by Audrey Novak Riley
The season of Lent ends with the beginning of the Maundy Thursday evening service. From ancient times, the penitents who received ashes at the beginning of Lent have been reconciled with God and the church on Maundy Thursday.
Even still today, our Maundy Thursday service opens with a ritual of confession and forgiveness. The refugees who had prayed together for God’s mercy on the ruined city of Rome rejoiced in that Thursday reconciliation so long ago, and the whole church rejoiced (and still rejoices) together in God’s forgiveness.
In the Good Friday service, we gather around the cross—the saving cross by which Christ won eternal life for us all. Egeria and the other pilgrims in Jerusalem gathered to pray before a piece of wood that tradition held to be a fragment of the True Cross. Still today, the church throughout the world gathers on Good Friday to pray before the wood of the cross, commemorating the death of the Lord— the death that conquered death forever.
The Saturday evening Easter Vigil service is a feast of word and sacrament, as we hear the scriptural history of God’s work of salvation, from creation to resurrection—and the story continues still, from the little village that Paul and Barnabas visited so long ago even up to our own place and time, with the sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion.
If you have ever participated in the services of the Triduum, you know how spiritually enriching they are. Prayerfully and mindfully participating in the church’s ancient and renewed services of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil will truly bring a new and deeper perspective on the joy of Easter Sunday morning.
If you haven’t done so in years past, why not make a Lenten resolution to attend those services this year? If your own congregation does not schedule these Triduum services, you might make a pilgrimage to another church that does. Perhaps the members of [your congregation or group] could attend together, sharing transportation. Wouldn’t that would make a wonderful conclusion to Lent!
Audrey Novak Riley is the former Director for Stewardship, Women of the ELCA. This was adapted from the resource, “Lent: Penitence, Pilgrimage, Preparation.”