Date: April 4th 2012

RECTOR’S MESSAGE

THE SACRED TRIDUUM

April 4, 2012

Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

Easter, the Feast of the Resurrection of our Lord, is not a standalone event. It comes at the end of Holy Week, a week of events that lead to the arrest, crucifixion and death of Jesus of Nazareth. Easter stands as both conclusion and beginning. The Resurrection completes the narrative of the Word made flesh, and it brings forth a new creation – a creation in which death no longer has power over us.

This understanding of Easter is spelled out clearly in our liturgy of the Sacred Triduum – the services of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and the Great Vigil of Easter. Neither the Maundy Thursday nor Good Friday services end with the dismissal. Once the Maundy Thursday service begins, we do not hear our customary service ending dismissal “Go forth in peace to love and serve the Lord” until the end of the Great Vigil of Easter. The Sacred Triduum is not three services, but one, a seamless liturgical action that enfolds us within the mystery of the death and resurrection of our Lord.

Some people mistakenly understand the Sacred Triduum as a reenactment of the final days of Jesus’ life. They see the institution of the Last Supper and the washing of feet on Maundy Thursday, the recitation of the Gospel account of the death of Jesus on Good Friday and the celebration of the resurrection in the Great Vigil of Easter as a congregational passion play. While passion plays and other reenactments of the passion have a long history in Christianity, the liturgy should never be understood as such.

In fact, the Sacred Triduum was the culmination of the forty days of Lent, and it was the capstone of that time during which people were prepared for Holy Baptism, the pivotal action of the Great Vigil of Easter, the only day provided for Holy Baptism in the ancient Church. After more than a year of preparation, those to be baptized gathered with the Church community and heard the recitation of the stories central to our salvation history, the Creation, the Exodus and the prophetic stories of the coming of Christ.

After hearing those stories, the catechumens were initiated into the Body of Christ through the sacrament of Holy Baptism, and then the blessed announcement was made – “Christ is Risen” –
and then all entered the church for the celebration of the Holy Eucharist.

The Sacred Triduum – indeed every Eucharist of our lives – affords us the opportunity to participate in the mystery of the eternal nature of God’s time. The liturgy unfolds for us in such a way as to enfold us in the collapse of time, bringing the past, present and future together in one moment. When entered into over a three day period, this mystery extends beyond the hour we spend in church each week and saturates seventy-two hours of our life in ways that cannot be imagined if you have not taken part in it.

In some traditions, Easter is a service that stands alone, neither as part of Holy Week services nor even as the conclusion to Lent. We are richly blessed to worship in a tradition that sees Easter not as simply a sunrise service one day a year, but as the culmination of the liturgical pathway that leads us from incarnation to resurrection. The rhythm of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost and the season after Pentecost allows us to enter, I believe, more fully into the mystery of Christ and the church. And Holy Week is a seven-day period that intensifies that rhythm as it leads us to the mystery of the resurrection.

I commend to all of you the Sacred Triduum (the continuous liturgical thread of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and the Great Vigil of Easter). It is an ancient and powerful liturgy that allows us to truly experience the thrill, the fear and the joy of the empty tomb.

Yours in Christ,

Fr. Geoff +