Triduum 2011 - Hope all goes well!

[mcb]

Happy Easter NT! You're the little bit of grit in our oyster.

[NorthernTenor]

Happy Easter, mcb . Christ is risen!

[presbyter]

OK - here's a poser for you, after all has gone well......

If a church possesses a Relic of the True Cross - might it be better to venerate that relic during the Good Friday Passion Liturgy rather than say, a Hayes and Finch crucifix ?

"This is the wood of the cross...." The H & F variety manifestly is not that upon which our Saviour hung.

I look forward to the debate...... even if I'm OT and subject to ursine redirection to a new thread.

[Nick Baty]

If a church possesses a Relic of the True Cross - might it be better to venerate that relic during the Good Friday Passion Liturgy

Even if it could be authenticated, how might that look held aloft and carried through the church?

rather than say, a Hayes and Finch crucifix ?

Isn't it supposed to be a cross rather than a crucifix?

[Southern Comfort]

Isn't it supposed to be a cross rather than a crucifix?

Here's Paschale Solemnitatis (Circular Letter Concerning the Preparation and Celebration of the Easter Feasts, CDWDS 1988):

68. For veneration of the cross, let a cross be used that is of appropriate size and beauty, and let one or other of the forms for this rite be carried out with the splendor worthy of the mystery of our salvation. Both the invitation pronounced at the unveiling of the cross and the people's response should be made in song, and a period of respectful silence is to be observed after each act of veneration, with the celebrant standing and holding the raised cross.

69. The cross is to be presented to each of the faithful individually for their adoration, since the personal adoration of the cross is a most important feature in this celebration. Only when necessitated by the large numbers of faithful present should the rite of veneration be made simultaneously by all present.

Only one cross should be used for the veneration, as this contributes to the full symbolism of the rite. During the veneration of the cross, the antiphons, "Reproaches," and hymns should be sung so that the history of salvation be commemorated through song. Other appropriate songs may also be sung (cf n. 42).

Nothing about a crucifix here.

In the church I attended on Good Friday they use a large, plain and yet beautiful, dark brown wooden cross, which is placed flat on top of the bare altar, in such a way that four people can venerate simultanously, one at the foot, one at the head, and one each at the two arms.

[mcb]

Isn't it supposed to be a cross rather than a crucifix?

Here's Paschale Solemnitatis (Circular Letter Concerning the Preparation and Celebration of the Easter Feasts, CDWDS 1988): [...] Nothing about a crucifix here.

Isn't it funny the way these discussions come round again so quickly? We covered this a few years ago, with some sound advice from someone who always sounds like he knows what he's talking about. (The guy in the following post doesn't do badly either.) In a nutshell, all the talk about a bare cross is playing with words, because Latin (the way the Church uses it) doesn't distinguish between a crucifix (crux) and the cross on which our Lord hung. There just isn't a word meaning exclusively 'a cross without a corpus on it'. It's mere improvisation to suggest that the Good Friday veneration – unless carried out with a supposed fragment of the true cross – should be conducted with anything but an icon of Christ crucified.

There turns out to be quite a lot of improvisation going on around the Triduum! Abstaining from communion on Good Friday, keeping the candles lit for a cosy candlelit Liturgy of the Word at the Vigil, and now this too. I guess we all do it!

[Nick Baty]

It's mere improvisation to suggest that the Good Friday veneration.... should be conducted with anything but an icon of Christ crucified.

So when the priest chants "This is the wood of the Cross...." should he be adding "And a bit of tacky Victorianesque plasterwork"? I had presumed that using a crucifix was one of these new-fangled ideas which has been doing the rounds.

There turns out to be quite a lot of improvisation going on around the Triduum!... keeping the candles lit for a cosy candlelit Liturgy of the Word at the Vigil, and now this too. I guess we all do it!

Suddenly flicking on the electricity rather diminishes the light of the Paschal candle. We certainly boo-bood by leaving everyone in darkness – although the PP later argued that, as the assembly only had to repeat psalm responses after the cantor it was OK – but there was something poignant about the only light being the Paschal candle, and the faint glow above the lectern. Perhaps I'm just an old drama queen!

[presbyter]

If a church possesses a Relic of the True Cross - might it be better to venerate that relic during the Good Friday Passion Liturgy

Even if it could be authenticated, how might that look held aloft and carried through the church?

It might look pretty good if the relic was contained in a large, cruciform reliquary.

[Nick Baty]

Methinks you are being deliberately naughty, dear Presbyter.

[presbyter]

Methinks you are being deliberately naughty, dear Presbyter.

Moi? What about this one?

[Southern Comfort]

Not very woody, is it?

[Southern Comfort]

Rubrics in the leaked 2008 Missal state: "Then the deacon places the paschal candle on a large candle stand prepared next to the ambo or in the middle of the sanctuary. All lights are lit throughout the church except for the altar candles" A later rubric indicates the altar candles are lit at the point to which Southern Comfort refers.

