Easter Joy

Alleluia! He is risen!

I know that I should say something about Easter, but others have said everything that needs to be said. The sorrow and penance of Lent has given way to the joy of the resurrection.

I made it to 2/3 of the Triduum this year, missing Holy Thursday’s Mass of the Lord’s Supper. By happy coincidence, that also means that I get to avoid the whole question of whether either of the parishes in our cluster included women or children in the foot washing.

At St. Augustine on Good Friday, I regretted the omission of the “Let us kneel . . . Let us stand” after each of the solemn intercessions, and there was some minor confusion during the recitation of the Passion. Like on Palm Sunday, the Good Friday Passion features the celebrant (if that’s the right word for a non-mass liturgy) reciting the words of Jesus, with a lector reading the narration, a speaker reciting the words of individuals like Pontius Pilate and Peter, and the congregation serving as the chorus of voices with lines like “Crucify him!” and “We have no king but Caesar.” St. Augustine parish, however, no longer has missals. With this year’s change in the English translation, all of the readings for Sundays and solemnities are now in the back of the hymnal, and the passion gospels are not annotated by speaker. We (i.e., the folks in the pews) did remarkably well, but there were occasions when it wasn’t clear whether the line belonged to the “speaker” or to the “chorus.” I still think that separate worship aids should be printed for the Triduum services, even if only to help people know when to stand, kneel, and sit (directions which are completely absent from the hymnal).

I attended the Easter Vigil mass at St. Joseph in Egypt. The vigil is always a little shorter there, if only because the whole town is already Catholic and there are never any catechumens or candidates. It was nice to sing the Gloria again, but they’ve chosen an extremely difficult musical setting. The notes are all over the place with absolutely no flow. It’s much easier to sing in other parishes I’ve been to, even if I haven’t sung it since before Lent. Overall, though, it was every bit the high point of the Church’s liturgical calendar.