MONDAY DIARY: SO I WOKE UP ON SPY WEDNESDAY WITH A SORE THROAT SURE THAT IT WAS STREP

It is very quiet.

There are no school children around. No secretaries. No janitors or maintenance personnel. Most of the seminarians that have been staying with us over Easter have vamoosed. While filling Sebastian’s water bowl my phone fell out of my pocket and right into the water so THAT’S not working. We have for all intents and purposes fallen off the face of the earth.

It is a guilty pleasure.

One of the seminarians, Joe, asked me if I was going to take an Emmaus Day. In his country the priests all disappear on the Monday after Easter calling it the Emmaus Day to relax and recharge. I am not going anywhere. This is one of maybe five or six days out of the entire year that the rectory is empty and I fully intend to enjoy it.

The Triduum went well. All the rehearsing and work by our behind the scenes people paid off. We looked like we knew what we were doing. Mundy Thursday went without too much of anything by way of hitches but then again Fr. Pfeiffer had the Mass. My job was to be decorative altar furniture and sit next to our pastor emeritus.

I was plenty nervous about Good Friday having to remember everything that had to happen with the rubric changes. Reading the Passion we had a Federal Prosecutor reading the part of the Voice. He read it well. “Truth! What is truth?!” I felt like I was on the set of Perry Mason. It took everything within me not to smile.

Most of the “difficulties” happened at the Easter Vigil. Fortunately most of them happened in the dark so nobody saw them. Entering the church the Paschal candle went out about which we were alerted by a concerned parishioner in much the same way somebody might have brought to our attention a raging fire in the basement of the church.

We lost one of the priests in the initial darkness of the procession and after the third “Christ our light!” the Paschal candle took off before the servers could light their tapers which they were to use to light all of the candles at the shrines. They went off chasing the candle into the sanctuary.

Half way through the offertory the music stopped. We still had a bit to go through. The altar had yet to be incensed and we just kept continuing on in silence. I was thinking to myself, “Well, I am not going to hurry this along simply because there is no music! I wish they would at least fill with something!” As it turned out, the organ, once again, just stopped playing – some sort of computer failure - not unusual as of late unfortunately.

The organ is being ripped out tomorrow.

I’m not kidding.

At the end the choir invites the congregation to sing the Halleluiah Chorus and then the priests stand in back and shake hands and wish people a Happy Easter. We change, lock up (just in time as it turns out. The alarms came on shortly after) and then, as is our tradition, we headed over to the rectory and had a shot or two of slivovitz and had a play by play recounting of the night laughing about things that went wrong (or right.) Sebastian still needed to go for a walk and so the lot of us, priests and seminarians, took the dog for his nightly airing out before all good clergy headed off to bed.

Easter Sunday was packed. Chairs needed to be brought up from the basement. Altar servers turned out in droves. “Can you use another server?” “Sure! The more the merrier!” So the Masses grew in numbers of ministers and in pomp. In some ways they went better than the vigil – though they were far less complicated.

The day ended with a friend coming over to share a bottle of Easter wine. Before he left I said, “You know, the organ is being ripped out on Tuesday. Do want to go climbing?” He was game and so we went exploring into the inner chambers of the organ.

“Stay here,” I told him sitting on a perch among the pipes, “And I’ll go play a march and you can see what it is like in the organ chamber when it is playing.” So I opened her up and gave her all that she is worth. It is a neat thing to experience. Instead of sound simply coming out of a speaker, thousands of flutes or pipes all around you play their individual notes and sounds in an orchestrated manner to make music.

The last song I played before shutting her down was, “Lepa si lepa”, a Slovenian hymn to Mary saying something along the lines, “You are a beautiful rose Mary . . .” Mom (rest her soul) always told me that I should always christen an organ by playing a Marian hymn. Thinking of her at Easter, I put this organ to rest having the last song being dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

HOW COME I DON'T REMEMBER IT BEING THAT WAY: TRIDUUM

Interestingly nobody made a peep that there was going to be rubrical changes in the Mass when everybody was either cheering or bemoaning the new Mass translation. There are quite a few that will hit us during the Triduum. The savvy Catholic (or the one not deeply in prayer) will notice a few changes (assuming that your priest noticed that there are, in fact, changes in what we are to do.)

Most are pretty innocuous. There are a few you might pick up on however. Here are a few:

GOOD FRIDAY: Instead of walking in and going directly into a prostration, the celebrant and other ministers will bow and then lay down in prostration.

The deacon has a stronger role in the ten petitions now. The “Let us kneel – Let us stand” is now optional. Congregations are encouraged to either kneel or stand through the whole of the singing of the petitions.

For the revealing of the Cross the first option is to have the deacon present the priest with the Cross in the sanctuary and as the priest uncovers the cross it is he that intones the response three times. The Cross is to be covered in violet (not red) and ALL are to kneel momentarily after each response.

It is still permissible to process the Cross in from the door of the church, but in this instance the Cross is NOT covered.

Here’s a very interesting one: Now the priest is to remove his shoes and his chasuble when he venerates the Cross.

Last interesting one: The ministers will now genuflect to the Cross (the Blessed Sacrament being taken away) before leaving the sanctuary.

HOLY SATURDAY:

When entering the darkened church with the Paschal candle, the presider now lights his candle after the first “Thanks be to God.” Everyone else lights it after the second. The church lights, save for the candles at the altar, are also lit at this point.

Before the Gospel, the celebrant is supposed to intone three solemn alleluias which are answered by the people before the Gospel procession begins.

Before communion the presider may address the newly baptized and those welcomed into the Church about the specialness of their First Holy Communion.

There are other changes but they are comparatively minute. These are the ones that, if you have been to the Triduum before, might cause you to look quizzically and wonder, “I don’t remember that.” That is because we haven’t been doing it that way!

HOLY SATURDAY BATMAN!

Symbolic Saturday was transferred to Holy Thursday this week. Here is a short Holy Saturday message as it is a busy day! God bless.

“Unwise is he that mourns a man’s going hence. Let Christ have thee rather than I.” From Sigrid Undset’s, “Kristen Lavransdatter”

The only reason we can say that is because on this Holy Saturday Christ does not lie in the earth, buried like a forgotten treasure never to see the light of day again, but like a flower bulb that lays beneath the cold earth ready to spring to life at the proper time. Hence for Christians, death has been redefined. We may shed tears in the face of death, but that is for us for we will have to be without the physical presence of a brother of sister for a spell. But even in death there is hope! It is the hope of life. Of life eternal! “Lord, for your faithful people, life is changed, not ended.” This is the gift we are given because Christ lies in a tomb today.

Therefore we are not completely bereft. The Church does not spend all of its time mourning today. We know there is more! And because there is more to the story we must prepare! In rectories homilies are written, chalices and ciboria are cleaned. Candles are prepared, all is made new, brought to a shine, and liturgical practices are held. In homes amidst the Triduum prayers the kitchen ovens are hot with preparations for the Easter Feast! Our Sunday best is prepared for when we shed our mourning clothes. The “A” word stands ready in our hearts ready to burst forth at the Easter Vigil.

Today the Christian prefigures what Peter’s mother-in-law went through when the news was brought to her on Easter morning. Jesus, who died is again alive! But it is too soon to celebrate. For now we only have hope. Tomorrow we shall know and we will greet each other with, “He is risen,” and, “Indeed He is risen!” and nobody shall be able to hold back our joy!