This Is the Night: The Triduum Explained

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“This is the night” is not a line of poetry. It’s a claim about reality.

We sit down at the heart of Holy Week with Father Mitchell Brown to walk through the Paschal Triduum. Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and the Easter Vigil are not separate events, but one continuous liturgy that makes Christ’s death and Resurrection present.

What you will hear:

Why the Eucharistic Prayer says “that is tonight”

The institution of the Eucharist and priesthood

The mandatum and love expressed through sacrifice

Why Good Friday has no consecration and what that means

The truth about veneration, relics, and idolatry

The silence of Holy Saturday

The fire, light, and power of the Easter Vigil

How to actually live the Triduum, even with a busy family

Key moments:

00:00 What is the Triduum

05:30 Holy Thursday explained

12:10 Good Friday and the empty altar

20:00 Veneration, relics, and misconceptions

28:00 Holy Saturday and the silence

34:00 Easter Vigil and new life

If you want to enter Holy Week with intention, not just attend but participate, this episode gives you a map.

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What part of the Triduum do you struggle to show up for most?

Transcript

Welcome And The Meaning Of This Night

SPEAKER_01 0:00

And on this night, Christ rose victorious from the underworld. So as we're basking in the light of this candle and it's spread through the entirety of the church, here in Gallup and all throughout the world, we're hearing the deacon proclaim in something that's very akin to a gospel and a Eucharistic prayer, this is the night, and we participate in that by entering into the sacraments, by being present to Christ who rises from the dead.

SPEAKER_04 0:30

Welcome to Chrysterocast. I'm Patrick Mason, and again with me today is Father Mitchell Brown from Sagar Cathedral. Father, would you mind uh starting us off with a prayer today? Sure.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Almighty God, as we prepare for the solemn celebrations of the Paschal Trituum, draw us into the heart of your Son, that as we prepare to die with him we may rise with him as well through Christ our Lord. Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

SPEAKER_04 0:59

Amen. Yeah, Father, ever since I've uh been reading your book, my I've swatted a lot less flies with my sign of the cross. I don't think I've ever been this intentional in my life with the sign of the cross, which has been great. And we're now in holy week and uh we're coming up on what really is the most important time of the year for the church.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

Yeah, this is the I mean pardon the pun, this is the crux of the matter here. The cross of all time and space is what we commemorate this week, on Good Friday especially.

SPEAKER_04 1:31

Yeah, so why don't you kind of tell us like what are we doing this week? So we have we I've heard, you know, I think a lot of us know the term the trituum, which is Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil. Uh maybe you could run into a little more of what is the tritum and why is it so important and how does it all tie together or what's what's going on there?

The Paschal Triduum Made Present

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Sure. So the sacred Paschal trituum, it triduum simply means in Latin three days. So it's three days that are dedicated to the commemoration of what happened at the Passover of Jesus, when he fulfilled all of the Passover imagery of the Old Testament from Exodus onward, and culminated all of that in his person, not an external lamb of sacrifice, but in his own flesh. And so in those days, we are memorializing everything that he did. So as we talked about in the book before, this isn't simply remembering what happened in the past. We're not play acting when we're at mass. God is making those things present to us in these days. And so whether it's um at the Last Supper, in the agony of the garden, uh the suffering of our Lord, his crucifixion, or the resurrection, those things are present to us in these days. They're not simply things of 2,000 years ago. They are present realities to us. And so entering into these days, into this trituum, into the celebration of the resurrection, engaging in them intentionally is the most important thing we can do all year long, because these are the mysteries of our redemption. These are the moment when we were saved and set free from sin and death. So these days are absolutely essential for us as Christians.