I believe that these are no different from current rubrics. Thus the Paschal Proclamation should be sung in full illumination if one interprets "all lights" to mean the electrical variety. This most certainly diminishes the symbolism of the "Pillar of fire...divided, but never dimmed by the sharing of its light"

I'm afraid that the 2010 revised version does not support your thesis, ft. It now says:

"And lights are lit throughout the church, except for the altar candles."

Note that it does not say all lights, as indeed the Latin does not. Those folks who go for progressive illumination, with some lights coming on at the Exsultet, more at the Gloria, and the full blaze of lighting at the Alleluia, would therefore still seem to be OK.

[keitha]

Presbyter said:

It might look pretty good if the relic was contained in a large, cruciform reliquary

I have a recollection of attending the Good Friday Passion Liturgy as a very young child at, I think, Christ the King, Bedford with my grandparents, where we had the veneration of a crucifix in the 'normal' style and then afterwards being invited to venerate a relic of the true cross, which was in a small cross-shaped silver reliquary. I remember wondering out loud afterwards just how many relics of the true cross there might be, as I could only see a small splinter, and just how anyone knew it really was from the true cross - and getting fairly short shrift from my Irish grandmother for not having enough faith!

[presbyter]

I remember wondering out loud afterwards just how many relics of the true cross there might be……

From Wikipedia:

By the end of the Middle Ages so many churches claimed to possess a piece of the True Cross, that John Calvin is famously said to have remarked that there was enough wood in them to fill a ship:
"There is no abbey so poor as not to have a specimen. In some places there are large fragments, as at the Holy Chapel in Paris, at Poitiers, and at Rome, where a good-sized crucifix is said to have been made of it. In brief, if all the pieces that could be found were collected together, they would make a big ship-load. Yet the Gospel testifies that a single man was able to carry it."
— Calvin, Traité Des Reliques.

Conflicting with this is the finding of Charles Rohault de Fleury, who, in his Mémoire sur les instruments de la Passion 1870 made a study of the relics in reference to the criticisms of Calvin and Erasmus. He drew up a catalogue of all known relics of the True Cross showing that, in spite of what various authors have claimed, the fragments of the Cross brought together again would not reach one-third that of a cross which has been supposed to have been three or four meters in height, with transverse branch of two meters wide, proportions not at all abnormal. He calculated: supposing the Cross to have been of pine-wood (based on his microscopic analysis of the fragments) and giving it a weight of about seventy-five kilograms, we find the original volume of the cross to be .178 cubic meters. The total known volume of known relics of the True Cross, according to his catalogue, amounts to approximately .004 cubic meters (more specifically 3,942,000 cubic millimeters), leaving a volume of .174 cubic meters lost, destroyed, or otherwise unaccounted for.
Four cross particles – of ten particles with documentary proofs by Byzantine emperors – from European churches, i.e. Santa Croce in Rome, Notre Dame, Paris, Pisa Cathedral and Florence Cathedral, were microscopically examined. "The pieces came all together from olive."[24] It is possible that many alleged pieces of the True Cross are forgeries, created by travelling merchants in the Middle Ages, during which period a thriving trade in manufactured relics existed.
Gerasimos Smyrnakis[25] notes that the largest surviving portion, of 870,760 cubic milimeters, is preserved in the Monastery of Koutloumousiou on Mount Athos, 537,587 cubic milimetres in Rome, 516,090 in Brussels, 445,582 in Venice, 436,450 in Ghent and 237,731 in Paris.
Santo Toribio de Liébana in Spain is also said to hold the largest of these pieces and is one of the most visited Roman Catholic pilgrimage sites. Another portion of the True Cross is in the Monasterio de Tarlac at San Jose, Tarlac City, Tarlac, Philippines.[26]
The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church also claims to have the right wing of the true cross buried in the monastery of Gishen Mariam.

I think I can possibly account for one missing cubic millimetre.

[Peter]

All parishes in our part of the country had been advised not to start the Vigil before 9.00pm because of the lateness of Easter, and none of them took any notice.

Actually, SC, "none" is too strong. My parish and one other nearby started their Vigils at 9.00, though the local Cathedral and the one other parish in the deanery did indeed start theirs at 8.00. From the Exsultet to just before the Gloria the church was lit by candles alone, and the PP emphasised that lighters were not permitted: the flame had to come from the Paschal Candle. It was very atmospheric and made the Gloria, sadly a rather poor paraphrase rather than the approved text, all the more effective when it did come.

And a bishop in the south has recommended to his clergy that they do not simply cease to use existing music settings from the beginning of September but instead have a gradual transition to new settings. Pastoral wisdom there, I think.

Not sure that it is actually "pastoral wisdom" if it could lead to a perpetuation of the sort of paraphrase we had at the Vigil. Is there a limit on how long this "gradual transition" is allowed to take?