Do you see now why I’m not charging for this Substack?
I’d have to refund everyone’s money, regularly, wouldn’t I?
But I thought today would be a good time to talk about, yes, Holy Week.
No, not the very intensely discussed 1955 changes. Those kinds of questions are not the subject of this space and I have almost zero knowledge of all of that. No, we’re about personal experiences here. Keeping a record, of sorts.
Four years ago - yes, the infamous spring of 2020, when Catholic churches were shut down around the world - I wrote about this, reflecting on my own childhood in the 1960’s and 70’s.
I’ll quote below, but the basic point was that…we didn’t do anything in church for the Triduum. There were Masses and services, but we didn’t go and I don’t have any recollection of it being a thing at all. You weren’t encouraged, much less expected to go.
(Ritual reminder: the “childhood” of which I speak is mine. The childhood of a Catholic daughter of a “lapsed Methodist” father (his words) and a Catholic mother who (and this was probably important) did not drive. It’s also a Catholic childhood lived in midcentury outside of any ethnic enclaves, in American Midwestern suburbia and college towns. The experience I’m describing I know is not the only experience, and globally speaking, was far from typical.)
….for example, when I was growing up, this is what we did, my mother and I, there in DeKalb, Illinois or Lawrence, Kansas:
We’d go to Mass on Palm Sunday.
On Good Friday, my father would drive us to a church (my mother didn’t drive) where my mother and I would would pray the Stations of the Cross. My recollection is that we tried to get there around 3, but that may be wrong.
We’d go to Mass on Easter Sunday.
That’s it. I have no idea what those parishes were even doing during those years – the mid-to-late 60’s through the early 70’s – for the Triduum.
***
No Chrism Mass, no Mass of the Lord’s Supper, no Liturgy of the Presanctified, not even a parish Stations of the Cross, no Easter Vigil – and no sense that a complete experience of Holy Week was dependent on participating in any of that.
I don’t have sharp memories of that time, but I do still have the children’s religious books that were mine as a child, those that I was expected to look at and read during Holy Week. There were no Holy Week Crafts engaged with, and there wasn’t even family prayer, except, in a way, on Good Friday afternoon.
Maybe it was harder because we didn’t have a lot of resources to help us – no community traditions where we were, no big Catholic community, no coloring sheets to download. But on the other hand, it was, in a way, easier, since there were far fewer distractions. No, we weren’t pioneers or hermits, but yes, before the Internet and other forms of easily accessed mass communication, there were, indeed, fewer distractions.
I’m not saying it was better or worse. I’m saying that is what it was. But here’s the other aspect of it:
There was, as I recall and as I still carry with me, a sense that each of us had a duty, no matter what our state in life or no matter what else we were doing or where, to try to imitate Christ in his Passion that week: to die to self, to sacrifice in some way, to put His suffering and love at the center of our consciousness.
To follow Him.
It was, fundamentally, my responsibility, as a Christian, to be serious about this time, think about it, and orient my prayers and daily life in a certain way that reflected that. It was my job, because it was my soul and it was my responsibility to do penance, try to be more like Christ and grow in love and hope.
Moving on…
I was in a Catholic high school from 1974-78, and have no memory of any particular Holy Week/Triduum talk at that point either. Of course, we wouldn’t have been in school from Thursday on, but still.
During college (1978-82), things changed, and yes, we were involved! At a Catholic campus parish in a large state university in the South, yes we sang Hosanna from Jesus Christ Superstar at least once during those years, and while I don’t remember anything about Holy Thursday Mass, I do recall that every year, we wrote our own Stations of the Cross for Friday. Because of course, that’s what you did. One of those times, we had a slide presentation for Stations - because of course, that’s what you did. The crisis happened when the priest dropped the tray of slides and they scattered, not long before the service began. We were pretty upset because I think we’d neglected to number the slides, but it also seems to me that it should have been okay because all of the slides were of stark, bare, tree branches and deserts, so they probably could have been in any order at all.
What about you?
If you grew up in the 60’s and 70’s - what was your experience of Holy Week? Did Jesus Christ Superstar play a part? Did things change as the 70’s turned into the 80’s and beyond?
You and I are roughly the same age. But I grew up in suburban New Jersey where despite all the VII changes, Catholic identity was still pretty strong and there were lots of us, of all ethnicities, including in the subgroup of emerging reactionaries/conservatives to which my family belonged. (We didn't call ourselves traditionalist in those days because those were the people who broke away with Archbishop LeFebvre.) By the early 70s my parents, my parents were church-hopping in order to avoid our local, progressive parish at least some of the time. For example, we went to Friday night stations of the cross at a different parish because it used the traditional Alphonosus Ligouri stations booklet rather than the "Every Man's Way of the Cross" which featured pictures of poor people for each station, rather than pictures of Jesus. (But I will note that whether liberal or conservative, the turnout for Stations in those days was phenomenal--church wasn't quite packed, but still very close to full.) But back to Holy Week. We went to mass Palm Sunday and each day of the Triduum. In our diocese, adoration after Holy Thursday mass went all night long and into the next day until it was time for the Good Friday service. (I wonder when that went away and adoration hours reduced only until 10pm or midnight?) My Dad would go back for adoration sometime late at night. My mom would send us kids during one of the morning hours on Good Friday equipped with rosaries and prayer books to help us get through the hour. During the day on Good Friday we were discouraged from riding our bikes or playing with friends on our street. We had to stay home and engage in quiet play. We returned to church (most years) in the afternoon for the service. I don't recall much about liturgical changes at that time--I think even our progressive parish didn't tinker much with the service. The veneration of the cross always stood out to me as a kid--after all it only happened once a year. We never went to Easter vigil as a family ( I think my Dad did once in a while). We'd go to a later morning mass on Easter after we'd found our baskets of candy. I didn't attend an Easter vigil ever until after I got married in 1980, so I know nothing about what that was like during the 70s.
My gradeschool years were 1971-1979, and I graduated high school in 1983. Both schools were Catholic.
As a family, we'd attend Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday Mass, Good Friday services (stations, veneration of the Cross, reception of reserved Holy Communion), and attend Easter morning Mass. For many of those years, I was an altar boy, so it was very likely I served at one or more of those Masses/services each year. I distinctly recall one Holy Thursday Mass, that the altar boys were among those whose feet were washed by the bishop (my childhood parish was the diocesan cathedral in Rochester NY -Sacred Heart cathedral). In 7th and 8th grade, I was in the boys choir, and we sang at the Easter Vigil those years.
Nowadays, I attend Good Friday services during Holy Week, and attend morning Mass on Easter Sunday. I haven't attended Holy Thursday in well over a couple decades.