Triduum ... Three Days of Prayer, Solidarity, and Hope

Somehow, I find it hard to believe that it is already Holy Week. Blogging has been light here of late, I know. I could list the many things I am busy about, but you can probably guess. In any case, I've not been here. Tonight, however, I thought I would just post something short about these Holy days we are entering of Triduum.

Triduum is my favorite part of our Catholic liturgical tradition. For those not in the know, Triduum refers to the three holy days of holy week: Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil.  We come together on these days to tell our story, to remember, to ritualize, and finally to celebrate the hope of the resurrection and welcome new members of our Christian family.

We open our hearts to the call to service on Holy Thursday, remembering Christ's love for his friends and his model of service and love.

We open our hearts to those who experience violence, oppression, and suffering on Good Friday, remembering Jesus who carried the cross on which he would die.

We open our hearts to joy and hope at the Easter Vigil and on Easter Sunday, when we stand again at the tomb and realize, along with the women, that Christ is risen!

The journey through Triduum is always a transformative one for me.  Part of my love of the Triduum might be the fact that even though I was raised Catholic and went to 12 years of Catholic school, I never really experienced it until I came back to the Church as an adult. And luckily for me, and my own faith journey, my first Triduums were experienced as part of a faith community at St. Phil's that took it seriously and journeyed together in a meaningful way.

Tonight I was invited by a young sister friend of mine to join her congregation for Holy Thursday liturgy at their mother house. It was a beautiful way to enter into these days. Tomorrow I will be joining the 8th Day Center Good Friday Walk for Justice through downtown Chicago. And on Saturday, I'm planning to attend the vigil at the University of Chicago Calvert House community.

Wherever and however you are marking these days, blessings of peace to you as we anticipate the joy of Easter!

Signs, Symbols, Ritual and Tradition

On Friday night as regular readers know, I made my perpetual vows as a Sister of St. Joseph of Peace. It was a wonderful evening full of signs, symbols, ritual and tradition.  In fact, each step along the formation/incorporation journey has carried its own symbols and ritual.

Back in February 2005 when I became a pre-candidate, I received a copy of Peace Pays a Price, the story of our founder Margaret Anna Cusack and a copy of our community prayer book during a short prayer service with a few people gathered around a table.

Later that October, when I became a Candidate, we had a ceremony of welcome with community gathered in the chapel at St. Mary-on-the-Lake, where I received a peace candle and an icon of St. Joseph.

The next summer, when I became a novice there was a two step ritual process.  In August I was received as a novice, again in a simple ritual held in the St. Mary-on-the-Lake Chapel, where I received my beloved Peace Cross and a personal copy of the Constitutions.  It's also when I started having Sister before my name and CSJP after!

A few weeks later, we entered the Congregation Novitiate in New Jersey in a simple gathering and prayer ritual in the Novitiate house with our leadership team and some local Sisters and Associates.

In September 2008, the two years of novitiate over, I professed my first vows in the context of a Eucharistic Liturgy at the St. Mary-on-the-Lake Chapel.  I received my ring, with my motto inscribed inside, "Live with an Open Heart."

And this past Friday, after three years of temporary profession, I professed perpetual vows in the context of a beautiful and meaningful Eucharistic Liturgy yes, you guessed it, in the St. Mary-on-the-Lake Chapel.  This time as the symbol I received a profession cross that belong to one of our Sisters who passed away earlier this year .... more on that in the next post!

what if we said wait

Have you heard about the impending changes in the liturgy, in particular with the new literal translation of the Latin to English recently approved and set to be implemented soon in a church near you?

Whether you answered yes or no, I suggest reading this essay by Michael G. Ryan, pastor of St. Jame's Cathedral in Seattle in America Magazine: What if We Said, "Wait?".

Recently the Archdiocese of Seattle sponsored a seminar on the new translations for lay leaders and clergy. Both the priest who led the seminar (an accomplished liturgical theologian) and the participants gathered there in good faith. When passages from the proposed new translation were soberly read aloud by the presenter (I remember especially the phrase from the first eucharistic prayer that currently reads “Joseph, her husband,” but which in the new translation becomes “Joseph, spouse of the same virgin”), there was audible laughter in the room. I found myself thinking that the idea of this happening during the sacred liturgy is no laughing matter but something that should make us all tremble.

There’s more: the chilling reception the people of the dioceses of South Africa have given the new translations. In a rare oversight, the bishops of that country misread the instructions from Rome and, after a careful program of catechesis in the parishes, introduced the new translations to their people some months ago. The translations were met almost uniformly with opposition bordering on outrage.

It is not my purpose here to discuss in detail the flawed principles of translation behind this effort or the weak, inconsistent translations that have resulted. Others have already ably done that. Nor do I want to belabor the fact that those who prepared the translations seem to be far better versed in Latin than in English. No, my concern is for the step we now face: the prospect of implementing the new translations. This brings me back to my question: What if we just said, “Wait”? Read the whole essay

There's also a website: www.whatifwejustsaidwait.org

Well worth the read and some pondering.

Memories

I love Triduum - the holy days of Holy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil. Perhaps they mean so much to because I didn't really discover them until I was an adult returning to the Church after a 10+ year "vacation" from organized religion.

Growing up, Easter Sunday was the big day. The Easter Bunny would come. We'd have a big family breakfast. My Dad would buy my mom and his daughter's corsages. We'd all dress up in our Easter best and take a family picture outside in the front yard. Then we'd go to Church. Easter was a special time in my family, although I have no memories of Holy Thursday or Good Friday, aside from what we did at Catholic School on those days.

So, when I tentatively returned to the Church as a 27 year old and discovered this fabulous 3 day long prayer/ritual fest .... I was surprised. But happily so. It helped I think that my Paulist Parish really pulled out all the stops. There is something about ritual being done well which helps us to get into the sacred space - both physically and spiritually.

