How is Holy Week for Priests? Fr. Piterit Explains

Rev. John Piderit, S.J. outlines the Triduum and answers questions on what Holy Week is like from the sacerdotal side of things:

HOLY THURSDAY

There’s a mass that’s supposed to take place on Holy Thursday, but you can do it earlier and virtually all parishes do it earlier. It’s called the Chrism Mass. And the Chrism Mass always takes place at the Cathedral. It’s always done by the bishop or archbishop and the three oils, the Chrism, Oil of the Catechumen, and Oil of the Sick are all blessed there. It’s a mass that all the priests, at least all the diocesan priests, have to be at.

Now the reason why they will do it the week before is because there are so many things that the priests have to do during Holy Week itself, and typically after that mass, which is often held in the afternoon, the different priests who know each other from different classes when they were in seminary will go out to dinner together. It’s a celebration of priesthood.

First of all, most priests spend a lot of the time preparing for Holy Week, because there are a lot of people involved in it. The first part of the Holy Week, of course, is Palm Sunday, and there’s usually a procession with Palm Sunday and also the reading of the Passion. And that happens at all the masses, and usually they have three people for each of them and they have to set that up beforehand. The other thing that has to happen for all these masses is the training of the altar servers. All these services only happen once a year so you have to have special training for all the servers. I was at my home parish in New York this year and they had an unbelievably well trained group of servers.

In every parish, the training has to be done by someone, and if it’s not a lay person, then the priest or one of the priests has to do that. So that takes time. Usually what you’ll do is set up practice times every morning on Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and you meet with the servers. You may also meet with any of the lectors who are going to be reading during the service.

The priests, in my experience, put a lot of time into preparing for it. It sometimes can be a bit depressing if there are very few people that show up. That can be hard on the priests if they really spent a lot on that night. 

One of the things I point out to people, in fact, even in my class, is that a lot of people think the Church is very demanding on what things you have to do. But if you think about this and Holy Week—the three most important days of the year are Holy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil—not one of them is required. None of them are days of obligation. So it’s up to the individual to go and I mean it, they’re good on it; most people go.

GOOD FRIDAY

So there’s only one day of the year in which there is no mass: Good Friday. You can receive Communion, but there’s no Eucharistic Prayer. There is no mass. What you receive is the communion that’s saved from Holy Thursday.

 Good Friday begins with the prostration of the priests, and everyone kneeling down. Then there are the readings and the formal reading of the Gospel. Usually there are a couple of lay people involved in that. After that, they do the 10 intentions. Normally, you announce the group that you’re going to be praying for, then the priest says, “let us kneel”, they kneel down, and he says the prayer and you go on to the next one. After that, you have the procession with the cross, the veneration of the cross, and that begins in the back of the church. And again, the servers have to know what they’re doing on this because they accompany the priest up to the front.

Then, the people come to venerate the cross and it’s a very moving time. It usually takes a while—people don’t do it quickly. After that, the altar is dressed and they put the altar veil on it and then you begin with the Our Father and then quickly into communion. All in all, it lasts about an hour-and-a-half.

Really there’s only one priest who celebrates; all the other priests can be in the congregation, and I’ve been in places where they do it. They’re up on the altar, but they don’t do anything. They don’t do anything other than receive Communion, because it’s not a mass. So they don’t participate because it’s not necessary. 

It’s fairly exhausting by Easter Sunday afternoon, because they’ve gone through these things, and they’re very conscious of making everything go correctly, which is good. You want that.

EASTER VIGIL

The Easter Vigil is challenging because it depends on how many readings you do. When I was in Queens, we did all seven Old Testament readings and then the reading from Romans and then the Gospel. It was three hours and 15 minutes. For some people, that’s long. Many churches will try and do it as soon as they can, but the rule is that it cannot begin before sundown. So here on the East Coast, that would be around eight o’clock.

EASTER SUNDAY

Usually, many places will do a five o’clock mass in the afternoon and the pastor of the parish usually makes it his responsibility to do that so that he’s not holding up any of the other priests. The pastor will not get home that day for his family; it’ll probably be the next day or two that he goes home and visits with the family. Priests are tired by the end of it, but they’re also happy. They’re very happy if they get a good number of people showing up. That’s the important thing.

WHAT IS HOLY WEEK LIKE FOR PRIESTS SPIRITUALLY?

Well, I think most priests will tell you—they like speaking to other priests after it’s over about the parts that move them most. And I mean they’re always careful to praise the lay people who were involved in the thing and the choir and things—some of the choirs are excellent—but I would say that they especially like the Veneration of the Cross. The other impactful part priests talk about together is that the people can be very devout in that as well as in receiving Communion on Holy Thursday. They’ll comment on this with others and oftentimes the priests, you know, even if not that day, but often they get a chance to review those things, you know, just in the dining room afterwards. So it is a big event for the priests.

HOW DID IT AFFECT YOU AND YOUR VOCATION?

As long as I can remember, I’ve been going to the Triduum. Even as a child, in our family. Now I come from a large family, but we were not allowed to speak from noon until three on the Friday on Good Friday. My mother did not require that we be in church, but you were not allowed to play, you were not allowed to play any music. You had to be quiet out of respect for Jesus dying. And you were encouraged to go to church but you didn’t have to spend the three hours there. So I would say yes, that was very formative for me both as a child and in the Jesuits. In the Jesuits, it was sacred silence. You were not allowed to speak once the mass began at eight o’clock on Holy Thursday, you did not speak again until after mass was over on Sunday. So I mean, it was definitely a time of great focus and concentration. You spoke in the sense that you gave responses at Mass but otherwise it was silent. I would say to young people that the most important thing is attending the services. It makes a much bigger impact than any homily does.