“Three holy days enfold us now

in washing feet and breaking bread,

In cross and font and life renewed:

in Christ, God’s firstborn from the dead.”

Sister Delores Dufner, OSB

This day we experience the awesome stillness of the second part of the Sacred Triduum.  The day is wrapped in quiet within the Monastery.

The Liturgy of the Hours takes on a stark simplicity with no music and the absence of the doxology, the daily expression of the worship of our triune God. This day there is a noticeable change — a lack of words and slowness of movement within the monastery.  The wooden cross is put in place; pictures of the ‘suffering Christ’ appear in the Chapel and final preparations are made for the Sacred Liturgy.  For many years several of us joined with others in the heart of Colorado Springs to walk a contemporary Way of the Cross with silence, prayer and song.  This has recently been discontinued.  So after a simple, silent meal, sisters, who choose to,  walk together to our cemetery and make the stations of the cross -– stations, carved by our sisters many years ago.  Others pray the stations of the cross in our Oratory or pray in their rooms.  Wherever we are, we relive Christ’s passion and/or experience and pray with  the ‘suffering Christ ‘ in our world today. Often it has been a profound preparation for the Sacred Liturgy.

At 3:30 we gather with our worshipping assembly in the Silence and Word, the Passion of Christ and Petitions for our wounded world, and the Adoration of the Cross and Reception of Holy Communion.   Our final hymn, sung as we receive Eucharist, gives the essence of our call as followers of Jesus the Christ:

“We hold the death of the Lord deep in our hearts.

Living now we remain with Jesus the Christ.

We are the presence of God; this is our call.

Now to become bread and wine: food for the hungry, life for the weary,

For to live with the Lord , we must die with the Lord.”

Now We Remain

Blessings,

Sister Anne Stedman