SPEAKER_04 3:03

Now, as Catholics and and we love our rules sometimes, uh like no meet on Fridays and Lent and fasting and go to Mass on Sundays and go out go to Mass on holy days of obligation. But our holy ther holy Thursday and Good Friday, the trude. I mean, you just said are the most important days of the year, but we they aren't holy days of obligation.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

Right. The the way I like to look at this is they're not holy days of obligation because there's so much more. They break that category, right? This is not simply, well, we have to go to this. It's this is just what we do. So there's not even a question in the mind of the church that we would participate in these things. So while they may not have obligation to them like Easter Sunday does, they are just as important to celebrate as Easter Sunday. So hopefully the churches are packed.

SPEAKER_04 3:52

Yeah, I think Father, I when I was talking with Father Keller, actually we did an Easter candle unboxing video we may or may not release, but uh well, one of the things I think he said was he was like, the church, the the the importance of these days is so much that the church wouldn't even think of needing to make them holy days of obligation. They do holy days of obligation because people may not know that they should go those days. But every Catholic should know that you go to these things.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

Yeah, this like I said, it's beyond the category of obligation. This is just who we are and what we do.

SPEAKER_04 4:25

And I wish I had known that more. Uh I think I came to that late, I mean, late in my life, late in my, I mean, I'm talking within like the last five years, especially when you have kids, or I could grow up in a pretty big family. Sometimes you're like, oh man, those services. Holy Thursday is bad time right around dinner time. Good Friday is super long. And and uh uh and Easter vigil, like good luck with the four-hour Easter vigil with a bunch of kids. So I think unfortunately, we did not go to the Trudeau uh services as much as I wish we had. And now with kids, it is a major sacrifice to do, but somehow we found ourselves being the family with eight children, dragging them not only to Holy Thursday and Good Friday, but to the Easter Vigil. I think my boys are serving for you on the Easter Vigil.

SPEAKER_01 5:17

Yeah, they're gonna be a great help to me, actually. But the the thing I think about in these days is it's easy for us, especially when we've maybe seen specific pieces of art or seen certain depictions in movies, where it all is very sterile and pristine, and there wasn't a single thing out of place in the Palm Sunday procession into Jerusalem or on Good Friday. But these days were chaos, right? The the the disciples fled from the garden as people are are taking Jesus into custody. People are wailing and gnashing their teeth all the way into uh to Calvary, and then Calvary itself is the death of God. There's nothing clean or pretty about any of these things. So even with families, right? If your children are crying, if it's if it's chaos, it's pretty fitting. But the fact that you are there, taking your children to engage in these things, saying it is important that we change our life for this, you know, your your smallest ones may not get that now, but it starts to plant the seed to the point that we're your older boys know why these days are important. Right. And and that will carry with them into their older life too.

Holy Thursday Eucharist Priesthood Love

SPEAKER_04 6:18

Yeah, I think two of them were disappointed that they could only serve two of the three services. But you're like, yeah, you guys wait till you're a little older before you get all three. Um so why don't we talk about Holy Thursday? What is Holy Thursday and what's the different about Holy Thursday than every other Mass of the year?

SPEAKER_01 6:33

So there's a particular moment in the Holy Thursday Mass that really s is striking. It really stands out. And it's when we get to the Roman canon, the Eucharistic prayer, every other time of the year, you know, it's it's talking in general, but the words actually change on Holy Thursday night when we get to the consecration, and it says, um, on the night he was betrayed, that is tonight. It's extremely powerful, especially as a priest and getting choked up thinking about it. Because we are, like I said, we're not just thinking back, we're present at the reality. We are at the Last Supper with the disciples. We are there as they are celebrating the Passover, and Jesus changes the rules, if you will, and says, Now take and eat my flesh, drink my blood for the salvation of the world, for the for the forgiveness of sins. So that night, that's the central act. It's it's commemorating the institution of the Eucharist. At the same time, commemorating the institution of the priesthood, because when he says, Do this in memory of me, that's kind of like their ordination. He gives them the power to do this by saying, Do it. So the priesthood and the Eucharist are both commemorated that night, as well as his commandment to love. This is when we have the washing of the feet, John 13 is the gospel, where he says, As I have done for you, so you must do for others out of love, right? And so there's the washing of the feet, which here at the cathedral, the bishop does that for the priests and seminarians. It's very humbling to have your bishop wash your feet. Um, but that's where the term Monde Thursday comes from, because he's giving us a new commandment, and that word in Latin is mandatum. So the mandatum of love, the commandment uh uh to wash the feet in love and charity and service for others gives this flavor to the rest of the liturgy, the rest of the triduum, that everything we're about to undergo, the institution of the Eucharist, the institution of the priesthood, the crucifixion, the resurrection, it's all out of the love that God had for us to send us his son. So Maundy Thursday, Holy Thursday kind of sets the tone for the rest of it as being the manifestation of God's love in his son. And that's all taking place on Holy Thursday. It starts that night.

