Triduum at Blackfen

2012 04 05_0025
Photo credit: Mulier Fortis

We were blessed at Blackfen to have the assistance of Fr Simon Heans of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham who gamely agreed to be deacon for the Maundy Thursday so that we could have High Mass in the usus antiquior. He also assisted at Good Friday and the Easter Vigil, both in the novus ordo. The servers and MC for those services are all competent in both forms so we had a fair bit of mutual enrichment.

There were quite a few confessions during Holy Week, with the biggest queues being after the services on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. defénde nos in proélio has mentioned the Święcone - the blessing of food on Holy Saturday, a universal Catholic custom which has been preserved especially by the Polish. It has to be on Holy Saturday at about midday because that is when the Easter Vigil finished until it was changed in 1955. (For more information, see my post from last year.) We had a few more people joining in this year and I hope that this builds up. I'll have to see whether there is a popular Polish hymn that we could learn.

Thanks be to God for all the graces of the Triduum, for the indulgences gained, confessions made, and for three new Catholics in the parish.

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