Easter Triduum, Holy Triduum, or Paschal Triduum, or the Three Days, is the period of three days that begins with th eliturgy on the evening of Holy/Maundy Thursday, reaches its high point in the Easter Vigil, and closes with evening prayer on Easter Sunday. [Wikipedia]
Am continuing to make sacrifices of being in attendance at liturgies this Triduum. The length of time in gloriously large and well-attended parish Masses and such as today's Good Friday liturgy is more than what this pained, consecrated Catholic hermit can tolerate in the sitting. The lumbar spine has grown worse over time, to the point that I must cling to the wood of Christ's cross in a different manner--more literally uniting with His Divine and Holy Suffering.
And, as far as the world goes, and acts of charity, I've been requested to help out a family member in having their pet for two days, including an overnight, while they are away. He is a very good and laid-back dog named Johnny B. Good. [I've nicknamed him Lambie-pie as the breed is white with head shape reminding of a lamb's.] Considering this is a means of service and hopefully of building up relationship that went through rough patch not long ago, and recently being reminded that I can serve God through His created creatures, it seems an easy affirmative to do this hopefully, with loving intentions and prayerful love for all involved: good deed.
At this point, doing just about anything, requires a sense of crucifixion of body and in clinging to Christ on His Cross. So I'm praying for the joy of what lays beyond, of the salvation of souls--my soul, others souls--that is the promise of Christ and what last night's beginning of the Easter Triduum is all about when we place it in context of our imitation of Christ in our daily lives--no matter how seemingly simple or seemingly, humanly pathetic, our applications.
I also have been asked to color eggs and get some candy to put into plastic eggs, and to hide them for an Easter morning egg hunt here at Solus Deus hermitage. It is but for one adolescent; yet the good in hosting the parents and child is yet another way of serving God through them. All lies within my intentions, my love of God and of others, and in my thoughts, feelings and spirit along with as ever, the pain in this cumbrously suffering physical body.
So we engage the body, mind, heart, and spirit to love God above all things and others as ourselves. This can be done in something as seemingly temporal as candy, plastic eggs, God's creatures the chickens who lay eggs that will be cooked, dyed, and later eaten, and in discarding concerns of this hermitage in on-going disarray as books and other items remain stacked about the floors, boxes still unpacked, sorting not nearly completed for donations to St. Vincent's Thrift shop and the rummage sale the teens at the parish are putting on. (They are raising money for a summer mission trip.)
The dog sitting will include my sorrow at having to keep the dog in his kennel, as he is known to chew anything laying about. Thankfully, he loves to sleep; but I will take him for walks which is good for the dog and very good for this hermit who has to get the bone density up as it is way too low for the surgeon's needs. Bone will be needed to re-do the spinal fusion with rods, once the mess of the now-age-old mess of back surgery, rods, and fusion, of nearly 32 years ago.
Right now, just getting up off the floor is immensely challenging. I am reminded of, in comparison to what Jesus went through 2019 years ago. He was being flogged, ridiculed, mocked, beaten, clothed in purple cloak and crown of thorns pressed into his skin and skull. He surely was beaten to a point of collapsing on the stone floor of the place of his imprisonment--unable to get up without tremendous effort and even more effort to walk, carrying and dragging a heavy cross.
But that consideration and contemplation will come later. I'm focusing on the morning, for now.
The Easter Triduum is intense. I find it so intense as to have trouble getting through the Gospel selection for this Good Friday. Yet I am ashamed. I asked myself, "How dare I not be able to read through, word by word, just the description in brief, of the immensity of what Jesus endured for the sake of my weak and haphazard, selfish personhood--my very soul? How can I be like this--so ineptly human when Jesus is saving me every present moment?
In His mercy, even so, He understands and loves me still and will continue throughout yet another Triduum He and I and all of us experience in our on-going lives. He does so out of eternal love for us.
Thanks be to His Real Presence: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! I love you with my imperfect love! Help me to love God in Himself, in His Perfect Love!
God bless His Real Presence in us!
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