SPEAKER_04 8:37

I mean, that's that's amazing. I don't think I've ever picked up on it that they say this night. I mean, that's like you're you're actually you're it just reiterates the point that we always say is like, well, you're you're participating in Calvary, but actually starting on Holy Thursday, you're not just participating, you're you're literally like at the at the at the at the verge of the hill, like you're about to uh enter into this with Christ, which is so appropriate because then we go into the next day, and the next day is the only day of the year in the Catholic Church that we don't have Mass.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

Right. Yeah, and we we have a movement in all of this. These three days really are one celebration of the liturgy. So at the end of Holy Thursday, we have the procession of the Eucharist through the church to a separate tabernacle, which represents going into the Garden of Gethsemane. And at a certain point in the night, the priest will come and take the blessed sacrament from there to another place, which shows that Jesus is being taken away, and then he's on trial overnight, if you will. Then on Good Friday, the tabernacle is empty, the altar is bare because Christ is in his passion. He's entering into the suffering for the salvation of the world. And so when we have at Good Friday, we start in and we don't even start with the sign of the cross, the bishop or the priest will come in and lay flat on the floor in in recognition of how sinful we are. Our sin crushes us down to the floor. And that's a continuation of what we were doing last night, right? Christ anticipated that, saying this blood is for the forgiveness of sins, and then we go to Good Friday where we see his actual forgiving of our sins. And it starts with that prostration, and it's a continuation, as you said, because we don't even start with any of the normal things. We just go right into the prayer. Just we're praying immediately for what we need to that day. And then there are a lot of prayers on Good Friday. It just keeps going.

SPEAKER_04 10:25

Yeah. So maybe another way to think of it is it's not that there's no mass on Good Friday. It's that the Mass for the Trudom encompasses three days.

SPEAKER_01 10:35

Yeah. Yeah. The liturgy, it it expands through all of that. Um, there's no consecration on Good Friday, right? Of new hosts. We have enough hosts on Thursday for communion on Friday, but it is one singular liturgy that just encapsulates everything we have. One of one thing I was telling someone earlier today, there's way too much to take in in the tridubum. We use every symbol and sight and sound and way uh more scripture than we're used to in normal Sunday masses. So don't try to take it all in. Just focus on one thing and try to latch onto that for dear life because there's so much beauty. It's it's overwhelming in a good way.

SPEAKER_04 11:10

Yeah. Well, so talking about Good Friday, I mean, so you procession and then you have, I mean, how you have multiple readings, like you're just saying, you have multiple readings, and then there's the there's that section where you do all these prayers, right? It's like it's kind of it's the inner it's the it's the intercessory prayers in the order that we normally do them. What's the normal order of prayers? It's like the church, our political leaders, but this just takes those normal intercessory order and just really expands them all the way from the top to the bottom.

SPEAKER_01 11:39

Yeah, and it's for every person, place, thing imaginable, uh, for people that know God, for people that don't know him, for people that know Christ, people that don't know him, for politicians, for the suffering, the sick, the dead, um, and and going the other way all the way up to the Pope, right? That everyone that day is presented to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit, because that is the day when the heart of God is open, right? When the soldier St. Longinus pierces the heart of Christ. Pope Benedict says that God is no longer hidden, he's no longer locked up, he has opened his heart to the world. And so we take that opportunity and say, Here's everything for your mercy. May your holy precious blood uh transform every reality in this world. And so we we take a long time to do that because this is the day of the year that is meant for that.

