The Triduum is at the heart of our whole Christian life. It celebrates the Lord’s Pasch. We can understand Pasch as passage and passion. Our Lord passes from death to life through the suffering of His cross. The central image of all three days is the cross. The Church makes this obvious in the Holy Thursday Opening Antiphon: “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.” 

Rome’s premier instrument of death has become the sign and glory of our life. As we survey these three days, keep in mind that as baptized Christians and as those preparing for baptism, we know the whole story! These three days are not a theatrical performance for us to watch; they are the entrance point into the singular event that won our salvation. We are there with the Lord, and we must not leave him. We enter his passion, death, and Resurrection not as a chronological series of events, but as one unifying event all at once! These days mark our lives and shape us to live in the awesome glory of his Resurrection. 

Holy Thursday

The tension, the mysterious balance, the inextricible blending of cross and resurrection meet at the opening of this liturgy. On Holy Thursday, “Love and death stand side by side here in the terrible drama that is about to unfold.” (Driscoll, Awesome Glory, 43). The unique ritual of this night is the footwashing. 

The most moving portrayal of the footwashing is in Ford Madox Brown’s Jesus Washing Peter’s Feet. Peter’s poise moves me. His hands clasped in prayer. Peter witnesses his Master become his intimate friend as he touches and washes his feet. Jesus washes the dirt from the tremendous journey we have all taken since the Exodus.

With His loving hands, He scrubs the filth that makes our journey in life unbearable, ugly, and horrendous. The faces of those gathered around Jesus capture the many emotions we face this passionate evening. Some are in utter disbelief that their Messiah would lower Himself to be a servant. Others are pensive about how a lover can draw close to His beloved.

My feet are dirty; my life is not perfect. Yet, my savior draws near me. He takes my feet into his hands, washes them, tenderly kisses them, and makes them clean. As Jesus washes my feet, I fall in love with Him anew.

I have resolved to follow Him to His Cross in this purifying love. This amorous night leads to its highest pitch at the Cross. He moves me to adore Him under the shadow of His Cross, which moves us in silence to the next day. I follow Him to His Cross, where love is fully displayed, and my heart is forever pierced.

Good Friday

Good Friday is infused with ritual and is the only day when Mass is not celebrated. The significance of the Solemn Intercession and the Adoration of the Cross is worth our consideration. 

Following the homily, the whole Church prays through ten extensive petitions. We are called to listen, observe intentional silence, kneel, and stand. Why is this important? Our intercessions flow from the magnanimity of the readings of this day. These extensive intercessions call to mind the Second Reading from the Letter to the Hebrews. Jesus is our Great High Priest who “offered prayers and supplications with loud cry and tears” (5:7). We are in his hour. We are entering the life of God as we pray for the whole world, the world that Jesus loved from his Cross. 

After the Solemn Intercessions, the Adoration of the Cross takes place. We adore the Cross that opened the whole Triduum. As many come from different directions to adore the one cross, there is a prescribed text that is used: The Reproaches. This is text from the Jerusalem liturgy. In Rome, the Greek song was preserved but also translated into Latin, and the choruses alternated between the two languages during the veneration. 

The verses recall major scenes from Israel’s salvation history, which are contrasted with the Cross event. The Christian contrast is direct. The God who acts in Israel’s history refers to himself as “I”, the same “I” speaking in Jesus. The verses help us realize how horrific our sins are, which led Jesus to the cross, and how deep our betrayal is. 

Sometimes the Reproaches can be viewed as Anti-Semitic, pointing the finger at the Jews for crucifying Christ. This falls short in its recognition of the Christian Church’s relationship to the history of Israel. Instead of viewing these reproaches outwardly, we should see them inwardly: Israel’s history is our history. The prophets speak to us, showing that Israel’s dealings with God are the pattern of our own relationship with God. 

I have learned that it may be misleading to name this poetic text the Reproaches. We know that our Lord never uttered a reproach, never complained while fastened on the cross. Love held him there. But in the liturgy, “the words placed in his mouth in these texts are a poetic form by which in some sense we reproach ourselves by imagining what Jesus, so unjustly treated, could have said but, strikingly did not” (Driscoll, Awesome Glory, 73). In such adoration, I want my heart to be pierced to his cross, to remain there, and never to abandon our Lord again.  

The Paschal Vigil

The Church waits in silence until the third night, when we celebrate the Great Paschal Vigil. The Second Vatican Council brought about a revival of the Paschal Vigil and a renewed emphasis on the Great Fifty Days of the Easter season. Vigil is important to us as the People of God. In Exodus, we read, “This was a night of vigil for the LORD, when he brought them out of the land of Egypt; so on this night all Israelites must keep a vigil for the LORD throughout their generations” (12:42). Vigil is an act of thanksgiving for the mighty deeds of God. A vigil expresses God’s priority in our lives by disrupting our schedules. The Paschal Vigil is the most important Vigil of all, containing four parts that overflow with complex rubrics found nowhere else in the liturgical year. The Paschal Vigil places pasch on full display. I want to highlight the Lucenarium and Easter Proclamation. 

The Vigil begins with a blazing fire. In the presence of this blazing fire, we come under the full force of the pasch. The Paschal Candle symbolizes the risen Christ and gives light to the darkened world. A cross, the year, and Alpha and Omega are traced onto the Paschal Candle. 

These symbols etch into time the eternal event of the Son who absorbs all human history into himself. Five grains are placed onto the Paschal Candle to represent the glorious wounds of Christ that protect us, an image of the slain and risen Lamb (Revelation 5:6). 

Once the candle is prepared, it is brought into the church. The Paschal Candle is an image of light evading the darkness. This light illuminates the whole space as we stand with lighted candles that came from this pillar of fire. 

Then, we stand in the presence of the Paschal Candle, and we hear with listening hearts the Easter Proclamation. In this long poetic proclamation, we see the balance of passion and passage. Pasch is on full display as these words are chanted in the presence of the Risen One. 

Baptism is at the heart of the Vigil. Without baptisms in parishes, the Vigil is sterile. Nothing fills our hearts with greater joy than witnessing adults receive new life in Christ. The Church increases as new children of God gather around the altar to eat his body and drink his blood. All the while, we renew our own baptism and recommit to the mission of Christ and his Church. 

Three days. One event. One protagonist. As Easter bursts open, remember that the Resurrection of our Lord is not the reversal of the horrendous event of the Cross. It is its completion. His cross is our hope. 

Image: Photo by alexandr Kornienko on Unsplash