Dear Fellow Parishioners,

This weekend we celebrate “Laetare Sunday,” which means, “Rejoice.” It is a close relative to the Third Sunday of Advent, known as “Gaudete Sunday,” which means roughly the same. They both come after the mid-point of a penitential season, and may be celebrated with rose-colored vestments, the only two Sundays when that color may be used. Both are turning points on the way to the two greatest Christian feasts, Christmas and Easter. From now through the end of Lent, there is a distinct shift in the emphasis of the prayers of the Mass, from penitence to the anticipated glories of Easter.

When is Lent? Lent extends from Ash Wednesday to the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday night. (There is no morning Mass that day.) The time between the Mass on Holy Thursday night and the Easter Vigil is the Triduum (i.e., “three-dayer”), a distinct liturgical period of its own. At the Gloria of the Easter Vigil Mass, the bells are rung for the first time since Holy Thursday, and the Easter season begins. Also, the “Alleluia” is said for the first time since the beginning of Lent. The clacker (a hand-held device with a wooden hammer attached) may take the place of the sanctuary bells for all, or part, of Lent. The liturgical name for it is “crotalus”(Greek “krotalon,” i.e., “rattle,” as a result, “crotalus” is the name for a genus of rattlesnakes.) At SV, we use it only on Holy Thursday night.

Are Sundays considered days off Lent? They certainly “count” liturgically, as the use of violet vestments, omission of the Gloria and Alleluia, etc. continue all through Lent. The only Lenten practices required by the Church are fasting and abstinence from meat on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, and abstinence on the Fridays of Lent. Anything beyond that is purely voluntary, such as giving up candy, video games, whatever. And if you want to take Sundays off, that’s OK too. More next week.

Holy Water. In the past, some parishes removed holy water from the fonts at the entry of the church in order to signify the dryness of the Lenten desert entered into by Jesus himself. While there is some symbolic logic to this, the current liturgical guidelines provide for removal of the holy water only between Holy Thursday night and the Easter Vigil. The covering of religious images is to begin no earlier than the Fifth Sunday of Lent. Good Friday and Holy Saturday are the only two days of the year when Mass is not celebrated at all. According to most ancient tradition, all non-essential liturgy and activity ceases, including much of the Divine Office, though Communion is provided at the Good Friday Passion Liturgy.  Until the mid-1950’s, usually only the priest received Communion on Good Friday. The reason was a devout practice all its own: the people united themselves to the priest’s Communion by making their own spiritual Communion, a traditional practice revived most recently during the COVID-19 church closures.

Blessings, Fr. Bill Donahue