Over the years, my mom has developed many different traditions to help us live the liturgical year in our domestic church. Some of the most enduring and cherished of these traditions are the ones attached to Holy Week, particularly the Triduum. These family customs have always helped me enter more deeply into the most solemn and holy days of the Church year, creating a time in our home that is very distinct from any other time.
During this difficult time, when the church doors will not be open to us on for the liturgies of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, the Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday, perhaps it is more important than ever for our Catholic families to focus on the liturgy of our own domestic churches. Instead of letting our separation from the sacraments divide us from Christ and the devout keeping of these most holy days, I think this is a time to direct our hunger for Him into fervent efforts to bring Him more and more into the center of our homes and hearts.
Perhaps this will be the truest of Triduums for many of us. Perhaps we are being given a glimpse of how much the world needed the Eucharist. Perhaps we are all experiencing, more truly and keenly than ever, a taste of the grief of our Blessed Mother and the Apostles, their pining for our Lord’s physical presence when He was separated from them for a time. Perhaps more than ever before we can have the smallest pulse of empathy with our Lord’s “Eloi, eloi, lamma sabacthani…”
What a gift this might be in itself, a consolation to our Lord that we long for him in some tiny echo of the great longing of His Heart for us which led Him to Calvary. And we must not lose hope or courage, even if our own Easter morning of seeing and touching our Lord again might be a while in coming, because He has promised us:
“Amen, I say to you, you shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned to joy. For I shall see you again, and your hearts shall be filled with joy, and that joy no one shall take from you…”
So I’d like to share a few ideas that have enriched our family’s journey with Christ through these upcoming days, in the hopes of offering some consolation and being united in the unique grace of this Triduum of 2020.
Also, I just wanted to remind anyone who is interested of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter’s beautiful LiveMass.net resource, where they both live stream and upload previous Masses each day in several locations around the world. We have been and will continue to have recourse to this wonderful ministry!
Holy Thursday
Messianic Seder Supper
For many years, our family has made and enjoyed what is called a Messianic Seder Supper on Holy Thursday. The simple idea of this meal is to commemorate the fulfillment of the promise of Passover that Christ accomplished in the Paschal Mystery. It’s a beautiful symbol that has always brought an aura of solemnity to our home at the start of the Holy Triduum. Some years we’ve done it before going to church for the day’s liturgy, some years after.
I’m pretty sure my mom compiled the way we do it from different sources over the years. It always runs basically the same way: we set the table very nicely, including glasses of wine (or grape juice for the underage drinkers ;)).
The Prayers
At the start of the meal, there is always a prayer and an explaination of what we are doing, read by Mom and Dad. Here is what we have followed (taken from Catholic Culture)
The mother lights a candle, since it is the Jewish mother’s privilege to light the Sabbath candles.
MOTHER: The traditional prayer of the mother in the Jewish family as she lights the feast day candle before the meal is this: Blessed art thou, O Lord God, King of the universe, who hast sanctified us by thy commandments and hast commanded us to kindle the festival lights. Blessed art thou, O Lord God, King of the universe, who hast kept us alive and sustained us and brought us to this season. May our home be consecrated O God, by the light of thy countenance shining upon us in the blessing and bringing us peace.
FATHER OR LEADER: This is Holy Week, a time that joins for us the Old and the New Covenant. At this season the Jewish people celebrate the feast of the Passover or Pasch. More than 1,400 years before the time of Christ, the chosen people were suffering in slavery in Egypt. God raised up Moses as their leader and Moses tried to secure their release from captivity. Despite the hardships of nine successive plagues which God sent to them, the Egyptians still refused the pleas of Moses. Then an angel of the Lord was sent to strike down the first born son of every family; but at God’s command, each Jewish family had sacrificed a lamb and sprinkled its blood on the doorposts. And the angel, seeing the blood, passed over their homes and their children were spared.
Then, finally, Pharaoh permitted the Jews to leave. They fled in haste, to wander amid the hardships in the desert for forty years before coming to the promised land. And God commanded Moses that the Jews should make a remembrance of their day of deliverance (Exodus 12:14-28). Thus the Passover became the great feast of sacrifice, of deliverance and of thanksgiving. Each Passover meal revolves around the retelling (the Haggadah) of this Providential act.
We who are the followers of Christ see the working of God’s concern for His people. As God sent Moses to rescue the Israelites from captivity in Egypt, so He lovingly sent His Son to redeem fallen man from slavery to sin. By the sacrifice of Himself, Christ opened the gates of heaven to us.
At this time Christians and Jews celebrate their own feasts in their own ways and we can see in these celebrations the common bond of the symbolism of the Exodus. Jesus was a Jew and today we wish to draw upon the traditional Jewish Seder and the words of the New Testament to help us more fully appreciate Jesus’ observance of His Jewish heritage, whose laws He kept.
Matthew’s, Mark’s and Luke’s accounts of Christ’s sacrifice for us each begin with His celebration of the paschal meal:
Now on the first day of Unleavened Bread the disciples came to Jesus to say, ”Where do you want us to make the preparations for you to eat the Passover?” (Matt. 26:17) (see also Mark 14:12 and Luke 22:7-9)
After Dad reads one account of the Last Supper, the meal begins.
We decided to have questions that each of us four kids would ask in turn, printing them on cards (with answers inside) at each place. Before each “course” of the meal, one of us would ask “why” this particular food, and then read about its symbolism. I believe this came from the tradition of the youngest member of the Jewish family questioning, at the Passover meal, “Why is this night different from every other night?”
The Menu & Its Symbols
The lamb (or for us, usually chicken that we pretend is lamb 🙂 ) is of course to symbolize how the lamb of Passover is fulfilled in the Lamb of God, whose blood saves us from eternal death and brings us to freedom, and Who first fed us with Himself on this holy night.
