Easter Triduum: A Challenge For the Curious

If you have never attended the Easter Triduum then this post is for you, especially if you don't know what it is. For those who have some interest in the historic liturgy or in Lutheranism, a once in a year opportunity is coming up that will help you understand both--especially if you come from a denomination that does not have the historic liturgy (if you don't know what the historic liturgy is then this probably includes you). Most Christians have some understanding of Good Friday and Easter. Good Friday is the day when Jesus was crucified and Easter is the day that Jesus rose from the dead. The Easter Triduum is a three-part service that extends from Thursday through Saturday. If you put the pieces together it is a structured to be one long service. On Thursday evening there is a Maundy Thursday service where we commemorate the Last Supper. The altar is stripped bare as we remember Jesus being taken away by the Roman soldiers. On Good Friday there is a service at noon (the time of the crucifixion) and another in the evening (when we remember His burial). The final part of the service takes place on Saturday evening which leads to the first celebration of the resurrection. Saturday service originally lasted all night until sunrise but in most cases today it is about 2 hours long. I suggest that the curious attend the Easter Triduum and then visit their own church for Easter Sunday. In a very dramatic way you will see the difference between historic Lutheranism and your current church and the difference between liturgical and non-liturgical worship. Please consult this list for a liturgical Lutheran church near you.

Antipas

Today, we commemorate Saint Antipas. According to Wikipedia:

Saint Antipas is referred to in the Book of Revelation (Revelation 2:13) as the "faithful martyr" of Pergamon, "where Satan dwells". According to Christian tradition, John the Apostle ordained Antipas as bishop of the Pergamon during the reign of the Roman emperor Domitian. The traditional account goes on to say Antipas was martyred in ca. 92 AD by burning in a brazen bull-shaped altar used for casting out demons worshiped by the local population.

Daniel, Prophet

Today we commemorate the Prophet Daniel. The Orthodox Church in America has this helpful summary of his life:

The Holy Prophet Daniel is the fourth of the major prophets.

In the years following 600 B.C. Jerusalem was conquered by the Babylonians, the Temple built by Solomon was destroyed, and many of the Israelite people were led away into the Babylonian Captivity. Among the captives were also the illustrious youths Daniel, Ananias, Azarias and Misael.

King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon ordered that they be instructed in the Chaldean language and wisdom, and dressed them in finery. Handsome children of princely lineage were often chosen to serve as pages in the palace. For three years, they would be fed from food from the king's table. After this they would be allowed to stand before his throne. Daniel was renamed Baltasar, Ananias was called Shadrach, Misael was called Mishach, and Azarias was known as Abednego. But they, cleaving to their faith, disdained the extravagance of court, refusing to defile themselves by eating from the king's table and drinking his wine. Instead, they lived on vegetables and water.

The Lord granted them wisdom, and to St Daniel the gift of insight and the interpretation of dreams. The holy Prophet Daniel preserved his faith in the one God and trusted in His almighty help. He surpassed all the Chaldean astrologers and sorcerers in his wisdom, and was made a confidant to King Nebuchadnezzar.

Once, Nebuchadnezzar had a strange dream which terrified him (Daniel 2:1-6). He summoned magicians, sorcerers, and Chaldeans before him to interpret the dream. When they asked him what he had dreamt, the king refused to tell them. He said, "If you do not make known to me the dream and its interpretation, you shall be torn limb from limb, and your houses shall be laid in ruins." The Babylonian wise men protested that no magician or sorcerer could be expected to do this. Only the gods could reveal the dream and its meaning, they told him.

The king ordered all the wise men of Babylon to be executed. When they sought Daniel and his companions to put them to death, Daniel asked that the king's sentence not be carried out. He said that he could tell the king what he dreamt, for it had been revealed to him in a vision. Daniel was brought before the king and was able to reveal not only the content of the dream, but also its prophetic significance. After this, the king elevated Daniel to be ruler of the whole province of Babylon, and the chief of all the wise men.