But I think that I most love Triduum because it was after spending most of 72 hours at Church in 2004 - washing feet at Holy Thursday as a member of the Pastoral Council, being one of the leaders of the Walk of the Cross and helping to hold the cross at our Good Friday service, helping to decorate the church on Saturday morning, ushering at the Easter Vigil which involved some very moving (and some very funny) moments, staying until 2am to clean up after the Easter Vigil (again, the funny moments - read a 2006 trip down memory lane post if you're curious, but really you just had to be there), and then heading back to Church Easter Sunday - that I realized how important my faith was to me. I'd become a super church geek, and that was totally ok. More than that, I started to have hints that maybe God was calling me to something more. And, most amazingly enough, it didn't take me too much longer to figure out what that was.

This year I'm here at St. Mary-on-the-Lake for Triduum. I gave the reflection at our Holy Thursday service. I went on a Walk of the Cross for the Homeless Good Friday afternoon and got back in time for our services here, which were quite moving. This afternoon I helped to decorate the Chapel. And I'm looking forward to Easter Vigil services tonight and then Easter Sunday liturgy tomorrow morning. Then we're having a big Easter Dinner. The best part is being able to spend these days with my Sisters. I'm still on the journey, but in some ways I've come full circle. Which I think is probably the point of our liturgical year, if you come to think of it!

Have a very happy Easter everyone!

Holy Week

A good friend of mine once said of Holy Week in the Catholic tradition ... "It's when we really pull out all our Catholic mojo." She meant that in a good way, in case you were wondering. This is no ordinary time, it's soul-feeding, spirit lifting, life changing liturgy. Putting aside all the jokes about "smells and bells," there is something transformative about the ritual of this time in the liturgical year - especially when it is done well.

I was invited this evening to the Tenebrae service at St. James Cathedral. Four of us Sisters drove into downtown Seattle, where we joined a Cathedral full of people for the candlelight service. For those who haven't attended a Tenebrae service, the candles are progressively extinguished throughout the service while psalms are chanted, until the end when the Christ candle returns. The effect is quite stunning, as was the music this evening.

Tomorrow of course is Holy Thursday and the beginning of Triduum. These days are really worth entering into fully. I'm never the same afterwards.

I'll probably be checking in over the next few days, but just in case, let me wish you all a very blessed Holy Week.

important conversations

Two bloggy friends have opened up important (yet tough) conversations on two topics close to my heart: Steve Bogner on Liturgy and Julie Viera, IHM on perceptions and assumptions about nuns.

New Translations
For those who don't know, our experience at mass is about to change BIG time. The folks in Rome have decided to implement a new literal translation of the liturgy. There's an excellent article by Bishop Donald Trautman in last week's America magazine on the topic. It's worth hunting down a copy if you can. For example, here's the new prayer over the gifts for the Advent Season:

Accept, O Lord, these gifts,
and by your power change them
into the sacrament of salvation,
in which the prefiguring sacrifices of the Fathers have an end
and the true Lamb is offered,
he who was born ineffably of the inviolate Virgin.

"Prefiguring? " "Ineffably?" "Involate?" Other great words in the new translation include "gibbet," "sullied," "suffused," and "consubstantial." As Bishop Trautman says in the article: "If the language of the liturgy is inaccessible, how can liturgy catechize and convey the reality of the living, risen Son of of God in the Eucharist?"

Or as Steve Bogner says in his post: "Of all the issues facing the church today – and there are plenty of big, serious ones – why in the world is... who's in charge of this thing? - why are 'they' spending precious time and resources on such a project that will further alienate and distance people from the Mass?" Read more on Steve's blog...

Nuns: Perceptions & Assumptions
Sister Julie Viera has a post responding to a reader's comment about Nuns being "too wordly" and not wearing habits anymore. I must say I am impressed with Julie's wilingness to open up the discussion about perceptions and assumptions of nuns. There's quite a conversation going on over there that's worth a look.

Easter Blessings

Happy Easter to all my bloggy friends. This image is from an e-card I sent to family & friends. As one of my friends wrote, it shows "the tree of death becoming the tree of life." (Here's a plug for gratefulness.org - they have wonderful free e-cards!

The retreat was wonderful. Our entire novitiate community went down to our retreat house on the Jersey Shore for the Triduum Retreat. It was a mix of groovy sisters and associates and the general public, although most of the general public were religious from other communities with a few lay people. Many of them have been spending their Holy Week at Stella Maris for years ... and I can see why. The retreat team did a wonderful job, including regular blog reader and groovy associate Fr. Terry who was a wonderful celebrant at the easter vigil (not to mention the gold lame vestments!). The rituals and liturgies were meaningful and prayerful, and it was such a blessing to have the quiet time by the sea. Christ is risen! Alleluia!

Triddum has been such an important time for me ever since I returned to the Church almost 8 years ago. Mostly this is because our parish had wonderful and meaningful liturgies. As a friend of mine puts it, they pull out all the "Catholic mojo" this time of year. (I wrote about my Easters past last year if you're interested).

This was my first Easter Vigil since I returned to the church without adult baptisms ... the very fact that it was in the context of a retreat would of course preclude that. I did miss that aspect of the Vigil, but not as much as I would have thought. While the liturgies this weekend were creative and planned in the context of the retreat experience, they were also a very much a part of the experience of the universal church. We are the people of God, followers of Jesus, journeying with him and all suffering peoples, celebrating the awesome reality of new life. Hope comes out of the darkness. For more than 2,000 years we have been on this journey. We are an Easter people, which when you come down to it is pretty amazing.

Easter peace to you all.
Susan