What is in Kelvin's Head?

In just three days…

12/04/2025

Every year I make a promise to people. I say that if they keep the triduum with me at St Mary’s then it will change their life and change their faith. I think that keeping the Triduum helps make sense of all that we do in church for the rest of the year. In just three days, you can learn things about the faith and why Christians believe the things that they do that are much harder to learn during the rest of the year.

The Triduum is the three days from Maundy Thursday to Easter Day. Although the various services take place over several days, it is really one big feast, which is what makes it so extraordinary when you keep it in one place and experience the whole thing. It really is life changing stuff.

A few years ago, I blogged about it, and it might be worth pointing people to those blog posts. There’s a few things we do a bit differently and I’ve changed my mind about one or two things too, but these blog posts do capture the essence of what we are up to.

Maundy Thursday
Veneration of the Cross
Three Hour Devotions
Good Friday Evening
Holy Saturday – all hands on deck!
The Vigil

I’d say you’d kept the Triduum with me if you come to the Maundy Thursday evening service, two of the three services on Good Friday (try for the three hours if you can), the clean and polish on Saturday and the early fire Vigil and the main Festival Mass on Sunday.

On Good Friday in the evening there will be a simple sung service of Night Prayer called Compline. On the Saturday evening we’re going to try something completely new. My colleague Maggie McTernan and I often go to a folk singaround in a local pub. We’re going to be leading a session of singing on the Saturday evening of Songs of Hope and Lament. People can bring a song to sing or simply come and listen to the singers and join in the choruses. (Only rule – no alleluias until Easter Day).

This year we are having a revival on Easter Sunday and there will be a number of people who will be baptised at the Easter Fire Vigil.

This is all open to anyone. You are just as welcome to participate if you have been at St Mary’s all your life or if you’ve never been. Some people come to keep these days here with us because their own church isn’t keeping them like this and they’ll be going back to their own church once Holy Week is done. That’s fine too. I’m also happy to answer questions as we go through these days about what it is all for. (The Saturday morning is a good time to talk).

It really is life-changing if you do it all and there are people around who will testify to just that.

Easter, Good Friday, Holy Week, Maundy Thursday, singaround, triduum, vigil

11 responses to “Equal Marriage – Questions people haven’t thought of #1”

Stewart

01/08/2012

As I see Scottish Law, all partnerships are registered by the Civil Authorities. In the case of Glasgow you have to go to Martha Street and fill in the appropriate paperwork. All varieties of couples can have a civil partnership officiated by a Civil Registrar.

However only Man-Woman partnerships can be solomnised in a religious setting. Kelvin, you should be allowed to solomnise all partnerships (Man-Woman, Man-Man, Woman-Woman) in St Mary’s.

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william

01/08/2012

Do we mean a ‘moral difference’ in the sight of God, or in the eyes of a nation at a particular point in history, or in the understanding of practising homosexuals, or in the perspective of a christian church?
Without defining the audience ‘moral difference’ is a slippery term!

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kelvin

01/08/2012

In this case, all that I’m interested in is what the Scottish Episcopal Church thinks it is doing.

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Erp

02/08/2012

How does the SEC consider opposite sex couples who get a civil marriage and then years later want something in church?

Now from my initial humanist point of view there has been no difference in moral status between a civil partnership, a civil marriage, or exchanging equivalent promises in cases where a legal ceremony is not possible (e.g., slaves in times past or same sex couples in many places) though there are legal differences.

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kelvin

02/08/2012

The SEC regards couples who get married in a civil ceremony and couples who get married in a religious ceremony as being equally married. There is no distinction between them

This is, I think, different to the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland.

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1. Seph
  
  02/08/2012
  
  If the SEC opts out of the same-sex marriage legislation, will it recognise civilly-wed same-sex couples as being married? If not, then the hypothetical same-sex couple are not married in the eyes of the church. If the SEC decides to recognise same-sex marriages but won’t perform them, there is no difference and we should stop messing around.
  
  I imagine people going from civil partnership to marriage will make as much or as little of a big deal of it as they like.
  
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Rosemary Hannah

02/08/2012

For me the question is intent – if the couple intend to be married but are denied by a civil authority, they are married in the eyes of God. However it is very plain that currently the law wishes to consider they are NOT married, and it is a hard thing indeed to keep your end up against the law. Therefore they ‘need’ to be married to affirm to themselves and the society that they are indeed married.

The question is ‘what makes a marriage: set promises made according to form: the understanding between the two marrying: the understanding of society of what marriage is.’ In practice it is very hard indeed to have a marriage without all three components.

CU was designed to have no promises, and no understanding by society that it was marriage. Compassionate registrars saw at once that the former was impossible. Generally, society has not fully embraced the idea that the latter is fully true. They usually think it is just near enough. Some people then think it is near enough to consider it marriage, and others that it is quite near enough, thank you. Hence those pressing for equal marriage – to make it clear once and for all.

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1. Geoff
  
  03/08/2012
  
  Having been vexed by this question myself, I think Rosemary is onto something. After all, the ministers of marriage are the couple. I have long advocated that couples denied marriage “for fear of the religious authorities” exchange their vows and present themselves at the altar rail during Benediction of the MBS for a guerilla blessing.
  
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Rosemary Hannah

02/08/2012

Interestingly, the church is still in places reluctant to marry some divorcees (where, for instance a new relationship has been formed before the marriage ended, and the new relationship killed the old) but once civilly married – married they are.

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1. william
  
  02/08/2012
  
  In the eyes of God?
  
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Rosemary Hannah

03/08/2012

@william. I am agnostic on the question of whether people whose adultery caused the end of an earlier marriage are married in the eyes of God, if that is what you are asking. It is an issue on which I have to admit I am incapable of dispassion. Maybe they are. God is endlessly forgiving and compassionate. It will hardly be news to anybody that I do not always rise to God’s standards.

I am sure that faithful gay couples who consider themselves married and have taken all the legal steps they can to be as-close-to-married ARE married in the eyes of God, but this latter belief will hardly come as news to those who know me and my family.

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