Entering into the paschal mystery during Holy Week

By Andrew Junker, The Catholic Sun
April 5, 2007

The paschal mystery, the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, stands at the center of the Gospels.

While the Church celebrates this mystery at every Mass, its reality is thrown into sharp relief during the triduum, beginning April 6 with the three days of Holy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil.

“During the triduum, we celebrate an elongated version of what happens every Sunday,” said Sr. Ginger Downey, OLVM, interim director of the Office of Worship.

“It cannot be contained in one liturgy, so it spills over into three days of reflection and commemorating and being with Jesus Christ,” she said.

She hastened to add that though the triduum takes place over three days, it is in fact one liturgy.

Larry Fraher, a professor at the Kino Institute, said that the triduum’s unity is borne out through the rubrics at the individual celebrations.

“As a community we start with the sign of the cross at the beginning of the celebration on Holy Thursday,” he said.

“And as a community we will not make the sign of the cross again until the conclusion of the celebration on Holy Saturday. The significance is that we are celebrating one liturgy,” Fraher said.

Because the one liturgy is proportioned over three days — and has attributes that no other liturgical celebration has — the triduum allows Catholics to enter into the life, death and resurrection of Christ in a singular way.

Living the life of Christ

“As the body of Christ, the Church must live the life of Christ,” said Dominican Father Philip Powell, a campus minister and theology professor at the University of Dallas.

“This means that we must follow Him, walk along with Him, and eventually drink the cup He drinks,” he said, adding that the liturgical celebrations of the Church offer the faithful “the most focused means of living Christian lives.”

The rituals that take place during the triduum liturgies emphasize the calling to become like Christ.

On Holy Thursday, the priest washes the feet of some of the faithful, just as Christ washed the feet of His apostles in the upper room.

“He humbles Himself to serve them in order to teach them how they should be Christ in the world — servants of the Lord’s least, slaves to all who answer God’s call to righteousness,” Fr. Powell said.

At the same Mass, the Church celebrates both the institution of the Eucharist and of Holy Orders. When the Mass ends, the Blessed Sacrament is reposed “to emphasize His departure from this world,” Fr. Powell said.

Many parishes offer adoration at this time, which harkens to Christ’s time in the Garden of Gethsemane.

“We go to the garden and pray through the night,” Sr. Ginger said. “And then we come back and are part of His death. What does that mean? How do we look at that?”

Fr. Powell said that the liturgy of Good Friday, with its veneration of the cross, allows Catholics “to give thanks for our Lord’s impending death by honoring the means of His execution.”

It may seem perverse, he went on, but in a way the Church is “giving thanks to the cross for its participation in our salvation.”

The Good Friday liturgy is solemn and quiet. The priest lies prostrate before the altar and empty tabernacle at the liturgy’s start.

“In the darkest moment of the triduum, at the execution of Christ on the cross, the priest, who acts in the person of Christ, the head of the Church, prostrates on the floor as a sign of obedient submission to the Father’s power of life, death and resurrection,” Fr. Powell explained.

In the silence of the church, the priest and the laity “let the gravity of the moment weigh against their sin and their need for mercy,” he said.

When the Church gathers again for the final triduum liturgy of the Easter Vigil, the tone has changed from Good Friday.

The celebration begins with the lighting of the Easter fire.

“Fire is such a wonderful symbol because it is both life and death,” Sr. Ginger said.

The Easter candle is lit and brought into a darkened church, where the faithful will hear a series of readings illuminating the salvific history of the Church.

Then, the alleluia is sung for the first time since before Ash Wednesday, and the Gospel proclaims Christ’s resurrection.

Beyond history

While the triduum liturgies offer the faithful a way of entering Christ’s life, and — in a way — replicating His actions, the full meaning of the paschal mystery is more than mere commemoration.

“The paschal mystery is a stand-alone event that happens in a historical moment, but is also outside of time,” Fraher explained.

“It’s not as though we’re re-sacrificing Christ, but we’re connecting ourselves within our time to the one and only sacrifice of Christ,” he said. “We’re not just remembering.”

He acknowledged that it’s a difficult concept to understand — hence the mystery — but offered a metaphor for what happens during the triduum and at every Mass.

“If you will, we’re kind of picked up in this divine time machine and transported to the one event where Christ Himself suffers, dies and rises for us,” Fraher said. “And that’s our connection, our communion with Him.”

That’s why liturgy is so important, Fr. Powell said, because it is a “moment where the divine and the human meet in transformative acts of sacrifice, acts of human assent and surrender to God, and godly acts of mercy and blessing for us.”

He added, “In these liturgies we remember, make present again, in sacramental form, the gift of Christ’s life for us.”

Fraher encouraged all Catholics to enter into the three liturgies of the triduum. It’s the most sacred time of the year, he said.

“This is where we celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ,” Fraher said. “And that’s the Good News. That’s the Gospel.”