A Triduum Blessing
Holy Week 2010

I want to extend a Triduum prayer and blessing this morning to all who will celebrate this most holy of commemorations. All through Lent and Holy Week we have been building up to this. Now we enter the most holy of times in the Christian liturgical calendar.

We begin with the Mass of the Lord's Supper on Holy Thursday tonight to reenact the institution of the Eucharist by Jesus. The tone of this liturgy at the monastery is quiet, intimate, and solemn. We come into intimate communion with Jesus in the Upper Room as He institutes this most sacred of mysteries among His closest companions and disciples. We also stand in special communion with our priests, whose ministry was also instituted by Christ on Holy Thursday. This takes on extraordinary significance in light of the recent sexual scandals as we honor the majority of our priests who remain humble and faithful servants of God and the Church.

After the Mass of the Lord's Supper we enter into a most intense time that reenacts Jesus' arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, imprisonment, and the beginning of a series of mock trials in the middle of the night. The chapel is stripped bare. The Blessed Sacrament is removed, and all decorations are removed and covered to represent Jesus being taken from our midst at the beginning of his Passion. This year we will not enter fully into this as a community do to to space constraints of still living in makeshift accommodations. Normally, we spend an hour in the re-created garden of Gethsemane, where we pray in silence interspersed with readings of what happened to Jesus on this very night.

Good Friday begins with an eerie sense of absence. Jesus has been taken from us. The only prayers we will pray today will be the long gospel reading of the Passion, followed by the most solemn intercessions of the liturgical church year for the salvation of the entire world, followed by a most brief Communion service. A single bell will toll at three in the afternoon to mark the moment of Jesus's crucifixion and death. All else is silent. The silence continues throughout Friday and Saturday.

As the second day of the passion comes to an end we celebrate the joyful resurrection of Jesus from the dead on the third day in the Easter Vigil. In a special way the Easter Vigil commemorates Jesus rising from the dead somewhere in the middle of the night before the dawn on Easter Sunday. (Keep in mind that on the Jewish calendar each day ends at sundown, and the new day begins in the darkness of night before dawn.) It is the absolute high point of the liturgical year! Here, we pull out all the stops with the most solemn, joyful, and a glorious celebration each local parish and monastic church can muster. It is a full out celebration of joy! The readings are long, and no one complains!! The music is beautiful, reverent, joyful, contemplative and loud! The church is filled with "smells and bells," as we use every artistic means at our command to joyfully celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. Candles, holy water, incense, music, drama and dance, colorful icons and sacred art, and the sacred gestures and sacraments of this most holy of nights! All of this is involved in the most grand and celebratory liturgy of the entire church year.

And there is another special significance for our Triduum at the monastery this year. This marks the end of our two-year exile from a truly appropriate church and monastery in which to celebrate this most holy of events. Immediately on Easter Monday we will begin preparations for the consecration and blessing of the New Monastery and church on Easter Saturday. The community is filled with joy, and anticipation. But there is much work to do! So this year, there is no rest after Holy Week, and the celebration of the Triduum. But no one is complaining. We are filled with Easter joy!

So I extend to everyone special blessings as we enter into this holy Triduum. I encourage you to celebrate the fullness of these most holy three days in the Christian calendar. Make time in your life for this most holy of celebrations. If you do not think you have it, find it! If you have time to eat on these holy days, you certainly can find time to pray with your brothers and sisters in Christ. A monastery is a wonderful place to experience the celebration! If you cannot get to a monastery, go to your parish church and enter fully into these most beautiful and meaningful celebrations. If your church does not celebrate the fullness of the Triduum, request that they do so next year. If they do not, find a church that does! (Many Orthodox churches also solemnly and beautifully celebrate Easter a week or so removed from the Western calendar.) Of course, we always extend a welcome to any of our Catholic churches throughout the world.

Most importantly, celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus in your own life. That's really all the liturgical celebrations are for. They are tools and aids so that his dying and rising might become a reality in our personal life on a daily basis. Allow the old self to die with Christ, so that you might be raised up a new creation in the resurrection of our Lord! Allow this relationship with Jesus to be personal, even intimate, and real. But allow it to be more than just a "feel-good" Christianity. Allow yourself to enter fully into the Passion this year, and to allow it to be real and living in your daily life. This is the real meaning of the Triduum.

John Michael Talbot