Christ Church Brunswick

Tenebrae

The liturgy of the Church consists of the worship of God chiefly in the Divine Office and the Mass. The Divine Office comprises two Night “Hours” (so called because they are intended to be recited in the early hours of the morning) and six Hours spread through the day from Prime in the early morning to Compline last thing at night. For convenience the two Night Hours, Mattins and Lauds, are usually “anticipated”, by which is meant that they are recited the previous evening. The monastic office of Tenebrae is Mattins and Lauds of Thursday, Friday and Saturday in Holy Week, each recited on the previous evening. The service of Tenebrae on the evening of Good Friday is Mattins and Lauds of Holy Saturday. Tenebrae is the Latin word for darkness and alludes to the darkness that was over all the land from the sixth to the ninth hour.

Mattins is divided into three Nocturns, each comprised of three psalms with their appropriate antiphons, and three lessons, each followed by responds which describe the background of the drama. Lauds, which follows Mattins, consists of five psalms, the Benedictus, the Miserere (Psalm 51) and a collect.

During Tenebrae there stands before the altar on the Epistle side a “hearse” which is a tall staff supporting a triangle on which are fifteen candles, lighted before the service begins. At the end of each of the fourteen psalms of Mattins and Lauds, a server extinguishes one of these candles until only the one at the top of the hearse is left alight. During the singing of the Benedictus, the six candles in the sanctuary are extinguished and the lights in the church gradually put out. On Wednesday all the lamps in the church, apart from those before the Tabernacle, are now extinguished and not lit again until Holy Saturday. Finally, the lighted candle is taken from the top of the hearse and hidden. In the darkness an antiphon, the Our Father (silently), the Miserere, and a collect are said. Then a sharp noise is made, the single lighted candle is brought out and replaced in the hearse – and the service is over.

This symbolism is rich in meaning: the deepening gloom of Calvary and the dereliction of our Lord, until Christ, the Light of the World, is alone; the disappearance from this world of the Light amidst the confusion of nature when “the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent”; the reappearance of the light reminding us that the powers of darkness had no dominion over the one true Light, Jesus Christ, true God and true Man.

The music of Tenebrae contains some of the Church’s finest chants. Especially beautiful are those of the lessons of the first Nocturn and of the responds which follow each of the nine lessons and which, when sung in harmony, are almost overwhelming in their poignancy; as is also the Miserere when sung to the settings of Victoria, Allegri or Palestrina.

The theme of Tenebrae this evening (Mattins and Lauds of Holy Saturday) is peace and rest after the agony and strife of battle; and the confidence of hope. “I will lay me down in peace and take my rest.” “He shall dwell in thy tabernacle: he shall rest upon thy holy hill.” The lessons are from the book of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, St Augustine’s treatise on the Psalms, and the Epistle to the Hebrews; Lauds ends with the triumphant 150th psalm.

After the singing of the Benedictus is heard what is sometimes called the Great Antiphon of the Triduum Domini, The Three Days of the Lord, as Thursday, Friday and Saturday in Holy Week are called. They are the familiar words from the Epistle to the Philippians, “Christ became obedient for us unto death even the death of the Cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name”. These words constantly recur during the Church’s Liturgy of these days but nowhere more dramatically than at Tenebrae.

As we go out into the night we realize that the Church’s liturgy has a power beyond human power: our souls have been brought face to face with the horror of the Passion with an almost overwhelming brutality. If we have entered in the smallest degree into the desolation of our Lord, Tenebrae will have done its work.

Though the Church will not rejoice until tomorrow, she leaves us tonight with a sense of peace and triumph.