Keeping Vigil at the end of Triduum

Triduum is the three days preceding a festival or holy day. The most important Triduum for us as Christians is the three days before our most important holy day, Easter. It’s an emotional whiplash, living through these three days, as our stories carry us from triumphant joy to darkness and fear, from the warmth of friends and family to betrayal and torture, from death and bereavement to the amazing, impossible glory of Jesus’ resurrection. But as humans, we do know how to deal with the confusion and grief of bereavement. We come together as a community. We tell stories of our loved one who has passed. We support each other.

We have a wake.

Vigil before Easter morning, indeed the whole of Triduum, is a wake for Jesus. We can imagine the early church, still in the present moment of living through Jesus’ transformation of their lives, coming together to make sense of everything that happened; coming together as ordinary people, not theologians; making sense of their new reality through reminiscence and story, not creeds and dogma. We too, in this present reality, are ordinary people who have been transformed by Jesus’ entry into our lives. We too, have the need for community during this most intense experience of the Christian year. And so we hold vigil.

Over the night from 6pm on April 19 to sunrise on Easter morning (April 20), we will gather together, pray the office of the hours, tell our stories through Scripture readings, recollections, improvisational puppet plays and drama, and testimony. And sleep, at least a little. This is a special opportunity to gather and experience for themselves, in the kairos of the Christian year, a little of what it was to be a first-century Christian.

Everyone is welcome. This is especially appropriate for city-wide confirmation classes. R.s.v.p. & bring a sleeping bag.