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Triduum #5 – Holy Saturday

Well Holy Saturday is an odd day and no mistake. Jesus is gone, he’s in the tomb and all the world waits. Well, all the world gets on with its own business generally.

There are no sacraments today. The font is empty of water, there is no Eucharist, there will be no weddings.

In St Mary’s it’s a day for getting things in order in case we have a resurrection on our hands on Sunday Morning. That means that it’s all hands on deck from 9.30 until about 1 pm to try to get things straight. The sacristy looks rather like a liturgical bomb hit it when everything was stripped out of the church. There are carpets and hassocks to bash free of dirt. There’s a large impressive looking eagle that is in want of a polish. Beeswax (or Mr Pledge) for the pews. There are sly buckets of flowers secreted somewhere in the church waiting to be brought forth in glory. This year there’s even the joy of folding some liturgy booklets. Our wonderful photocopier that folds and staples refused this week of all week either to fold or staple and it has been back to the good old days of document preparation. Alistair the Office Manager has folded and stapled his way almost to delirium, I suspect, but there are still some to go and volunteers are needed.

I like the clean and polish on Holy Saturday. It’s good community time. There really is a job for everyone. If you turn up, expect to be assigned a job. It might be dusting, it might be flower arranging (only for specialists with a PhD in Pew Ends) or it might simply be mopping the Provost’s fevered brow. And in all of this, he will keep his counsel about all that has gone before. No matter who makes him a cup of tea, he is unlikely to divulge who had the prettiest, ugliest or largest feet at the footwashing. What’s washed at the altar stays at the altar.

I like Holy Saturday. Its a great day to enjoy doing practical things today and sometimes to learn a name or have a chat with someone you’ve just not got to know yet on a Sunday. People always say how much they enjoy it and always say we should do that kind of community thing more often. It’s easy to join in with whether your a well kent face or just in town for the triduum.

All hands on deck. All hands needed!

Triduum#4 – Good Friday Evening

Generally in St Mary’s we have a Good Friday service or devotion of some kind in the evening, but it does differ in character from one year to the next.

In recent years, we’ve had a performance of Stainer’s Crucifixion, a Tenebrae service and services like tonight’s which is simply a meditation in words and music on the themes of Good Friday.

We’ll not be reading the Passion Reading again tonight – we’ve had that plenty and as we heard this afternoon, “It is Finished”. Tonight, we’ll have some poetry and perhaps a reading of the deposition from the cross, the time when Jesus is taken from the cross and laid in the tomb.

It’s worth noting in passing the the Deposition from the Cross is wonderfully depicted in one of the big paintings in St Anne’s Chapel. Jesus is taken down from the cross in a garden, but one that looks strangely familiar to anyone in this neck of the woods. It is all apparently taking place in Kelvingrove Park. A good reminder that the passion happens all around us all the time. It’s not just Jesus who is betrayed, captured, imprisoned, tortured and killed. The passion is all too familiar in some ways. So familiar that we block it out and don’t see the connections between the pain around us and God being in the world.

In some churches, the evening service is the main one of the day, particularly in places where people are prevented by work from attending in the morning or afternoon. Sometimes they walk the Stations of the Cross – a walking meditation looking at representations of the Passion Story. Sometimes it is Tenebrae – a musical service where lights are progressively put out until all is dark. Sometimes it’s a formal liturgy like the Veneration that we have here earlier in the day.

Tonight for us it’s music and words and then rest. All is done. Good Friday will be over.

And to end, a prayer from Compline the service of Night Prayer with which many people end their day:

Almighty God, whose most dear Son
lay at this hour in the sepulchre
in obedience to your will;
may we by your grace be so buried with him
that with him we may rise to life everlasting;
through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen

Triduum #5 – Holy Saturday

Triduum#4 – Good Friday Evening

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