SPEAKER_04 12:26

And then you venerate the cross. We are we is the we all of us venerate the cross. Um, and I guess at the cathedral, we're blessed to have a a relic of the true cross um that is the is it in I guess it's in our crucifix that we venerate or so it's it's a separate relic.

SPEAKER_01 12:43

We tie it to the top. Oh, that's right. But but you can see it when there when you're venerating, and you know it's a pretty large crucifix, so you can see it throughout the church, and it has excuse me, the corpus on there, so you can see and recognize this is why we're here today, for this man that's on the cross that we know to be God as well. And then we're able to come and and venerate and and kiss the corpus of Christ, but right underneath the true relic, uh, recognizing that we have a connection to that moment of salvation.

SPEAKER_04 13:12

So, what about people that say that's idolatry? You're kissing a image of Jesus, you're not kissing him, which is true, it's not actually Jesus, it's an image of Jesus.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

What do you say to that? So all the way back to the apostolic age, um, you know, or to the the patristic age, the idea was that what we do for statues or images, the veneration there passes through to the prototype. So what we're doing for Christ on the cross in an image is passing through to the Christ in heaven, to where he sits at the right hand of the Father. But people in the secular world do the same thing all the time. They have a picture of their loved one they might kiss if they haven't seen them for a long time, right? And that's not all dulls. Nobody thinks that's idolatry. Um, they do it because there's love there and they know that they're not worshiping the Polaroid that they might have or the piece of plastic or even their phone or something, right? Um, they know that this is meant to pass to the person that's actually in existence or that's passed on to the next life. So the same is true with images or statues, or in this case, a crucifix. I'm not there to worship the plaster. That'd be stupid.

SPEAKER_03 14:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

But I am there to worship Christ, and this reminds me of what he did for me. So kneeling down to reverence that is to incite my heart, my body, my soul to reverence Christ who is crucified.

SPEAKER_04 14:26

Yeah, that's right. I get, I guess I always give the example of nobody ever has a problem. No, uh, some of our Protestant brothers and sisters that criticize us for these things, like praying to marry, idolatry, you know, all this kind of stuff. They all none of them have a problem. And no Protestant I ever has a problem saying, like, hey, will you pray for me? I'm going through a hard time. Will you pray for me? Nobody ever has a problem, like you said, of having pictures of their family on their dresser in their house, or maybe even pictures of their dead loved ones uh in in somewhat of like a family remembrance area in their house. But suddenly when the Catholics are doing it, no, no, pictures and statues of Jesus, that's idolatry. Uh and uh praying to Mary uh to ask her to pray for us.

SPEAKER_01 15:11

Oh, that's that's And it's I think helpful to recognize that the traditional understanding across cultures of worship always involves sacrifice. Yeah. But we never offer sacrifice to the Blessed Mother, we never offer sacrifice to saints, and we certainly do not sacrifice to wood and wood and stone and plaster. We may venerate them, but we're not offering a sacrifice to them as we would to Christ or we would to God.

SPEAKER_04 15:34

And then I guess one other kind of hot topic is the relic of the true cross. Um I've heard somebody, I think an atheist, uh famous atheist one time says like if you took every every every relic of the true cross and put them together, it'd be a a beam the size of Manhattan Island. Uh, you know, and I think that's just uh it's marketably untrue to me to thinking of how small these splinters are. But what do you what would you say to something like that?

SPEAKER_01 16:02

Yeah, they're extremely tiny. It's not like a hundred of these is gonna make much more than a nail or something. Yeah. Uh but beyond that, our God is a god of miracles. He can make amazing things happen with a very small amount of matter, which he created in the first place.

