Tuesday 27 March -- 5:30pm: SCHOLA PRACTICE WITH ROXANNE
- Please make every effort to be here. This will be our big practice for the week and for the new Mass Setting for the next few months.
Wednesday 28 March -- 6:00pm: JOINT CHOIRS' PRACTICE
- NOTE THE CHANGE IN TIME FROM 6:30 TO 6PM. Easter Vigil will be first on the agenda. Once that's done, we will leave the 9am choir to practice their material for Holy Thursday and Easter Sunday.
- PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE make every effort to be here if you are going to be at Easter Vigil!
Friday 30 March
- 3pm Passion of Good Friday [LINK].
- Be sure to have the Stabat Mater in addition to the packet I gave you.
Saturday 31 March
- 8pm Easter Vigil: THE THINGS WE WILL NEED TO PRACTICE INCLUDE:
- Gloria by Tony Alonso
- Vidi Aqaum
- Christ the Lord is Risen Today
- Communion Antiphon: Pascha Nostrum
- O Sons and Daughters
- Jesus Christ is Risen Today
Sunday 01 April (music sheet order) *** New Mass Setting ***
- Vidi Aquam
- Mass Propers: EASTER SUNDAY [LINK]
- Kyrie I Lux et Origo
- Gloria I Lux et Origo
- Credo III
- HYMN: O Filii et Filiae [LINK]
- Sanctus I Lux et Origo
- Agnus Dei I Lux et Origo
- Antiphona ad S. Michaelem Archangelem
Sunday 08 April
- This will be easy: Keep your Easter Sunday music for Divine Mercy Sunday. Since it's also the Octave of Easter, everything will be the same, except that in the hymn we will chant the verses appropriate to that Sunday.
Regarding the weekdays within the Octave of Easter at 6:30am Mass. Since each day of an Octave is a feast-day, last year those of us at daily Mass chanted the antiphons and sang a hymn. I have spoken with Fr. Blake, and for various reasons we are not going to do so this year. Our next daily Mass feast day will therefore be Monday 09 April, the Feast of the Annunciation, normally 25 March but displaced this year by Palm Sunday.
Regarding Divine Mercy Sunday, there will be a Divine Mercy Service at 3pm. We are in the process of finalizing what it will entail, but likely will include a very simple English chant of the Divine Mercy Chaplet.
Finally, as a reminder, I have permission from Fr. Blake to chant the Vigil of Holy Saturday as a simple, unofficial, not formally announced Tenebrae Service in the Basilica at 8pm on the evening of Good Friday. If I am by myself, that is fine, but I would really prefer not to be by myself. I'm hoping that if we have a decent, even if small, turnout of people that we can get this on the schedule for next year. To quote (really, "adapt") from Wikipedia:
Tenebrae – Latin for “darkness” or “shadows” – is a Christian religious service celebrated during Holy Week within Western Christianity, on the evening before or in the early morning of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and/or Holy Saturday. Tenebrae is distinctive for its gradual extinguishing of candles while a series of readings and psalms are chanted or recited.
The Roman rite of Tenebrae, originally associated with the celebration of various canonical hours of the Divine Office, most typically Matins and Lauds (anticipated), was widely observed in the Catholic Church, especially in monasteries, but with a high attendance by the laity, until liturgical reforms in the second half of the 20th century suppressed the practice. It has begun to reappear in recent years, however, as an extra-liturgical devotional service.
The gradual extinguishing of candles symbolizes the gathering darkness of sin which cannot, ultimately, overcome the Light of Christ. The strepitus or “great noise” near the end simulates the earthquake at the crucifixion, the closing of the tomb, and the tumultuous clash of God with Satan.
Holy Saturday is, in my opinion, the "overlooked" day of the Easter Triduum -- between Good Friday's Crucifixion and Death of Our Lord and Easter Sunday's Resurrection (beginning liturgically, of course, at sundown on Saturday). But the time in between is important as well, when, as the Apostles' Creed says, "[Jesus] descended into Hell," and as 1 Peter 4: 6 puts it, "[he] preached [the Gospel] also to the dead." It is called the "Harrowing of Hell," an ancient homily on which will be the climax of Tenebrae.
