Rector’s Note: Marking the Triduum-4.17.25

Tonight, we begin the final leg of Passion Week with the start of the Triduum, the three-day liturgy that concludes with the Easter celebration. Lent is ending, and the great story of Easter has begun.

To consider these three days, it’s important to adjust our sense of when a day begins, writes Felix Just, S.J., in a 2008 article in America magazine.

Just reminds us that in Hebrew thought, as well as in Christian liturgy, a day begins at sunset. That’s why we often begin celebrations of holidays like Christmas or Easter on the evening before. So, the story of Jesus’ Last Supper, arrest, torture, crucifixion, death, and burial all occur on one day, starting Thursday night and ending Friday at sunset. The next day of this holy time, sunset on Good Friday until sunset on Holy Saturday, is only the emptiness of Jesus’ death. And finally, from sunset on Saturday to sunset on Sunday, we celebrate the resurrection story. The season of Easter will then continue for 50 days.

Just encourages us to consider the time not as days marked by distinctive liturgies, but as a period of themes that change in each 24-hour period. Tonight, we begin to explore the unity and passion of the first day (from Jesus’ Last Supper to his Crucifixion and Burial). That is followed by the rest and void of the second day (with Jesus in the tomb, and people simply waiting). And on the third day, we rise to joy and life (uniting more closely the Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday).

These are helpful ways to consider this sacred time as they allow us to mark this three-day period by participating in collective liturgies as well as with our own acts of quiet contemplation. To the community events described below, you might add individual practices of fasting and abstinence, setting aside practices that detract from the focus of this long story. While many fast from meals or treats, especially on Good Friday, might I humbly suggest a brief fast from newsfeeds and social media during this time? Instead, lay at the feet of the cross any worries, heartbreaks, or fears that you are carrying. Attach them to Christ’s saving work as we remember this painful salvation story and let them be bathed in the promise of Easter, and the unfolding of the resurrection life that we celebrate in its wake.

Meanwhile, here is how we will celebrate the Triduum collectively at St. Peter’s.

We mark the “unity and the passion of the first day” with tonight’s Maundy Thursday service, which begins with the 6 p.m. Agape meal and the 7:15 p.m. Eucharistic liturgy. We continue this observance on Good Friday as we join other churches in a noon Community Stations of the Cross, and we tell the passion story at the 7 p.m. Tenebrae service.

The darkening of the church at Tenebrae leads us into the period of rest/void of the second day. Our garden of repose is open from Thursday afternoon through Saturday morning for personal prayer and reflection, and a self-guided Stations of the Cross is also available for personal devotion.

And finally, the joy and life of the third day begin at sundown on Saturday with the Easter Vigil, which in our deanery will be hosted by St. Thomas Whitemarsh at 7 p.m. and supported by several Episcopal churches. If you would like to support parishioner Marsha Blake as she is confirmed and Keirstin Sibley as she recommits her baptismal promises before the bishop, you can attend the 5 p.m. Easter Vigil service at the Philadelphia Cathedral on Saturday night.

Easter Sunday, of course, is the most prominent part of the Triduum in our local practice, when the 10 a.m. liturgy swells with people, an Easter egg hunt beckons, and the smell of ham wafts in from the kitchen in anticipation of the Easter brunch.

Details on all of these liturgies can be found on the St. Peter’s website. However you mark this time, my prayer for you is that this period of prayer and worship does deep, restorative, and hopeful work in you, culminating in lasting Easter joy.