During these times King Nebuchadnezzar ordered a huge statue to be made in his likeness. It was decreed that when people heard the sound of trumpets and other instruments, they should fall down and worship the golden idol. Because they refused to do this, the three holy youths Ananias, Azarias and Misael were cast into a fiery furnace. The flames shot out over the furnace forty-nine cubits, felling the Chaldeans standing about, but the holy youths walked in the midst of the flames, offering prayer and psalmody to the Lord (Daniel 3:26-90).

The Angel of the Lord appeared in the furnace and cooled the flames, and the young men remained unharmed. This "Angel of Great Counsel," as he is called in iconography, is identified with the Son of God (Daniel 3:25, Isaiah 9:6). In the first Canon for the Nativity of the Lord (Ode 5), the Church sings: "Thou hast sent us Thine Angel of Great Counsel." The emperor, upon seeing this, commanded them to come out, and was converted to the true God.

Under King Baltasar, St Daniel interpreted a mysterious inscription ("Mane, Thekel, Phares"), which had appeared on the wall of the palace during a banquet (Daniel 5:1-31), foretelling the downfall of the Babylonian kingdom. Under the Persian emperor Darius, St Daniel was slandered by his enemies, and was thrown into a den with hungry lions, but they did not touch him, and he was not harmed. The emperor Darius then rejoiced over Daniel and ordered people throughout his realm to worship the God of Daniel, "since He is the living and eternal God, and His Kingdom shall not be destroyed, and His dominion is forever" (Daniel 6:26).

The holy Prophet Daniel grieved deeply for his people, who then were undergoing righteous chastisement for a multitude of sins and offenses, for transgressing the laws of God, resulting in the grievous Babylonian Captivity and the destruction of Jerusalem: "My God, incline Thine ear and hearken; open Thine eyes and look upon our desolation and that of Thy city, in which Thy Name is spoken; for we do not make our supplication before Thee because of our own righteousness, but because of Thy great mercy" (Dan 9:18). Because of Daniel's righteous life and his prayers for the people's iniquity, the destiny of the nation of Israel and the fate of all the world was revealed to the holy prophet.

While interpreting the dream of King Nebuchadnezzar, the holy, glorious Prophet Daniel spoke of a great and final kingdom, the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ (Dan 2:44). The prophetic vision about the seventy weeks (Dan 9:24-27) speaks about the signs of the First and the Second Comings of the Lord Jesus Christ, and is connected with those events (Daniel 12:1-12).

St Daniel interceded for his people before King Cyrus, who esteemed him highly, and who decreed freedom for the Israelite people. Daniel himself and his fellows Ananias, Azarias and Misael, all survived into old age, but died in captivity. According to the testimony of St Cyril of Alexandria (June 9), Sts Ananias, Azarias and Misael were beheaded on orders of the Persian emperor Chambyses.

Mary Clopas, Sister of the Mother of God

Today we commemorate Mary Clopas, the sister or sister-in-law of Mary the Mother of God. John 19:25 says that she was among the women present at the crucifixion. According to some interpretations of the Biblical text she was also present at the tomb on Easter morning.

Dionysius of Corinth

Today, we commemorate Dionysius of Corinth. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia:

Bishop of Corinth about 170. The date is fixed by the fact that he wrote to Pope Soter (c. 168 to 176; Harnack gives 165-67 to 173-5). Eusebius in his Chronicle placed his "floruit" in the eleventh year of Marcus Aurelius (171). When Hegesippus was at Corinth in the time of Pope Anicetus, Primus was bishop (about 150-5), while Bacchyllus was Bishop of Corinth at the time of the Paschal controversy (about 190-8). Dionysius is only known to use through Eusebius, for St. Jerome (Illustrious Men 27) has used no other authority. Eusebius knew a collection of seven of the "Catholic Letters to the Churches" of Dionysius, together with a letter to him from Pinytus, Bishop of Cnossus, and a private letter of spiritual advice to a lady named Chrysophora, who had written to him.

