Terrors of the Triduum

[Nick Baty]

Removed

[The original poster has removed some of his posts in this topic - Musicus, moderator]

[VML]

Not a terror exactly, but three years ago I was standing at the lectern ready to start the Exsultet, and the deacon thought he was incensing the Paschal Candle, and he is a deacon who loves to make a show, and the boat girl was standing by, and she and I both knew he had forgotten to add incense...

[keitha]

How about Easter Vigil in 1966 with new (but elderly) PP (5'2") and inexperienced curate (6'3"). 5 gallon 'tin bath' (painted tasteful white with gold symbols on the side!) full of newly-blessed baptismal water. Litany starts - time to carry bath to the font at the back. Each priest grabs a bath handle, but PP lifts bath fractionally ahead of Curate. The inevitable happened. Not sure which was the funnier - the tsunami flowing across the sanctuary towards me (a very young MC doing his first EVigil as MC and rooted to the spot in horror), or the sight of the rescue party of four traditionally-dressed nuns heading towards the sanctuary at some pace with habits hitched up and mops and buckets in hand as the litany ground to a horrified halt!

And some people complain that the Ordinary Form lacks dignity!

[pirate]

Standing behind reader of Exodus reading, ready to seamlessly sing 'I will sing to the Lord' I realised I was still clutching 'Send forth your Spirit'; fortunately the composer had not altered the words in the Lectionary so we survived... and perhaps a little more adrenalin than usual gave the text extra resonance - I will never know!

[docmattc]

Its going to take a lot to beat Keith's tale above! When a child and on holiday at Easter I once saw a priest at the fire instruct the server to light the paschal candle, so instead of using a taper, he thrust the whole top of the candle into the fire. Needless to say, it came out unlit but very deformed.

I heard a story of a certain archbishop forgetting that the charcoal he'd put in the fire might be hot. He picked it up with his fingers to place it in the thurible and his radio mic broadcast some very un-archbishoply words.

[contrabordun]

Radio mics are a menace. His Reverence's candid remarks on the subject of an Easter fire that wouldn't light were broadcast to a packed church in Birmingham a few years ago.

[Ros Wood]

New Priest's first Easter (and only but that's another story) in the Parish. Holy Thursday and half way through Mass the organ develops a cypher during gospel Procession. Organ is switch off and during the Homily 3 members of the choir make a dignified procession roung the back of our semi circular church to the hall - the choir sitting on the opposite side of the church to the entrance to the hall. They then return by the same route carrying the Electic Piano and Stand.

Meanwhile, new priest is trying to preach while wondering what strange local custom he has fogotton or not been told about!

[lesley wright]

A good many years ago we had an Irish Priest and a German Deacon, and someone had the bright idea that if we built a fire adjacent to the car park people could chuck a stick on it to represent all the things they'd regretted during the past year. By the time the Easter Vigil was about to begin people were chucking logs on it and you could have roasted an ox. So we all gathered around the fire and a small altar server was told to go and light a taper at it; the heat was so intense the child couldn't get near to it before his taper simply keeled over. The Deacon then grasped one end of a burning brand, with both hands, and pulled it out of the fire. As he swung it round the wind got up, and the Parish Priest, who'd clearly found the German efficiency hard to bear during the previous couple of months, was heard to mutter through his disastrously effective radio mike "the b***y k***t will set us all on fire!" The candle was eventually lit and held up with a cheerful "Lumen Christi" but before we could respond the wind blew it out. The following year we had a fire of very small twigs in a wok in the entrance porch.

[musicus]

Tonight – just as the psalmist sang "O precious in your eyes is the death of your faithful" a huge crash as the brass processional cross fell on a server!

I wonder how many people, in that moment, made the connection between the words and the event!

[JW]

Thursday: Father freezes after singing the first line of the Doxology "Through Him, With Him, In Him" - Long pregnant pause with organ chord - till I sing the next line from the organ and we both sing the rest of it!!!

Friday: One of the hymns at the veneration is "Here is Love". I've downloaded an accompaniment in F rather than the Ab version in our hymnbook - it's in a clear plastic wallet. I playover but realise that only the first page is showing. Another pregnant pause at the end of the playover, me holding the final chord down with the left hand and digging the second page out of the wallet with the right. Two members of the choir anticipate... then we all come in.