SPEAKER_04 16:16

And where do where do these relics of the true cross come from? I know when you go to St. Peter's, they have a very large relic of the true cross right in the middle of St. Peter's Square at the top of the obelisk there. But where did we get the true cross, if you know?

SPEAKER_01 16:29

Oh, well, so in general, you know, St. Helena, Constantine's mother, had a vision. She went to the Holy Land and she was able to find the true cross that had just been buried for 300 years. Um, and over time, after that, parts of the cross were given to different places, different religious orders, different countries. Somehow we ended up with two actually at the cathedral. Um, so we have two very small relics of the Holy Cross, one in our chap, our rectory chapel, and then one on that crucifix that we use, especially for Good Friday. Um, but they they've gone throughout the world. So I we have the paperwork for it. I could find out probably where it came from, but they they're all over the place. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 17:06

And I guess and Saint Helena, who is the mother of Constantine, right? She went to the Holy Land and she they found they were venerating the truth, and was in the 300s, I think, the fourth century. She went to the Holy Land and oh, they're venerating the true cross there already. And she brought that along with the steps that Jesus went up to and a bunch of other things back to Rome, where you could go today and still see all that. Yeah, and on grand scale too. Yeah, really beautiful. Yeah, we uh I took my son for Carlos Accudis's canonization and we did the the scala, the holy the what do they call them? The sanctata song to the holy stairs on your knees all the way up, and it's it's not as easy as you'd think because it's not just a matter of like, oh, I'm gonna go up on my knees, there's hundreds of people doing it. And so you got to wait for the guy in front of you to go up the next step. And some of these people like take you're kind of like scooting around, like, yeah, this guy's taking a little long.

SPEAKER_03 18:00

I'm gonna go go off to my right here and and do worry about getting into passing lane on the city.

SPEAKER_04 18:04

Yeah, where's the fast line for the whole holy stairs? I need to get up there quick because my knees are killing me. Um, but that was, I mean, it's amazing. This goes back to like the Catholic Church is amazing and weird and beautiful, and sometimes the most beautiful things come from our weirdness. Um, so we venerate the cross back to good on Good Friday. We venerate the cross, then we don't have a consecration, but we do receive communion. Um, and you said that that's usually from the host consecrated on Holy Thursday. Uh is there anything else that kind of goes on that we should dive into on Good Friday?

SPEAKER_01 18:39

I mean that Well, you know, the um this happened on Palm Sunday as well, but there is the long reading of the Passion on Good Friday from St. John's Gospel. And his looks and sounds and feels very different from the other three, the synoptics, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And there are biblical and theological reasons behind that, but it's the one that we hear every year on Good Friday. And the beauty of hearing these passion narratives regularly, even every day this week, if possible, personally, is to recognize this is our story. This is the story of Christ, this is the story of every sinner, of every saint, of every Christian. The passion is uh the result of our sin, but also the the reason, uh the the the showing of God's love to us. So the misery of man and the and the depths of God's mercy meet in the passion. And so while it takes a long time to get through, uh I always tell the servers, make sure not to lock your knees during the passion, during the shirt one, but it's it's a very important thing because this story is is the heart of it all. This story, and then of course leading into the resurrection is what makes us who we are today. So while it may last a long time, it may be difficult to get through all of that, um, especially at the cathedral, we chant it, so it takes even longer. Uh it's important to hear those words and recognize this is my story, this is my life that I'm hearing in front of me.

