The Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields is an Episcopal parish in the Diocese of Pennsylvania that is centered on the worship of God, the ministry of all baptized persons, and the call to be agents of Christ’s love in the world.
Contact
Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields
8000 St. Martin’s Lane
Philadelphia, PA 19118
215.247.7466

The Reverend Robert L. Tate, Rector

Triduum, Part I

In the early centuries of the Christian Church, there was no sense of separate commemorations for the death and resurrection of Jesus. The Christian Passover, or pascha, was considered a single observance of Christ’s victory through death and rising to life again and of the Christian’s death and rebirth through baptism. Thus, the events of the Triduum (the three days from sundown Maundy Thursday through Easter) were viewed as one event. To assist in preparing for the Triduum, Rubrics Expanded over the next several weeks will focus on the liturgies of those days.

The custom of celebrating the Eucharist on Maundy Thursday began in the late fourth century; prior to then it was customary not to celebrate the Eucharist within the week preceding the Easter Vigil. The practice of an evening celebration spread throughout the church under the name ‘Cena Domini’ (the Supper of the Lord); its time of day was a commemoration of Jesus’ last supper with his disciples. By the sixth century, this service began to take the form we now find familiar: the epistle has always been Paul’s account of the institution of the Eucharist, the gospel was John’s account of Jesus washing the feet of the disciples, followed by foot washing and Eucharist.

As early as the seventh century, the reading from John’s Gospel and the ceremonial reenactment of it had been given the name Maundy Thursday. ‘Maundy’ derives from the Latin ‘mandatum’: the Lord’s commandment to ‘love one another even as I have loved you.’ Throughout the Middle Ages and beyond, it became traditional for abbots to wash the feet of monks and for kings to wash the feet of peasants. Other traditions connected to Maundy Thursday emerged over time: it became a day for penitents to be reconciled with the community; altars were stripped and washed (in the Gallican tradition this was done on Good Friday, in Rome it was done on Thursday); and the chrism (oil) was blessed.

The first Prayer Book in 1549 retained only the Lord’s Supper as a Maundy Thursday practice, and the day was referred to simply as the ‘Thursday before Easter’. With no provision for the ceremonial washing of feet, the gospel reading was changed to Luke’s passion narrative. (Even with no provision for ‘keeping the maundy’, the custom of the ‘royal maundy’ lived on well into the 18th century: in 1560, Queen Elizabeth kept her maundy in Westminster by washing the feet of twenty poor women.) Little was changed in the service until the present Prayer Book. The phrase ‘commonly called Maundy Thursday’ was added to the title in 1928, and the traditional gospel for the day (John 13.1-15) was provided as an alternative to the reading from Luke.

The 1979 Book of Common Prayer gives the service its proper title of Maundy Thursday and restores the ceremony of the washing of feet as an option. In light of this, the reading from John’s gospel is restored to its prior position as the preferred gospel. Several of the anthems provided for use during the foot washing ceremony date back to the mediaeval rite. A rubric has been included, as well, that it is to be from this service that consecrated elements are reserved if there is to be distribution of communion on Good Friday.

Children (and quite frequently adults, too) will often ask why Good Friday is called ‘good’ when the events of the day are so sad. While this topic is most appropriately taken up in a sermon, it bears remembering that it is through Christ’s death and resurrection that we are raised to new life in him. As one of the Good Friday anthems states: ‘because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.’

Similarly with Maundy Thursday, the first evidence of special rites for Good Friday emerge in the late fourth century in Jerusalem. At the place of Jesus’ crucifixion, there was a veneration of the supposedly true cross (actually held firmly by the bishop while deacons stood guard so devout worshippers could not take pieces of it!), followed by a service of psalms, lections, hymns, and prayers. Very early on, this service traditionally began at noon and lasted until three o’clock. By the ninth century the service had evolved to include lections, prayers, the solemn collects, the veneration of the cross, and a general communion from the reserved Sacrament (the celebration of the Eucharist having been forbidden on fast days).

The title ‘Good Friday’ first appears with the 1549 Prayer Book, which assumed that the service of the day would be the daily offices of Morning and Evening Prayer with very abbreviated forms of the solemn collects. It is our current Book of Common Prayer that restores the solemn collects and the veneration of the cross. The solemn collects are very ancient, portions dating back to the fourth and even third centuries. The anthems for the devotions before the cross are from the late mediaeval period. The current Prayer Book also revives the tradition of prohibiting the celebration of the Eucharist on Good Friday, with a rubric directing the administration of communion from the reserved Sacrament. Prior to this, despite the universal tradition of having no celebration of the Eucharist on Good Friday, there has been no prohibition in earlier editions of the Book of Common Prayer; thus, the Eucharist had been celebrated frequently in some Anglican churches on Good Friday until the 20th century.