Confessions on Good Friday and Holy Saturday
There is a rubric in the 1970 Missal at the beginning of the texts for Good Friday which reads:
"According to the Church's ancient tradition, the sacraments are not celebrated today or tomorrow."(The next rubric gives an exception for Viaticum.) This has led some priests to think that confessions should not be heard on Good Friday or Holy Saturday. In fact, as everybody knows, Pope John Paul regularly did a stint in the confessional in St Peter's on Good Friday.
The 2000 Editio Typica Tertia of the missal has unambiguously clarified the matter. The rubric now reads:
Hac et sequenti die, Ecclesia, ex antiquissima traditione, sacramenta, praeter Paenitentiae et Infirmorum Unctionis penitus non celebrat.So there is no reason at all why we should not have confessions on Good Friday and Holy Saturday. In fact, it is obviously an important time to make the sacrament available.
"According to the Church's ancient tradition, the sacraments are not celebrated at all today or tomorrow - except for Penance and Anointing the Sick."
9 comments:
Thank you for the clarification. I noticed in a friend's newsletter a statement of no confessions on Holy Saturday and thought it odd. Thank fully I live in a parish that not only has confessions but puts on extra time slots on Good Friday and Holy Saturday. (The Parish alluded to above without confessions also practices general absolution and washed the feet of women yesterday.....what pastoral confusion - to totally misrepresent the events of the last supper by washing women's feet and then fail to provide opportunity for the great sacrament of confession.) I write this as a woman who feels she has a right to the truth and not some foolish pandering to a misplaced sense of equality. Is it just me or do priests who mislead their flock in such ways also seem to cultivate a "great humility"? The last phrase is sarcastic - that self aware 'humilty'
Confessions are heard all day on Holy Saturday, at The Birmingham Oratory.
...and it is when people come.
We have 7 priests who hear Confessions Friday and Saturday, thankfully.
That's wonderful. Oh what we could do here if we had seven priests for Mass and confessions!
One oddity of that is that it seems to suggest that we should not be receiving communion on Good Friday.
I'm not sure that celebrating the sacraments could be narrowly interpreted to only exclude performing the sacrifice of the mass, surely a service of communion (which is effectively what the end of the Good Friday service) is a, sombre, Celebration of the Blessed Sacrament
??
I myself came back to the Church by going to Confession in the evening on Holy Saturday 1964, so this situation just kills me, as the two parishes we frequently attend will not be offering Confessions tomorrow. It seems to me that the sacrament ought to be available on that day of all days of the year. It is THE day for making the passage from slavery to freedom.
See: "Congregation for Divine Worship affirms Confession during Triduum" http://tinyurl.com/yrupja
How grateful I am that there was a priest sitting in that confessional during the evening twilight, sitting there and waiting for me as I expected he would be. For which priest and confession, may you be blessed forever, Lord Jesus Christ!
Lee - Many thanks for that link. It's nice to know that the CDW also consider's the Holy Father's example an eloquent argument.
Paul - in fact, before the reform of Holy Week in 1957, only the priest received Holy Communion on Good Friday.
I went to a Tridentine Triduum and no-one there saw any reason why there shouldn't be confessions on Good Friday. In fact the queue was hours long.
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