From Around the Year With the Trapp Family
On Good Friday Holy Mother Church gives her children a beautiful opportunity for a profession of faith: the adoration of the cross. Behind the priests and altar boys follows the whole congregation.
We remove our shoes when we go to adore the cross. Three times we prostrate ourselves as we come closer, until we finally bend over and kiss the feet of the crucified.
As we, the church choir, follow right behind the priest, we sing during the rest of the adoration. Our songs are the heartrendingly moving “Crux fidelis” by King John of Portugal, and Eberlin’s “Tenebrae factae sunt,” of such haunting beauty.
When the adoration of the cross is finished, the candles on the altar are lighted, the cross is most reverently taken up from the floor and placed on the altar, and a procession forms to get the Blessed Sacrament from the “Altar of Repose.”
During this procession the hymn “Vexilla Regis” is sung. And then follows a ceremony that is not a real Mass, although it is called the “Mass of the Pre-Sanctified.”
The priest consumes the Host that was consecrated the day before. On the anniversary of Our Lord’s death–the bloody sacrifice–the Church does not celebrate the symbol of the unbloody sacrifice.
After the official service is finished, the altar is stripped again. The tabernacle is left open, no vigil light burns in the sanctuary. But in front of the empty tabernacle lies the crucifix on the steps of the altar, and the people come all during the day for adoration.
In Austria another custom was added.
At the end of the official service the priest would carry the Blessed Sacrament in a monstrance, covered with a transparent veil, and expose it on the side altar, where a replica of the Holy Sepulchre had been set up with more or less historical accuracy, with more or less taste, but always with the best of will.
Like the crèche around Christmas time, so the Holy Sepulchre on Good Friday would be an object of pride for every parish, one parish trying to outdo the other.
The people in Salzburg used to go around at Christmas time and in Holy Week to visit the Christ Child’s crib and the Holy Sepulchre in all thirty-five churches of the town, comparing and criticizing.
There would be literally hundreds of vigil lights surrounding the Body of Christ in the tomb of rock, which was almost hidden beneath masses of flowers.
There would be a guard of honor, not only of the soldiers, but also of firemen in uniform and of war veterans with picturesque plumed hats.
I still remember the atmosphere of holy awe stealing over my little heart when as a child I would make the rounds of churches. There in the Holy Sepulchre He would rest now, watched over by His faithful until Holy Saturday afternoon.
Here in America we have found another lovely custom: people going from church to church not on Good Friday but on Holy Thursday.
On that day, the churches are decorated with a profusion of flowers, as a sign of love and gratitude for the Holy Eucharist. The contrast with the bare churches the day after, on Good Friday, is all the more striking and gives a tremendous feeling of desolation.
Good Friday is a very quiet day with us.
There is little to do in the kitchen, since fasting is observed rigorously on this day.
We have no breakfast, and all that is served for lunch, on a bare table without tablecloth, is one pot of thick soup, “Einbrennsuppe,” which everyone eats standing up in silence. There is little noise around the house.
Talking is restricted to the bare essentials, as it would be if a dearly beloved was lying dead in the house.
As we are so privileged as to have a chapel in our house, we use the day when the holy house of God is empty and desolate to clean and polish all the sacred vessels and chalices and the ciborium, the monstrance, candlesticks, and censer.
The vigil light before the picture of the Blessed Mother in the living room is also extinguished, because on Good Friday Christ, the Light of the World, is dead.
From twelve until three, the hours of Our Lord’s agony on the cross, all activity stops. We sit together in the empty chapel before the cross and spend these hours in prayer, meditation, and spiritual reading. From time to time we rise and sing one or the other of the beautiful Lenten hymns and motets.
On Holy Saturday, a new stir of activity starts in the kitchen. Eggs are boiled in different pots containing various dyes–blue, green, purple, yellow, and red.
Every member of the household who wants to participate in this art takes some eggs to his or her room, after they have dried, to work on them in secret.
One takes some muriatic acid with which she etches the most intriguing patterns out of the colored foundation. It is quite popular in our house to etch the first line of Easter songs–staves, notes, and words.
Our cleverest artist sits with paint and brush, and under her fingers appear pictures of an Easter lamb, or of Our Risen Savior Himself, or of the Blessed Mother, or of the different patron saints of the family. Sometimes they turn out to be little gems.
Others fasten dried ferns or little maple leaves or other herbs around the eggs before they are boiled in dye. When these leaves are finally taken off, the shape of the flowers and herbs remains white, while the rest of the egg is colored. This is easily done and looks very pretty.
These eggs first appear on trays and in bowls on Easter Sunday morning at the foot of the altar for the solemn blessing of the food. Afterwards they will be distributed at the solemn Easter breakfast.
