabe Huck, The Three Days: Parish Prayer in the Paschal Triduum (Chicago: Liturgy Training Pubns, 1981), 107-9.

[2]Huck, The Three Days: Parish Prayer in the Paschal Triduum, 1.

[3]Huck, The Three Days: Parish Prayer in the Paschal Triduum, 6.

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