Holy Saturday Silence And Self-Examination

SPEAKER_04 20:03

And then we go through the night into Holy Saturday, and then the next time there's mass or service or anything is the Easter vigil, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:16

Yeah. So priests and and religious, you know, we we still have the liturgy, the hours that we're praying through the day. But holy Saturday is the weirdest day of the year. Um you know, Good Friday is perhaps the most tragic because of what we have done by our sin, but Holy Saturday, there's just a stillness in the air, the tabernacle is empty, God is dead, right? That's that's the feeling of that day. Yeah, you the the sanctuary light is out. Yeah, there's there's I mean, we we are getting ready, we're decorating the church and this kind of stuff, but there's just a weird feeling to that day because you know, if we if we follow the creed, even Christ has descended into the dead to preach the gospel to those that went before him, but we are still here waiting for the resurrection. We're there with the blessed mother and the disciples, perhaps back in the upper room, just wondering what happened. And there's a long time in that day just to pause and consider what are we doing here? What did Christ do? Where am I in this in this situation? Have I denied him in this last year like Peter? Have I betrayed him like Judas? We have a long time that day to consider since the last time we celebrated these mysteries, where am I in my relation to Christ? And there's no answer until very late that night when we start the Easter vigil and he comes back from the grave. That whole day is just a day of silence, of mourning, of waiting and anticipation, and a time for reflection and examination. So it's a very, very bizarre day, um, in a in a way that only God could make happen in time.

Easter Vigil Fire Light New Exodus

SPEAKER_04 21:42

And and it's I I love the Easter Vigil and all there's a you know, out where we are, we're the Native American diocese and we have a lot of different faithful tribes, but the most faithful of the tribes is Laguna. And they've been uh, you know, their their village was founded in 1698 as a Catholic village when they Built their church St. Joseph's. And I love their tradition that continues today that on Holy Thursday, the leaders of the tribe go into seclusion, go into meditation, and then they also emerge on um on Holy on the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday. And um they have a giant bonfire outside of their their old mud church with the mud floors and everything. And it's a huge bonfire of sage, and everybody has their candles and they they light their candles and they process in and they and they do the Easter candle there. What what is that? I mean, that's how maybe it's not as dramatic in in every church. I think sometimes you just have like a little fire pit, but you have some kind of fire outside, and then and then you you make the candle, you make the Easter candle and you process in. What's what's going on there?

SPEAKER_01 22:50

Yeah, so this is like I said, all of our symbolic power as Catholics just explodes with the Easter vigil because we use everything water, fire, smoke, oil, uh, bread, wine, light, darkness, sound, silence. It's all there on the Easter Vigil, uh, and lots and lots of scripture. Um, but it starts with that moment outside when everyone goes outside, they're holding unlit candles because we're still in anticipation of the resurrection, right? We're waiting. Everyone's waiting for the moment that the mass starts. And it has to start after dark. Uh there's theological reasons for that too, but it also makes this part so much cooler. So the the celebrant will come out and bless the Easter fire. This fire represents the the revivification of the of the body of Christ, if you will, he this new life that is coming to us through the resurrection. The candle itself is blessed. Uh, it's it's uh marked with the current year and it shows that Christ is the Lord of all space and time. And then the candle goes in along with the incense. And this signifies to us that we're in the new Exodus, right? When when Moses led the people through the Red Sea, there was fire by day, uh smoke by day and fire by night to lead them through the wilderness. Well, we come into the church which is pitch black with smoke and fire, which lead us through the darkness of death, and that one candle pierces the entirety of the church and lights it up. And then there's stages. First, the the first stage, there's the the proclamation of the Lumen Christi, the light of Christ. The second one, the celebrant lights his candle, the third one, everybody lights their candles, and the light just starts to spread from the Easter candle to all of us. And it signifies the life from Christ coming to the believers, the life of Christ coming to those who are about to be received into the church, the life of Christ coming into the darkness. And it's an amazingly powerful moment because you can just look around and see these flickering flames everywhere. It's like the Holy Spirit has just descended on the church, and then the deacon gets to the front, places the candle by the ambo, and proclaims the exultate, which is uh a significantly long chant proclaiming the power of this night. I think it's eight or nine times we hear this is the night, this is the night, this is the night, when God did this in the past, he led the Israelites through the Red Sea, when he did all these amazing things, and on this night Christ rose victorious from the underworld. So as we're basking in the light of this candle and it's spread through the entirety of the church, here in Gallup and all throughout the world, we're hearing the deacon proclaim in something that's very akin to a gospel and a Eucharistic prayer, this is the night, and we participate in that by entering into the sacraments, by being present to Christ who rises from the dead.

