Your Family and the Triduum

Do you attend the Triduum liturgies with your family? We've gathered up some tips and encouragement from past years to help you and your children get the most out of these holy days.

Triduum Memories

"Let us stand." ... "Let us kneel."

I have vivid memories of the first time I attended a Good Friday liturgy. It was held during the day, so Dad was probably working, and we kids attended with Mom and two of our great-aunts. To top it off, we were attending at our great-aunts' parish, not ours, so it was an unfamiliar church.

Between the completely different ritual of the Good Friday liturgy as opposed to a regular Sunday Mass and the new surroundings and music, I remember being very confused. I certainly didn't understand the custom of venerating the cross.

Holy Thursday was less of a stretch, and there was the added novelty of going to church on a school night. We really couldn't see much of what was happening during the Washing of the Feet, but everything else felt a lot like a Sunday and we knew what to do.

And I never attended an Easter Vigil Mass until I was a graduate student acting as a sponsor for a fellow student in what was then called RCIA but is now known as OCIA (Order of Christian Initiation of Adults). It was a beautiful Mass, and I realized I'd been missing out by not attending an Easter Vigil before that year.

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Bringing My Children to the Triduum

Since I'm a volunteer musician at my parish, there have been many years when I've been assigned to play and sing at one or more Triduum liturgies. When our children were little, some years my husband stayed home with them and we all attended the same Easter Sunday Mass. Other years, the kids came along with us, sometimes participating as altar servers and sometimes sitting with my husband at the rear of the musicians' corner of the church — the little ones occasionally falling asleep on the blanket my husband had wisely brought along. I remember one year when our youngest was three for three with Triduum naps!

A couple of times when I wasn't assigned to sing at the Easter Vigil and we planned to attend Sunday Mass together when I was going to be singing, we would come to the introductory portion of the Vigil, which is held outdoors. We would watch as the deacon and altar servers lit the Easter fire (often assisted by Boy Scouts from the parish), the priest blessed the paschal candle, and everyone walked into the church with little candles, singing "Thanks be to God!" Once everyone was in, we would go back home and prepare to go to Sunday Mass in the morning.

Yes, You Can Bring the Kids to the Triduum

Sometimes the Triduum liturgies seem like a lot and don't feel like the best place to bring kids. But children are just as welcome during the Triduum as they are on any other day in the Church, and these are the most important days of the liturgical year.

If you can't manage all three days, choose one that feels doable for your family. Maybe next year you can make it to two!