Triduum and Easter Preparations

We left behind the Lenten season last night, moving into the most solemn season of the Church year: the Holy Triduum. Was anyone else able to make it to a Tenebrae service? Hearing the Lamentations of Jeremiah sung and experiencing the sudden, dark silence really drives home for me the message of "This is real; pay attention, be alert, immerse yourself in these last few days of prayer and penance, or you won't be ready for the Resurrection!" Unfortunately, I couldn't find any parishes in our diocese holding a Tenebrae service this Lent. Hopefully next year!

We will be joining the university parish for Holy Thursday and Good Friday this year, because they have the earliest liturgies and Matt can just walk over from his office after work. Trying to bundle a potentially angry Little Bear into the car at bedtime for an hour round trip plus mass? Not a good idea.

There is still so much to do! So many things to get in the way of spending the next few days focusing on the Passion. Easter clothes to find, wash, iron... House to clean... Food to prepare...hot cross buns and Easter bread for us, something for the college students' dinner tonight, vegetables (and a dessert??) to bring to my parents' house... And just because I need to be even more crazy, we will be dying eggs.

Growing up, every year as far back as I can remember, we dyed eggs on Holy Saturday. And every year, my mother marveled that she hadn't followed through on the previous year's resolution to do it earlier in the week. Over the years some of my siblings began making pysanki, the ornate Ukrainian dyed eggs, over the course of Lent, but everyone still participated in the Holy Saturday ritual of writing on hard boiled eggs with white wax and dunking them in mugs of dye.

Last year, six months pregnant with Little Bear, I remarked to Matt that next year we would be dying eggs ourselves, and that I was going to try to learn from my mother and have them done *before* Holy Saturday. He looked at me blankly, and I discovered, to my shock and horror (pregnant women are allowed to be melodramatic), that he has never once dyed Easter eggs. He wasn't opposed, necessarily; he just hadn't, and didn't see a reason to do it.

"But... eggs! And symbols! And life! And... prettiness!"

So this year, we will be dying Easter eggs. And we will be dying them on Holy Saturday, so that Matt can join us.

Have a blessed, crazy Triduum.