Saint Benedict Episcopal Church

Excerpts from our upcoming brochure, make sure you get a copy today!

What we do from Maundy Thursday to the Easter Vigil? Maundy Thursday brings an end to Lent. That night we begin the Three days that are the center of the Year. Why are these days so important? What do they mean for you? These three days invites all of us to make them different set apart from all the days of the year.

From mid-winter to the end of spring, the Church keeps the great Paschal Season.

It has three parts: 

40 The Forty days of Lent, from Ash Wednesday to Holy Week Thursday. They are days of prayer, almsgiving and fasting. In these ways we try to become as fully as possible the baptized people we are, living by the gospel—and so we prepare to baptize Catechumens. 

3 The three days between the Forty and the Fifty. They are called the Triduum (Latin for three days) and they begin Maundy Thursday night, continue through Good Friday, Holy Saturday and conclude on Easter Sunday. In the darkness between Saturday night and Sunday, the Church keeps vigil, baptizes catechumens and celebrates with great joy the Resurrection. 

50 The Fifty days are the days of Easter, from Easter Sunday to Pentecost Sunday. They are the time of birth, marriage, festival and feasting. They are like the wedding of earth and heaven, Christ and the Church.  

The Three days, this Easter Triduum, is the center, the core of the year for Christians. What Sunday is to the week, these days are to the year. These are the days to save and to savor.

Maundy Thursday: We enter into this Triduum together, by sharing a simple meal and celebrating an Agape Meal. Agape is the Greek word for unconditional love. Early Christian Patristic scholars believe that this simple meal and very simple blessing over bread and wine is the way that the earliest Christians celebrated the Eucharist together... 

Good Friday: The liturgy we started on Maundy Thursday continues on Good Friday. Traditionally, Good Friday liturgies are held from 12-3 in the afternoon—the time traditionally when Jesus hung on the cross dying. However given modern life and work schedules, we have chosen to mark Good Friday in the evening when more people are available to be present for this second part of the Triduum liturgy... 

Easter Vigil: Hungry now and full of excitement, the church gathers in the darkness and lights the new fire and a great candle that will make this night bright for us. We listen to some of the most powerful scriptures in our Bible: stories of Creation, stories of dry bones coming to life, stories of Moses and Miriam and the parting of the Red Sea, poems of promise and rejoicing, the Gospel of the Resurrection... 

Hungry for more? Please pick up your copy of the brochure today or view it online at www.stbenedictslacey.org. 

Maundy Thursday (The Agape Meal)

Thursday, March 20th @ 6:30 p.m.

Good Friday

Friday, March 21st @ 7:30 p.m. 

Holy Saturday (Easter Vigil)

Saturday, March 22nd @ 9:00 p.m.

Easter

Sunday, March 23rd @ 8:00 a.m. & 10:00 a.m.