SPEAKER_04 25:37

And again, like you said, this is not a this is not just a fun ceremony. This is us actually being there. So on Friday, we are at Calvary and we are actually plunged into darkness, and the the veil of the tabernacle has been rent asunder and it's been found empty, and the earthquakes are happening, and and it's just we're literally in this darkness. Then all of a sudden, uh that's the beginning of the story in some sense, but the but the completion of the story is the resurrection.

SPEAKER_02 26:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 26:09

That is where the light comes from. Like we, like the apostles and the and the disciples and everyone are plunged in the dark, the whole world, but now the resurrection has happened. And not for not remembering the resurrection, this is the night. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:22

The resurrection is going on now as the light spreads. Yeah. And you're able to see that light entering into the tomb, right? The candle coming into the church, the tomb kind of represents, or the church represents the tomb of Christ, and that light piercing in, and he's alive again. You know, if this were just acting or remembering, we would be far better watching the Passion of the Christ or watching some stage play on Good Friday or something, doing the stations of the cross. I would not make myself as exhausted as I am every year just to put on a play. Yeah. This is us entering into the very life and death and resurrection of Christ. And there's something way more communicated to us than just nice thoughts about something someone did for us a long time ago.

SPEAKER_04 27:03

And then everybody comes into the church. People are getting baptized, they're getting all the sacraments pretty much, right? Or could be present, I guess, at the aspect.

SPEAKER_01 27:13

Yeah, there aren't there aren't marriages or ordinations, um, but we have all the initiation. Yeah. So people are baptized, confirmed, and receive first communion. And all of us get to renew our baptismal promises. Um, you know, one I think the best way that I've heard the the Easter vigil described, if you remember the ents from the Lord of the Rings, the big trees. Yeah. Uh they may take offense at being called trees, but there's a point in those stories when um it says that the ents took a long time to say anything, especially if it was important, especially if it was their name, right? It would take a long time to say their name because that encapsulated everything of who they are. And since they lived so long, they have a lot to their story. That's what's happening at the Easter Vigil. The church is saying her name with every prayer, with every scripture, with every chant and tone and every sacrament, the church is saying, This is who I am. And thankfully, we have a shorthand of saying Christian, right? That that name of Christian that the church has is being given to those who receive sacraments. But that that uh name is so long, we have to go through all of salvation history to be able to understand this is the church. This is what Christ did for us. So we start with the darkness, right? Then there's light piercing the darkness, let there be light. We hear the creation account from Genesis. We go back to the beginning with the scripture stories and the passages from the Bible, and those go all the way up through the resurrection. So that whole night is like the church as an end saying her name, taking a long, joyful time to say, This is who I am, and now this is who you can be.

SPEAKER_04 28:50

So yeah, and that's then we have, and then the consecration comes back and we receive our creator, our brother, our savior into us once again. Um we we witness we the mass is back and and and we're joyful and we sing the hallelujah again. We've been well, you bury the hallelujah and on uh on Ash Wednesday, and you get to dig it up again on on uh at the Easter Vigil. Um and and we're and we're just back. We're Easter people again.

SPEAKER_01 29:22

Yeah, and it's a very powerful moment because you know, the all these readings that are happening, we don't get to the opening prayer yet. We don't get to anything specifically about the resurrection until we've been praying for about an hour and a half. And then all of a sudden breaks in this really long, beautiful chant of the Alleluia that has been dormant, like you said, for for 40 days. But that word itself is is the encapsulation of the resurrection. The the it the word means praise the Lord for his great works, right? And so we get to that point that the servers have just finished ringing bells for a long time in the glory, we have the hallelujah, and then Christ is back. And that that leads us into a proper uh celebration of the sacraments of the Eucharist, of receiving him and then being able to go forth from that alive with the new light of Christ.

