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In just three days…

12/04/2025 By Leave a Comment

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.

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Maundy Thursday

20/03/2008 By 9 Comments

Not much clergy blogging going on this week. We’ve all been working flat out to get everything ready.

Just a few notes about Maundy Thursday.

The focus of the worship today is the supper. Here at St Mary’s, we have a choral mass, that means that the choir have been preparing special music which they will sing for us to aid the devotions. There is no sermon tonight. Well, that is not strictly true. There is the opportunity to have your feet washed. The foot washing is the sermon and comes in the same place in the service that a sermon usually would do.

Some bishops down south are going out into the streets to clean people’s shoes in order to demonstrate in a modern way the gesture that Jesus made in washing people’s feet. [We should note in passing that the BBC call this Easter Week and should know better – Easter week is next week – See update below]. I applaud their effort, though I’m not sure that I think this is what it is all about. There is certainly something about service about Christ’s gesture, but there is also something about intimacy too. Anyway, the invitation is open to people to have their feet washed in church tonight. It is an invitation, not a compulsion.

The service tonight ends differently to every other service of the year. Everything is stripped out of the church whilst Psalm 22 is said. Psalm 22 is the psalm that Jesus himself quoted on the cross. The stripping of the church is an unsettling reminder of everything being taken away from Jesus.

The last thing to be removed is the blessed sacrament, which is carried to what is called an altar of repose. There the sacrament will rest and people stay and pray. We keep the watch until midnight here these days, though someone was telling me that it was once kept all night through. The watch is just a time for quiet prayer whilst we remember Jesus praying in the garden of Gethsemene. Some people devote the time to quiet prayer, some to sitting thinking through what these events are about. Some people bring poetry to read quietly (RS Thomas is a favourite for me at this time) and some try to read a gospel through during the watch. It is a peaceful and a lovely time. People are welcome to come and go quietly. Some go away after the service for a break and then come back for the end of the watch later in the evening.

It is my practice to consume the last of the sacrament at the end of the watch. Good Friday and Holy Saturday are strange times. Sacraments have ceased. The experience that so many people know as a reality – that God is gone from them, is made lived out by us all. So, the font will be closed and there will be no baptisms, the tabernacle will be empty and there will be no communion, until the Great Feast begins early on Sunday morning.

Service starts at 7.30 pm. Bring your feet.

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UPDATE

Kudos to the BBC for changing the headline to the article after I sent them a comment. It now reads – “Bishops in Holy Week Shoe Shine” rather than “Bishops in Easter Shoe-Shine.”

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