For those mothers who cannot make the Triduum services because of little children and duties at home, here are a few things to get your creative mind going…
The Year & Our Children: Catholic Family Celebrations for Every Season
For the hours spent at home by those who cannot get to the rites of Good Friday, it is good to plan special activities in order to help all keep a spirit of recollection. With many little children, silence is almost impossible, but as they grow older, they begin to cooperate.
Friends of ours have had their children make the garden of Joseph of Arimathea outdoors, separately, on Good Friday. They used whatever they could find at hand – stones, mosses, sticks, acorns.
(My interjection – We talked about a Resurrection Garden today and here is a Pinterest page with many interesting ideas for one.)
A drawing project will keep Peter occupied. Having said the Stations of the Cross during Lent, he applies himself seriously to illustrating them.
(Follow the link here for the coloring pages.)
Rereading the passages about the Passion will keep another child busy, read out of Scripture or from a favorite life of Christ.
(Here is a good translation for the Passion.)
For a boy who is fidgety and must be active, a solitary chore that is a penance is better: perhaps cleaning the goat stalls or spreading hay and manure from the goose’s pen on the garden.
I know many mothers who, because they must be at home with their babies during this time, save a task that especially tries them.
Each has his or her way of best spending the hours of Good Friday, but it will work out most successfully if the program for the day is well planned.
Perhaps one of the tasks for several of the children can be copying Psalm 21 to be used at night prayers this evening. Our Lord quoted the first line of it from the Cross. It prophesied Christ’s Passion and death and our salvation: “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me….”
This was the great prayer of our Lord on the Cross. The family may divide itself and read the lines alternately.
Prayer from Divine Intimacy…
“O Christ, Son of God, as I contemplate the great sufferings You endured for us on the Cross, I hear You saying to my soul: ‘It is not in jest that I have loved you!’
These words open my eyes, and I see clearly all that Your love has made You do for me. I see that You suffered during your life and death, O Man-God, suffered because of that profound, ineffable love. No, O Lord, it was not in jest that You loved me, but Your love is perfect and real.
In myself, I see the opposite, for my love is lukewarm and untrue, and this grieves me very much.
O Master, You did not love me in jest; I, a sinner, on the contrary, have never loved You except imperfectly. I have never wanted to hear about the sufferings You endured on the cross, and thus I have served You carelessly and unfaithfully.
Your love, O my God, arouses in me an ardent desire to avoid anything that might offend You, to embrace the grief and contempt that You bore, to keep continually in mind Your Passion and Death, in which our true salvation and our life are found.
O Lord, Master, and Eternal Physician, You freely offer us Your blood as the cure for our souls, and although You paid for it with Your Passion and Death on the Cross, it cost me nothing, save only the willingness to receive it.
When I ask for it, You give it to me immediately and heal all my infirmities.
My God, since you agreed to free me and to heal me on the one condition that I show You, with tears of sorrow, my faults and weaknesses; since, O Lord, my soul is sick, I bring to you all my sins and misfortunes.
There is no sin, no weakness of soul or mind for which You do not have an adequate remedy, purchased by your death.
All my salvation and joy are in you, O Crucified Christ, and in whatever state I happen to be, I shall never take my eyes away from Your Cross.” (St. Angela of Foligno)
“The very presence of a woman who knows how to combine an enlightened piety with mildness, tact, and thoughtful sympathy, is a constant sermon; she speaks by her very silence, she instills convictions without argument, she attracts souls without wounding susceptibilities; and both in her own house and in her dealings with men and things, which must necessarily be often rude and painful, she plays the part of the soft cotton wool we put between precious but fragile vases to prevent their mutually injuring each other.” – Monseigneur Landriot, Archbishop of Rheims, 1872 -Loreto Publications
Fulton Sheen’s Last Words on Christ’s passion…
Coloring pages for Holy Week…
Make a statement with this lovely and graceful “MOther of God” handcrafted apron….fully lined….made with care. Aprons tell a beautiful story…..a story of love and sacrifice….of baking bread and mopping floors, of planting seeds and household chores. Sadly, many women have tossed the aprons aside and donned their business attire. Wear your apron with joy….it is a symbol of Femininity….”Finer” Femininity! 🌺 💗
Available here.
If you have trouble reading saint books and find the story lines boring, you need to try these!
We love these books and have had them on our book shelves for years! They are very well-written and make the saints come alive!
Louis de Wohl has the amazing capacity to take historic Catholic figures and breathe life into them by creating a novel around what their life might have been like.
They are meant for high school and adult level. Some of the books could have adult content, for instance, St. Augustine’s life before conversion. Parents may want to read them first.
Louis de Wohl Historical Religious Novels
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A blest Good Friday to you.🪦😢