The unleavened bread (we use pitas) is to symbolize the humility of Christ, the Bread of Life, who was broken for us. The heat-scorched stripes on the bread vividly recall to us that “by His stripes, we are healed.”
The bitter herbs (I think we use parsley) symbolize the bitterness of our slavery to sin, and the bitterness of the Cross which ransomed us. We dip them first in salt water, to represent the tears of all mankind in bondage and the tears of Christ our Savior. We dip them again in applesauce (a sweet mixture called haroses would be more traditional but we don’t get that fancy!) to symbolize the mortar the slaves used in their work, and also the sweetness of Christ’s work of redemption.
The round, white cake is a symbol of the Eucharist, and a celebration of its institution and the institution of the priesthood. It is a taste of the sweetness of Christ’s love for us, a sweetness we will remember through the bitter days to come.
The wine is (obviously) a symbol of Christ’s precious blood which is about to be offered for us.
We’ve also supplemented the meal with other side dishes as needed.
Other Holy Thursday Ideas
We haven’t done this every year, but sometimes in addition to our Seder Supper, we do a washing of the feet among our family members, to remind us of the attitude of humble service we ought to have towards each other as the family of Christ, Who calls us to “love one another as I have loved You.”
A lot of the time we will do baking, such as making Hot Cross Buns for Good Friday, on Holy Thursday, since it was the day our Lord first confected the Bread which “contains in itself all sweetness”.
We typically go through the miniseries “Jesus of Nazareth” throughout Lent, and watch the scenes of Holy Thursday sometime on this day. We have also gotten into the habit of starting our annual watch of “The Passion of the Christ” on Holy Thursday evening, watching up to the point of Good Friday morning in the movie. This always helps me transition into the gravity of the evening, turns my mind from the joy of the Last Supper to our Lord’s Agony.
Like many people, some of us have had the chance to go to Adoration sometime during the course of the night, to “watch one hour” with Christ. I think this is an incredible tradition, and while we cannot do this physically this year, we can still rise during the night and spend an hour in prayer to keep company with our Agonizing Lord.
Good Friday
We always try, with mixed success, to keep the house very quiet on Good Friday. This simple effort adds very much to the sad solemnity of the day and makes prayer and contemplation much easier. Dad takes off work and school has ceased. The focus, as much as possible, is entirely on Christ’s Passion.
Of course, it is a day of fasting. We often have Hot Cross buns around for the small meals, the sweetness of them a reminder of our Lord’s love.
We always finish watching “The Passion of the Christ” sometime in the morning. Around noon, the quiet of the morning intensifies into a more strict silence as our Lord is on the Cross. Usually we would be at church in the early afternoon, for Confession, Stations of the Cross, and the day’s liturgy at 3 o’clock. This year I imagine we will pray Stations here, stream the liturgy online (as we will do each day probably), and also begin the Divine Mercy Novena, which takes place starting on Good Friday and leading up to Divine Mercy Sunday.
One of the most vivid and piercing traditions for me is the veiling of the images of Christ in our home, which we do at the hour of His death. I never realize how much I love the sight of His face in all the religious art, crucifixes, statues, etc. in our home until I cannot see Him. It is an extremely poignant visual reminder that, liturgically, He is dead, removed from our midst. We leave images of Our Lady uncovered, reminding us to share in her grief and console her.
We began this tradition a few years ago, just as traditionally churches veil their statues and such at some point during Lent. I would highly recommend it. The coverings remain until Easter Morning.
After the 3 o’clock hour, the silence lifts a little to just a hush. We usually have a simple meal, which Mom has always gotten creative with in tying in symbols, and the evening is quiet. There is a tangible sense of relief that our Lord’s sufferings are over and his victory attained, mingled with the grief of his absence. There seems to be a natural shift of attention to each other, to being loving and consoling after a day that feels like you’ve been to a funeral.
Sometimes it is beautiful to also steal an hour from this night to pray and keep company with our Lady.
Holy Saturday
We don’t have as many traditions on Holy Saturday. It’s always a combination of trying to keep the quiet mourning attitude that befits Christ’s time in the tomb, keeping company in spirit with our Lady, as preparation goes on in the kitchen for Easter festivities. The veiling of our Lord’s images helps keep things solemn, while the baking for the next day makes things feel more hopeful. While it’s not required to fast on this day, I think it’s an effective way of keeping the day focused.
When we are not attending the Easter Vigil, it is a nice practice to renew our baptismal vows at home. (We do this on our baptism anniversaries as well, and it’s always powerful!)
Sometimes we have also made a Paschal Candle for our home, usually painted by my much-more-artistic sister. It’s a great idea to have a candle burning in your home in front of whatever religious images you use as a focal point for family prayer, to remind everyone that Christ is King and He is always present in this domestic church.
Easter Sunday
“On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realized the new wonder; but even they hardly realized that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but the dawn.”
-G. K. Chesterton
Easter morning, the first thing to do is to unveil the images of Christ. This is such a powerful dose of Easter joy!
We greet each other in the morning with, “Alleluia! He is risen!”, and respond, “He is risen indeed!” Easter hymns are usually being sung by somebody. Much like Christmas, the other great feast of the Church year, we make a good breakfast and exchange gifts, and joy overflows. All the practices and signs of penance and sorrow give way to an abundance of celebration and joy, because He is alive, and has brought us to life with Him!
These are different things that our family has found helpful in entering more deeply into the Triduum over the years; we have never done all of these at once! Whatever we may, as individual families, find edifying and helpful, let’s make a special effort to adore Christ in the Paschal Mystery this year, and to make our own domestic church ever more true to the name.
Ut Cum Electis Videamus 