Triduum and Rome

Dear Martin Saints community,

Nationwide, all Chesterton academies feature a senior year pilgrimage to Rome. The COVID pandemic created a little hiccup establishing this tradition at Martin Saints, but, to everyone's delight, last week we finally blessed our first pilgrims and sent them on their way. They are now on the ground for Holy Week and Easter in the Eternal City!

Here's how their pilgrimage began, with a blessing on Friday at the foot of the altar in school.

Here's how it's going, yesterday in Rome.

Our pilgrims are carrying a box of prayer intentions from the whole school community. For family and friends who are in need. For our three faculty families expecting new babies. For seniors making college choices. For our move to St. Titus. For more students and donors to grow our school. For our church, for our city, for our country, for our world.

We can't all go to Rome this time. But it is the same Lord meeting us in the Triduum this week. One of the glories of the Eucharist is how it is intensely local and cosmically universal at the same time. Truly, we are together around the same altar.

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday this week are the high point of the Church's year, the most sacred liturgies on our calendar. On Thursday night, we commemorate the institution of the Lord's Supper, with a special Eucharist and the washing of feet. On Friday, the only day of the year on which Mass is not celebrated, we behold and venerate the cross. On Saturday night, we light the Paschal fire, we sing the Exsultet, we baptize and initiate new Christians, and a sequence of readings traces the entire history of salvation.

Here's my main advice for how to get the most out of these days: just go. Let it wash over you. Track any details that catch your attention, but show up to wallow and bask in the overall goodness and beauty, the solemnity and the joy. The world knows nothing like this. This is not something you can stream online. If you have squirmy little kids, go anyway. Thursday's foot washing, Friday's cross kissing, and Saturday's fire - they make an impact on us all, but perhaps especially on children and the young at heart. Sit in front and let them see. If they fall asleep by the end of the night, that's ok. They were there. They saw. Grace washes over us in layers.

If you've had a beautiful Lent, these days are a fitting climax. If you haven't had the Lent you intended, these days are a unit, a second (or a third, or a fourth, or a 490th) chance to experience the Church's beauty and grace, to encounter our Lord in the Sacred Liturgy.

If you're looking for a church near you where you can visit, perhaps with one of the priests who helps out at Martin Saints, just shoot me an email, and I'll help you find a time and place.

Here's a beautiful interview with a bishop that explains what it's all about. Personally, I will always remember the Triduum of 2020, when we were cocooned at home in the first weeks of COVID. The pandemic was terrible in a thousand ways, but I also remember that time of slow living at home, the deep quiet of that Good Friday, an awareness of the Lord's presence in our suffering. I am looking for that stillness again this year.

School will be closed for the rest of this week, reopening on Thursday next week. Enjoy the gift of these quieter days and these beautiful liturgies. Let us pray for each other and our little school, whether we are here at home or on pilgrimage. Our school is young and humble, but we have great dignity, for we are members of a Body which is grand, invincible, and beautiful.

Pax Christi,
Deacon Chris

Ms. O’Donnell and Mr. Franz sent this view last night.