Tenebrae: the service of Matins and Lauds for Maundy Thursday, but anticipated on the Wednesday night. It’s sombre and long (two hours plus), but also very moving. And the sopranos in our choir get to thrill the congregation every year with their top Cs in the Allegri Miserere.
I always have to remind myself that your time zones is way ahead of mine, here in the Central USA. Our Tenebrae service isn’t for another thirteen hours or so.
We have services every day this week, but I can’t get to all of them. But Thursday night(or rather very early Friday) I’ll participate in the vigil. I go to work so early, as I’m a baker, it’s not too hard to get up an hour earlier to go sit in contemplation in the church. Kind of wierd to be almost all alone in the darkened sanctuary, listening to the creaks and groans of a big old building at night.
And it went very well too, with a bigger congregation than normal.
I know the feeling. Strange, but also oddly comforting.
Never even heard of Tenebrae until I read Brideshead Revisited.
Yes, that was when I first heard of it too. Waugh’s reference to the ceremony intrigued me. So a few years later, when I got the opportunity to attend a Tenebrae service, I was very keen to go. And I loved it. It was the start of my conversion to the traditional Latin rites.