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?
Same age as you, grew up in suburban Southern California, Catholic father, Lutheran mother, all 5 of us kids went to public schools from k-12. No ethnic component to our faith practice. We went to church on Good Friday (not Mom though), usually just for the service where you venerate the cross 'Mass of Pre-Sanctified' I am learning from you. Sometimes Stations of the Cross and/or and I remember something called 'The Seven Last Words' also we did once or twice. Then we went to church on Easter of course. That's it. We didn't do anything special at home except of course observe abstinence and fast on Good Friday.
My grade school years were 1959 to 1967 and high school 1967 to 1971. All Catholic schools, and I never heard the word Triduum in all that time. Lent went from Ash Wednesday through Holy Saturday, omitting Sundays, which is indeed 40 days.
The town I lived in from 1955 to 1965 was made up primaries of engineers who had been transferred there by their employers. The Catholic Church was built by the parishioners there, and it was a mission parish until 1961. I don't remember if we had Holy Thursday Mass before then. We had Good Friday services, no Easter Vigil that I ever went to, and we went to Easter Mass after seeing our Easter candy. There was still a two or three hour fast before receiving Communion, so we had to wait until after that to eat it.
The biggest change in Holy Week came when the 1962, pre-Vatican II liturgical changes happened. The Passion was no longer read as the Gospel for the fifth Sunday of Lent and was moved to Palm Sunday. I remember the last time it was read on what was then called Passion Sunday, I walked out of church thinking what I was doing for Lent was so small in comparison with what Jesus had done for me, and I was much more serious about Lenten discipline those last two weeks.
And of course I looked forward to Palm Sunday with the short Gospel and the procession around the church grounds waving the palms. I would like to see those two things changed back to what they were.
Back in those days if one wanted to become Catholic one went to a local priest and he decided when one knew enough about the faith to be admitted. There was no special day where everyone who was joining for the year entered the Church. And no regular classes either.