Tenebrae

Holy Week is difficult. It’s supposed to be. It’s the shortest season, and yet the season most charged with meaning. From Passion Sunday to Paschal morning, there’s a lot to do, and even more to take in.
Even more intense are the great three days, the Triduum, from Holy Thursday through the Great Vigil of Easter. Just as Holy Week amounts to a single, week-long season, the Triduum represents a single, three-day service.

All of this makes sense. The events we commemorate — the Lord’s Supper and washing of the disciples’ feet, the agony in Gethsemane, the betrayal and arrest, the trial and scourging, the crucifixion, the burial, the descent among the dead and the resurrection — are the foundation events for our faith. And the themes we encounter — sin and redemption, guilt and forgiveness, innocence and violence, good and evil, death and life — are what that faith is all about.

I like to think of the optional service of Tenebrae not as yet another service to add to all this. I think Tenebrae actually helps with Holy Week. It gives us just a little more to do, but it makes the whole thing more comprehensible. And many others who have joined me in the custom over the years agree. Tenebrae sets the tone, introduces the themes and adjusts the heart and the mind for the great events of the Passion.

Christ on the Cross by Diego Velázquez (1631-32)

It began as a distinctive way of doing the daily pre-dawn Offices of prayer in monasteries on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. During these services, a long passage from Lamentations was gradually read, various penitential Psalms chanted, and a candle-holder with 15 candles was gradually extinguished, signifying the apparent victory of darkness over light on Good Friday and Holy Saturday. Later each day, these themes were again expressed in sacraments and symbolic acts: footwashing, communion, veneration of the Cross, blessing of new fire, Baptism and Eucharist.

The current version is in some ways even better. Since people outside monasteries are not going to gather for three successive pre-dawn services — and because we want to emphasize the three distinct services of Holy Thursday, Good Friday and the Great Vigil — the three services have been gathered into a single, powerful service intended for Wednesday evening.

All you need to do it are a copy of the Book of Occasional Services (for the lessons, the various responses and directions), a Prayer Book (for the Psalms and Canticles), 15 candles (and something to hold them), and a group (there are nine lessons; a group of 12 or more seems perfect). Vestments, incense and the like can be added over time, but with Tenebrae the old modernist dictum “less is more” certainly applies. This service is very dense, rich, and powerful. It needs no elaboration.

All the ancient verbal elements are there — the acrostic readings from Lamentations, the antiphons and the Psalms — plus a mighty reading from St. Augustine’s Treatise on Psalms and the classic meditations from Hebrews on the Lordship of Christ.

Even more impressive are the nonverbal elements. There should be massive and deliberate use of silence for one thing: no entrance procession, no exit music, ample silence between readings. A loud noise will signify the startling victory to come in four days. And the gradual extinguishing of the lights, ending in total darkness, communicates to everyone the primal, and the real, nature of what Holy Week means.

Tenebrae takes its name from this aspect: it means “shadows” or “darkness.” That is a perfect title for a service that prepares us so well, in heart, mind, even in body, for the three days when light seemed to go out. When there was darkness at noon. When the first creative words of God, “Let there be light,” seemed to have been muted. When it seemed, for one moment of terror, that the darkness really might overwhelm the light.

I think of it as one powerful and thoughtful prelude to the most important three days in our Christian year — our high Holy Days that precede our festival of festivals. It takes a little planning and it definitely takes over Wednesday evening in Holy Week, but what it adds seems far more significant than what it takes.

Tenebrae may be found in the Book of Occasional Services, p.72 ff. Ideally it is also chanted, and a recent compilation by Fred Elwood, In the Shadow of Holy Week: the Office of Tenebrae (Church Publishing, 1996) provides an entrance-level musical setting, plus helpful background material and practical suggestions. (Thanks to David Hurd, Professor of Music at General Seminary, for this reference!)

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