Triduum

One of the things I love about the great liturgical feasts is that they are the one time, as western Catholics, that we allow ourselves to screw it up.

I don't mean, of course, that the liturgies aren't beautiful -- nor that we should stop trying to make them beautiful. But the Triduum is one time that we are all doing things we're not accustomed to doing, and so we tend to do them like we would do them at home. We bump the chairs. We spill things. The altar servers aren't sure who's supposed to go get the candle or where it should be. By the end of the Vigil homily, even the priests are tired.

Thomas came with us to the Holy Thursday mass, and wanted to see the footwashing. We told him we could go home anytime, since it started at bedtime, but he'd been asking for the "When Jesus walked on earth and we could see him" (my "New Testament story" opener) stories all week and the foot washing was his favorite. He cruised through the bilingual liturgy of the word (not so good at the Vigil, but who can blame him there?) and, as soon as the guys started bringing the chairs, was riveted, too fascinated to even answer my "Do you like it?"

They bumped the chairs out onto the dais and had to mess around a little to get them all lined up properly. Then the people came out and fiddled their shoes and socks off. Our priest came out with his basin and the server brought the ewer. The deacon handed each person a towel. The water ran out about half way through the line and the server went to bring a new basin and ewer, then staggered under the full one until the seminarian hurried over to take it out of his hands. Father Paul continued to progress down the line and Thomas continued to hang his chin just over the edge of the frontmost pew on his tiptoes. People began to pull their shoes and socks on, and eventually Father Paul stood up and the parishioners went back to their pews. The ushers came forward to take the chairs away, and suddenly Thomas began to protest.

"Lots of people left! He needs to do ALL the people!"

Whispering wasn't correcting this misapprehension, and Thomas was exhausted, so I offered to take him home and explain what was going on. I had a burst of inspiration.

"Thomas, all the people need their feet washed, but Father Paul is done. Now it's your turn." Gee, aren't I cute, I think. A two-year-old's homily. But I had more effect than I expected.

When we got home, "Daddy! Daddy! I wanna wash your feet!" Matt, who was home with Juliana, blinked at us. "I wanna wash your feet!"

Thomas runs out of the room with a water bottle, filling it at the sink before running back to the kitchen. He reemerged dragging a dining chair -- boy, he really was paying attention! -- and had to be persuaded that the chair Matt was already sitting in would work fine.

He came in with his water bottle and his little dishpan and started to wash Matt's feet. Too bad he only put cold water in the bottle. Very cold water.

Sometimes the rituals are better if we allow ourselves to do them a little bit wrong. After all, this is the season when God broke into the world, through a great gash of wrong, to save it.