Tuesday, April 14, 2009

The Triduum & Easter

Well after having experienced a Bahamian Palm Sunday we moved on to Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter.

St. John Chrysostom hosted a combined Holy Thursday celebration for all three churches we serve. There had been very little planning since I wanted to see what they have done here in the past and Fr. Bill Martin has been coming here to celebrate Holy Week for over a decade. Knowing that, I still wanted to try to set up some of the preliminaries - such as what 12 people would have their feet washed on Holy Thursday. Unwittingly, I created a bit of a stir when I told people I'd try to get that done early. People kept saying that members would be hurt they couldn't get their feet washed, and I kept saying, "Who? Tell me and I'll include them." The response was, "well, we don't know, but if they want to come up and they can't they'll be hurt". I went around and around on this one until someone explained that instead of 12 people, Fr. Bill always opened it up to the entire church and whoever wanted to have their feet washed could. I was amazed that they were this open, and a bit concerned that Holy Thursday could run into several hours if everyone came forward, not to mention the logistics of how many towels, how many pitchers of water, basins, etc. we'd need. I'd been told not to worry about it - they'd use a common basin and clean water from the pitcher, tossing the dirty water if we needed to - we didn't need to use a clean basin for everyone since their feet were dirty anyway.

Well, as it happened we had a low turnout but all 3 churches were represented. At the invitation people came up to the sanctuary where a long bench had been prepared. Fr. Bill started at one end and moved right on down the bench, using a common basin for all and changing towels every 2 or 3 people. All in all it went rather well. One thing that I changed this year that seemed to go well was reposing the Blessed Sacrament. In prior years Fr. Martin would simply process out to the Sacristy with it, but the people had no opportunity to worship there. This year, since Fr. Martin was living at the Navy Base I converted the priest's apartment attached to the church into a small adoration chapel and installed an old wooden tabernacle I found in storage and cleaned up. It felt perfect and we processed out of the church, singing our way through the parking lot, and into the chapel - incense and all.

After the service I helped our sacristan strip the altar and do what set-up we could do for the Good Friday service. When we were done, however, someone turned off the main power switch to everything, rather than the switch to the ceiling fans. An easy thing to remedy except whenever we lose power, we lose our internet. Our router is a bit sensitive to that and this was no exception, so for the rest of the Triduum we had no internet (those no internet telephone to wish happy Easter to our friends and family).

Good Friday was a marathon, the first Good Friday was at 10:30AM in Cargill Creek. Now I realize that Good Friday shouldn't be a morning celebration, but when you need to do 3 of them you adjust. The second service was at 12:30 at AUTEC and we barely got there in time for that, followed by a 3PM service in Fresh Creek for the third service. Then there were Stations of the Cross at 6:00.

What spiced this up a bit was that at the third service, the one in Fresh Creek, we have no music since our drummer has become unavailable. Consequently Ginni had pulled out her guitar and was planning to lead a few of the songs. As we read the passion (in 4 parts to include the laity), and as Ginni is worrying about what to play and when, there was a huge crash as one of our parishioners passed out and fell to the floor. Now our floors are tile and a risk of his being hurt from the fall was very real. Coincidentally, the Doctor was in attendance, as was my wife the guitar-playing nurse. All thoughts of music were replaced by blood pressures and pulses, and get a cold drink, and let's sit him up over here, and ... Once it was clear he was up, and we had a Doctor and a nurse, we resumed reading the Passion and our healthcare team took over. The Doctor called the clinic and they called in the nurse practitioner while Ginni and Leonard, another parish volunteer, took him to the clinic. Suffice it to say they missed the rest of Good Friday services.

Holy Saturday was silent, until the Easter Vigil that night, and I liked that. It's Holy Saturday, Jesus is in the tomb, and we wait, expectantly - there is an anticipation to Holy Saturday that is, well, Holy.

The Easter Vigil was at St. John's, then Easter Day we did a service at the Navy Base at 8:30 and in Cargill Creek at 11:30. The Christ Candle I found in storage was good, but had 2 cracks in it that made it rather unsteady. I patched it up as best I could so I thought it'd work, but it made inserting the 5 rosettes into it during the candle blessing a bit tricky. Fr. Martin sang the Exultet (I will try to do it next year). We had no RCIA or baptism candidate (that too will be different next year since we already have 2 in RCIA formation with 3 others considering joining us). All in all, the Easter Vigil was wonderful, but we did miss what we have come to enjoy so much at St. Timothy's in Norwood.

Anyway, the Vigil was over around 10PM, we showered and got to bed and were up and out for the 8:30 service at AUTEC, then the 11:30 service in Cargill Creek. We were joined by vacationers from one of the local fishing lodges - from Italy!

Arriving home we weren't done yet. Once home we did our communion calls to those who couldn't make it to church due to illness. While tiresome after the services we had just led, it was special to continue serving in this particular way - bringing the Body of Christ to those too ill to celebrate the Risen Christ.

We were rewarded however. For Easter, the US Navy served lobster tail in the dining hall. Somehow we were able to drag ourselves back to the base and have Easter Dinner with them.

All in all, we put in alot of hours and we can see several things we think we could improve on for next year - but this first year we needed to learn their traditions, their methods of celebrating the resurrection, and so we did. Jesus Christ is risen from the dead on ANDROS - AMEN!