Eusebius first mentions a letter to the Lacedaemonians, teaching orthodoxy, and enjoining peace and union. A second was to the Athenians, stirring up their faith exhorting them to live according to the Gospel, since they were not far from apostasy. Dionysius spoke of the recent martyrdom of their bishop, Publius (in the persecution of Marcus Aurelius), and says that Dionysius the Areopagite was the first Bishop of Athens. To the Nicomedians he wrote against Marcionism. Writing to Gortyna and the other dioceses of Crete, he praised the bishop, Philip, for his aversion to heresy. To the Church of Amastris in Pontus he wrote at the instance of Bacchylides and Elpistus (otherwise unknown), mentioning the bishop's name as Palmas; he spoke in this letter of marriage and continence, and recommended the charitable treatment of those who had fallen away into sin or heresy. Writing to the Cnossians, he recommended their bishop, Pinytus, not to lay the yoke of continence too heavily on the brethren, but to consider the weakness of most. Pinytus replied, after polite words, that he hoped Dionysius would send strong meat next time, that his people might not grow up on the milk of babes. This severe prelate is mentioned by Eusebius (IV, xxi) as an ecclesiastical writer, and the historian praises the tone of his letter.

But the most important letter is that to the Romans, the only one from which extracts have been preserved. Pope Soter had sent alms and a letter to the Corinthians:

For this has been your custom from the beginning, to do good to all the brethren in many ways, and to send alms to many Churches in different cities, now relieving the poverty of those who asked aid, now assisting the brethren in the mines by the alms you send, Romans keeping up the traditional custom of Romans, which your blessed bishop, Soter, has not only maintained, but has even increased, by affording to the brethren the abundance which he has supplied, and by comforting with blessed words the brethren who came to him, as a father his children.

Again:

You also by this instruction have mingled together the Romans and Corinthians who are the planting of Peter and Paul. For they both came to our Corinth and planted us, and taught alike; and alike going to Italy and teaching there, were martyred at the same time.

Again:

Today we have kept the holy Lord's day, on which we have read your letter, which we shall ever possess to read and to be admonished, even as the former one written to us through Clement.

The testimony to the generosity of the Roman Church is carried on by the witness of Dionysius of Alexandria in the third century; and Eusebius in the fourth declares that it was still seen in his own day in the great persecution. The witness to the martyrdom of Sts. Peter and Paul, kata ton auton kairon, is of first-rate importance, and so is the mention of the Epistle of Clement and the public reading of it. The letter of the pope was written "as a father to his children".

Dionysius's own letters were evidently much prized, for in the last extract he says that he wrote them by request, and that they have been falsified "by the apostles of the devil". No wonder, he adds, that the Scriptures are falsified by such persons.

Hegesippus

Today we commemorate Hegesippus. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia:

A writer of the second century, known to us almost exclusively from Eusebius, who tells us that he wrote in five books in the simplest style the true tradition of the Apostolic preaching. His work was entitled hypomnemata (Memoirs), and was written against the new heresies of the Gnostics and of Marcion. He appealed principally to tradition as embodied in the teaching which had been handed down in the Churches through the succession of bishops. St. Jerome was wrong in supposing him to have composed a history. He was clearly an orthodox Catholic and not a "Judaeo-Christian", though Eusebius says he showed that he was a convert from Judaism, for he quoted from the Hebrew, he was acquainted with the Gospel according to the Hebrews and with a Syriac Gospel, and he also cited unwritten traditions of the Jews. He seems to have belonged to some part of the East, possibly Palestine. He went on a journey to Corinth and Rome, in the course of which he met many bishops, and he heard from all the same doctrine. He says: "And the Church of the Corinthians remained in the true word until Primus was bishop in Corinth; I made their acquaintance in my journey to Rome, and remained with the Corinthians many days, in which we were refreshed with the true word. And when I was in Rome, I made a succession up to Anicetus, whose deacon was Eleutherus. And in each succession and in each city all is according to the ordinances of the law and the Prophets and the Lord" (Eusebius, IV, 22).

Lucas Cranach and Albrecht Dürer

Today we also commemorate Lucas Cranach and Albrecht Dürer. One of Lucas Cranach's paintings appears at the top of this blog. He is pictured in with the blood Christ landing on his head. Read the article at cyberbrethren.