SPEAKER_04 30:09

So why do we do the Easter uh just something you just said? Like I understand like the Christmas vigil, right? Or the midnight mass, because our tradition is that Christ was born at midnight in Bethlehem in piercing gold. Like that is this the the tradition of the church is that Christ was born at midnight. So it makes sense to have the midnight mass. But why do we do an why do we do why is the Easter visual the big mass and not like say Easter Sunday?

SPEAKER_01 30:35

Like the when we talk about the empty tomb and the Yeah. So when they find the empty tomb, it's daybreak, meaning he rose at night sometime, right? And all through his ministry, he's constantly saying, I will return like a thief in the night. You need to be vigilant, you need to stay awake and be ready. And so one of the first sacramental things that the people coming into the church get to do are follow that commandment. I'm going to stay up late and pray and pray and pray, keep vigil, because the Lord is returning. And the beauty of that night is we don't have to worry about the thief in the night in the sense that we know he's coming back that night. He promised it, he will raise. And so when we come to Easter Sunday, we can rejoice with a joy that they did not yet know because he's already raised, right? That's what the angel tells Mary Magdalene. He is not here. He is raised, as he said, he will meet you in Galilee. And we're able to experience that because we were there that night. We know he's at uh he's back.

SPEAKER_04 31:30

I th I think uh this just made me think of your book, Praying the Mass and Lin. And we have uh our our incredible podcast producer, Isaac Ritzer, is also a very talented and classically trained artist, and he picked out a lot of the art that we used in the book. And for the Easter Vigil, he picked out the resurrection by Karl Bloch, and you have Christ rising from the tomb with only angels present. You don't have any humans there, it's just Christ and the angels as he rises, and then for uh, and then Christ is gone. And on Easter Sunday, you have the woman at the tomb, and there's an angel in the tomb, but there's no Christ. So it goes to what she says, like, you've come too late. Christ has risen, or you've come that he's in the world again, he's out there.

SPEAKER_01 32:18

And you know, they they can be somewhat excused. They were rather grief-stricken, they probably lost track of time or something, but yeah, but by the time they get there, this momentous occasion that changed all of history has already occurred, and now it remains for them to enter into it, which is the whole Easter season. That's what we have awaiting for us in the Easter season as we read through Acts of the Apostles and the Liturgy, trying to figure out what does it mean, what does it look like to know that Christ died and is risen from the grave, how does that affect us personally? How do we uh as a church as a whole and then individually live that out in our life? How does that actually affect us?

SPEAKER_04 32:55

Well, Father, you've got me even more excited about the Trudom than I already was. It seems like every lint, it's just this like pressure of the world comes down on everything. And it's just, it's just dark. And then as you approach the truth, it kind of lightens. Even like Palm Sunday, whatever it was, is on Palm Sunday. I just kind of felt like it's starting to lighten up. And now I just I can't wait for the Trudom with everything you've said. So maybe uh could you close this out with a prayer and uh and we'll go from there.

SPEAKER_01 33:23

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit Good and gracious God. You have deigned to send your Son among us to be one of us, to suffer, to die, and to rise again. May we who come to you this Lenten season, as we prepare for this holy tread one, may we be open to the graces you have in store for us individually, in the parish, in the whole church, that we, like the apostles, may be given new life by the resurrection, and encouraged to go out and spread your good will, your good name, the name of Jesus, which is above every other name, through the same Christ our Lord. Amen. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Thank you, Father. Thank you, Patrick.

SPEAKER_00 34:21

Thank you for watching this episode of Christerocast. For more information on the Christeros or to join the movement, check out our website at theCristeros.org. That's the Christeros with an S.org. There you could find our daily reflection series as well as many of our publications and articles. Thank you for watching, and viva Christore.