Having said that, so far so good for the Triduum, the highlight (so far) being an excellent (long) sermon by Father today after the Passion, as well as a lovely psalm by a fourteen year-old on Thursday. The focus on the cross on Good Friday works well - we dropped receiving Communion on Good Friday a few years ago. Tomorrow we have 10 baptisms/confirmations - really encouraging - our organist has prepared 9 pages of Litany of the Saints so she's got all the names in the correct order - there's dedication for someone who had a blood tranfusion and a course of chemotherapy over the weekend. It's a pity I have a family duty tomorrow evening and I can't be there. As a penance, I'm singing the psalm on Easter Sunday morning and playing for the rest of the Mass. - Handel anniversay coming up and 'Thine be the Glory' and the 'Largo' are scheduled.

[mcb]

we dropped receiving Communion on Good Friday a few years ago.

Ouch! Doesn't that sever quite an important connection between what happens in the Mass and what we commemorate on Good Friday?

[RobH]

I had absolutely no idea that Holy Communion was an option in the Good Friday Liturgy and was a bit shocked to read this posting. Surely it is a highly important part, nay, essential, though I am no Liturgist. Why on earth would anyone want to 'drop' this part of the Liturgy. Personally, I should feel very sad and deprived if this were to happen in this Parish. There is no mention in my missal of the possibility of not giving Holy Comminion from the Blessed Sacrament. Mind you, I'm a convert and am not very well "up" on these things. Rob

[Southern Comfort]

Nick is right. For hundreds of years only the celebrant communicated (even if there were loads of other clerics there). You have to go back to the earliest of the Ordines Romani (8th/9th century) to find everyone communicating. This is also the first mention of the Mass of the Presanctified (as it used to be called) - not really a Mass but a brief Communion Service, which was tacked on to the Liturgy of the Word and Veneration and did not form part of the original Good Friday liturgy. But very soon after this period, Communion became restricted to the celebrant only.

It was only in 1955 that the revised Holy Week Rites reintroduced Communion for all on Good Friday - probably a spin-off from Pius X's loosening-up of the regulations surrounding, and encouragement of, the reception of Communion in general in the early 20th century. However, many people still did not receive, and only started to do so in large numbers after the new Holy Week Rites had appeared in English (1969/1970) in advance of the rest of the Missal (the Order of Mass and the Rites of Holy Week were brought out first; the translation of the rest was not complete until 1973 and only published in England and Wales in 1975).

It was not long before people had started to reflect on this practice. A significant proportion of parishes started to say to themselves that it was good to emphasise the extraordinary nature of the day by deliberately refraining from receiving Communion. After all, they said, we were not able to receive on Good Friday for many centuries, so why not continue that practice? An additional argument for refraining from receiving is that this service is not, and has never been, a Mass; and that non-reception of Communion not only makes that very clear but enables everyone to focus on the wood of the cross, which is at the centre of this liturgy (as JW points out).

Of course, those who did not live through the pre-1955 era or who have recently joined the Church are mostly unaware of all this. They think that Catholics "always and everywhere" have Communion. It was not always so, and need not always be.

Yes, Communion is specified in the rite for Good Friday, but perhaps as many as 10% of parishes don't do it. I have detected over the years a small shift back to receiving Communion, and a rather larger shift in the opposite direction towards abstaining from receiving.

My personal inclination is towards abstinence. In addition to the arguments outlined above, I also think that anything which stops us taking Communion almost for granted and makes us reflect on the true value of this wonderful gift is probably a good idea.

[RobH]

Every Good Friday Liturgy I have ever gone to has always had people receiving Holy Communion. Indeed, I have never been to a Parish where this has not been the case. But there, I'm perhaps not well up on Liturgy.

[docmattc]

There are two issues in SC's summary which need clearly separating. One is the presence of the communion rite in the Good Friday service at all, and the other is whether, in its presence, everyone communicated.

This discussion stems from JW's comment and hinges on the former issue. So, Nick's question in a more specific way: When did the communion rite become part of the Good Friday Liturgy? SC seems to suggest the answer is at least 8/9th century, hardly a recent innovation.

I have a deal of sympathy with the school of thought which suggests the Good Friday liturgy might be better without a communion rite, mostly for the reasons SC points out. As the current Good Friday liturgy does contain a communion rite though, this school of thought is clearly at odds with the mind of the church, and as such, I would be extremely uncomfortable omitting it.

But we are straying off topic into a rather heavier one.