With full LSB rites for Chief Service at noon, and Tenebrae Vespers. No question that Tenebrae Vespers continues to be the more popular in our parish, with over 200 in attendance tonight, but only slightly more than 30 for the "Chief" (!!!) Service. But those who attended both can attest that they are very different liturgies, and each seems to me to be an important part of Good Friday.
At the Vespers I especially love the praying of the 4 psalms. We don't pray the psalms nearly as often as we should, and on a day like today, well, they are just perfect. When all our words fail, God gives us the gift of these Words for our prayer that are both prayer to Him and Words from Him.
Now we eagerly wait for the joy of Pascha breaking into the darkness tomorrow evening.
7 comments:
LSB really did a nice job with both of those rites, didn't they? The love and kindness of God in the cross is announced with such clarity.
I love both rites. The Chief Service is very moving, with the Passion, the Bidding Prayer, and loads of contemplative silence.
I appreciate four psalms for Vespers, along with the Habakkuk canticle (chanted by yours truly from the Brotherhood Prayer Book).
They are two totally different services focusing on the same thing.
22 for Chief Service (2 more than last year), 33 for Vespers (7 more than last year). The Lord blesses the faithful proclamation of His Word.
Pastor Esget,
Exactly! The whole notion of Calvary as the gift that opens up for us the Father's heart of love is unmistakable.
Pastor Juhl,
Good for you on the Habakkuk canticle. Cindi sang ours, but did so in the lovely Magness setting that is published in the back of the hymnal accompaniment for LSB. "In wrath remember mercy!"
"What language shall I borrow
to thank Thee, dearest Friend,
for this Thy dying sorrow,
Thy pity without end?" (LSB 450.5)
those Psalms... wow... the Lord opened our lips and filled it with praise. of course 22, and even 51... but I never would have thought about Psalm 2! The plots of the Lord's enemies were in vain, and the Lord laughing from Heaven on Good Friday!
And 27 - the scariest day of all time, and yet whom shall I fear, for the Lord is my light and salvation even (especially) on the darkest day. Hearing this psalm as the faith and words of Christ was overwhelming. The enemies stumbled and fell, as St. Romanos pointed out for us yesterday.
hmmm... I might just have to preach four short homilies next Good Friday after each of the Psalms before the Tenebrae proper...
and convince the lovely Laura to learn the Habakkuk canticle in just over a year... by hymnal accompaniment, you mean the organist edition, right? what page?
I have not yet done a chief noon-day service here (preached one Good Friday noon down at Chester though - they do noon-day services every day of Holy Week!). I found out this year that of the four LCMS churches w/in 10 miles of us, only one has a Good Friday service in the morning and none at noon... so maybe next year I'll try a noon-day here
I wanted to do the Chief Service really badly, but Peace With Christ loves Tenebrae.
So, in a bit of liturgical innovation, I disguised the Chief Service as Tenebrae.
The people seemed to like it, and they loved the reproaches.
What say you about Communion at a Saturday night Easter Vigil? The rubrics in the Altar Book indicate that the Lord's Supper was reserved for Easter Dawn part of the Vigil. I have done it for the last four years on Saturday night, but I never noticed that rubric before.
We celebrate the Eucharist as the culmination of the Vigil.
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