The Triduum

The Reading: This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance. Exodus 12:14

The Whispering: Tomorrow, we enter into a three day long liturgy called the Triduum.  During these three days, we focus our attention on Jesus. The liturgy begins at the Passover meal. Jesus gives his followers those final instructions that will become the benchmark of the future Christian church: the primacy of a shared meal and the need to serve all people with humility and generosity. The next part to this three day liturgy finds us following Jesus to the Garden of Gethsemane, where he prays and where he is arrested by Roman soldiers. We watch, helplessly, as he is whipped and interrogated and mocked. A dreadful error. And then we cringe as he is led up a hill and nailed to a tree. And he dies. How can God die? Surely there must be a mistake. What is our role in this? On Saturday, we consider what a world without Jesus might look like; how we would feel if God's grace were irrevocably absent. We feel bereft. We wonder what our inaction accomplished.  We teeter on the lip of hopelessness. And then?  And then? The third day, we find ourselves drawn to the tomb once again. Where is he? The tomb is empty! Do you see him? Feel him? Experience him? Alleluia!