Holy Triduum Commemorations at Home During COVID-19 Self-Quarentine Advice

For those of us who love our faith and love to worship together, these days amid the COVID-19 pandemic make it difficult if not impossible to get out and mingle when we are advised to stay home, for the sake and love of others, even ourselves. How are we with obedience? We can get into an ego-driven power struggle, tempting God, because we believe in God, that nothing bad will happen to us. We do know, that even though we believe in God and deliberately walk in front of a moving 18-wheel truck coming towards us fast, praying all the while that God will save us, if we do not move, we will get hit and possibly die. That will have nothing to do with our belief in God. It will have to do with our lack of God-given common sense. COVID-19 is this fast moving truck seeking to destroy everyone in its path. Please do not think this truck will not hit you because you believe in God. Bad things do happen to good people.

During the holiest of weeks of the year, starting Holy Thursday evening this week, here are some alternative Holy Week suggestions. This is also known as the Holy Triduum. Here are some celebration ideas we can adopt for out at home observances, for those of us who wish to follow the directions of the medical communities and civic leaders, for the public safety for all.

Famous art displays will be presented at the end of this post. You can use them as you wish. If you use the beautiful picture where John is laying on the breast of Jesus, please note the image credit belonging to Gregory A. Shemitz. You can decide what, how and when you might like to put together a prayer service, memorial and/or Easter celebration in your home with your family. If we make a plan now, it will not catch us unprepared.

With God, there is no time and space. God is infinite. It is for our benefit that we use time, hours, days, weeks, and years. Our priests, bishops and Pope Francis will all be having Holy Triduum celebrations on television we can all watch. By our hearts desire, which God can read and know, we can be mentally present at those moments, even though we may not be physically present.

Some priests, like those at St. Anne’s Shrine, at St. Anne-St. Patrick’s Church in Sturbridge (Fiskdale), Massachusetts, have had the beautiful forethought to send all their parishioners the readings and celebrations set for Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday Vigil, and Easter Sunday services. I will also include them here below. The links are PDFs.

Private Masses for Holy Monday to Holy Wednesday will be at 8:15 AM at St. Anne Church. They will be live streamed on the St. Anne/St. Patrick Parish Facebook page.

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On this Thursday night, we can share Bible readings with our family, each taking parts reading the Passion of our Lord. It can be as simple and humble as using our kitchen tables, or as grand as moving the living room around, just to make it special. The kids can make posters. It can be inside or outside, depending on your imagination, landscape and weather conditions.

For Holy Thursday (Maundy Thursday) another idea could be to get a wash basin or bucket, water and a big bath towel so your family could re-enact Jesus washing the feet of his apostles. We are the modern day apostles of our Lord and Savior. He stooped to wash the feet of his apostles to show them that he came to serve. He told us to do the same thing. We could follow His humble example.

On Friday, maybe even at 3 p.m., might there be 14 trees, or 14 rocks or other landmarks around your yard that might make a perfect substitute for the Stations of the Cross? Or perhaps there might be a fence around your yard that could have the 14 markers for each of the fourteen stations of the cross. Or the family could take turns simply walking around the block reading each station, praying one Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be prayer after each station.

Perhaps we have a candle-light service in our living room, or use the small lights from our cell phones in a darkened room, or flash lights to begin the Saturday Night Vigil on this coming Saturday night. Perhaps you could print out the pictures in this post to decorate your homes, changing them for each service you do, or keep them all up together. Pictures are a wonderful way to teach our children, especially the young ones who may not yet grasp all their deeper meanings.

On Easter Sunday, we can light our candles, or keep all the lights on in the house all day in place of the big Paschal Candle in church. Just a thought. Of course the children all love the Easter candy, but if we could keep the reason why we celebrate Easter, not the just the Easter bunny and celebrating spring as the pagans also do, but keep the attention for just a bit longer on Jesus who came to live and die and rose again to new life so that we can all experience that new life with Him as well, we will have done a very good thing.

Now for the art display:

 

 

 

God Bless