Looking back at the weekly messages of Father Paul Counce, first published in The Carpenter, our weekly Parish Bulletin
Published: March 21, 2021
The end of Lent is fast approaching. We will soon be in Holy Week, so I thought I would share with you some of what we can expect in the celebrations of this sacred time. (You will remember that last year during Holy Week all of the Church’s public worship was shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic, so we were reduced to small televised services only.)
Over the weekend of March 27-28, we will celebrate Palm Sunday. All of the Palm Sunday services, at our usual times, will be inside the Cathedral, so we won’t have to worry about the weather or of unsafe crowding into the church at the end of an outdoor procession. The biggest problem we are facing, I think, is a shortage of sago palms. The winter storm of several weeks back managed to kill many of them here on Cathedral Square and elsewhere around town. If you have one or more sago palm trees that survived unscathed, please consider donating palm branches to us. Just bring them to the Parish Office on Friday, March 26! If we don’t get enough to give everyone a full palm branch, we’ll cut them into smaller pieces so as to have some for everyone.
In order to allow all of the clergy of the diocese and some representatives from every parish to attend, the annual Chrism Mass – and reception – that is normally celebrated at the Cathedral during Holy Week will be hosted elsewhere this year only: St. George’s new church building and their hall are twice the size of ours! But our staff will be involved in setting up for that special Mass anyway: we are the ones experienced in bottling, labeling, arranging, packing and distributing both the large urns of olive oil as well as the smaller bottles used for distribution to every priest and parish! We like to joke that the bishop can’t bless the oils without us!
The Sacred Triduum (a Latin word meaning “Three Days”) follows Lent. It’s the shortest liturgical season of all, lasting only from the beginning of the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday, through Good Friday’s Commemoration of the Passion and Death of the Lord to the great Vigil of Easter on Holy Saturday night. Yet the solemnity of those important feasts outweighs all other celebrations of the year.
The Covid-19 pandemic will require us to omit the traditional “washing of feet” on April 1, but the rest of the special Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord’s Supper at 6 pm that evening will take place as usual. It was at the Last Supper on the night before He died that Jesus Instituted the sacrament of the Most Holy Eucharist , and in so doing also established the sacramental priesthood of the New Covenant by empowering His apostles to continue to enact this sacrificial meal in His memory until the end of time. At the conclusion of our Mass, the consecrated eucharist remaining will be brought in solemn procession to our Blessed Sacrament Chapel. Everyone is invited to remain in church in silent prayer before the Blessed Sacrament reposed in the Tabernacle until 9 pm: Jesus’ Passion really began after His Last Supper with His own intense, agonizing prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. He still invites us, like He did His first disciples, to “watch and pray” with Him in these hours.
On April 2, Good Friday, our Solemn Commemoration of the Lord’s Passion takes place as usual at 3 pm, the hour Christ died. This somber liturgy features the account of Jesus’ sufferings and saving death on the cross taken from St. John’s Gospel and solemn public prayers for God’s blessings upon all humanity, followed here by public veneration of our relic of the True Cross and holy communion from the sacrament consecrated the evening before. Another popular devotion on Good Friday is the Way of the Cross, prayed in the Cathedral that day at 12 noon. Remember that Good Friday, too, is a serious day of both abstinence from meat AND a day of fasting (minimal food, including only one full meal).
Holy Saturday recalls Christ’s body at rest in His tomb until the great overnight Holy Vigil of Easter. Since it must be held entirely after dark, the Holy Vigil begins at 8 pm on Holy Saturday, April 3. It encompasses the singing of the Easter Proclamation (the famous “Exultet”), followed by a Bible vigil, and the celebration of the sacraments of baptism, confirmation and eucharist. Mr. Steven Vaughan will be brought into the Church by receiving all three of these sacraments; being already baptized, Ms. Carrington Cain will formally profess faith as a Catholic before being confirmed and admitted to the eucharist. Yes, it’s a long service, but easily the most important moment of worship of the entire year, as the Church both recalls and makes real again the victory of Christ over sin and death!
Masses will also be celebrated at 8:30 and 10:30 am on Easter Sunday, April 4. Do make plans now to share in these important, sacred days of prayer and remembrance. Perhaps now that we know so poignantly the horror of severe illness and death in these pandemic times, I suspect, our observances in holy worship of Jesus’ own facing death and His triumph over it will be powerful indeed!
In the Lord of Life Eternal,
Father Paul Counce
