[Magdalen] Busy Triduum

[Scott Knitter]

Thanks to parishioners who have left (temporarily, one hopes) in anger
over staff changes, the liturgical rota is having to be filled by a
suddenly reduced group of people. Our saintly head MC is juggling
twice as many things in addition to guiding those who serve through
the Holy Week liturgies while keeping up with changes to the same
(which changes are good ones; Palm Sunday was wonderful and not
head-spinning). The effect on me is that I have to serve as subdeacon
at every Triduum liturgy: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Great Vigil,
and Easter Day main Mass. While this appeals to my excessive desire to
feel needed, it'll be busy and distracting, as every liturgy has a
rehearsal, stuff to remember, and stuff to think ahead about rather
than focus on what is happening in the moment.

It isn't arduous, so I pray I'll be able to enter in fully and offer
the subdeacon service as part of my prayer. And in a way it's payback
for last year when I think I couldn't be there at all until Sunday
morning thanks to a project for work.

And I wish the head MC were not so stingy about training additional
subdeacons: he sticks to four trained ones at any given time, so they
can each serve about one Sunday a month and not forget how to do it
between those times. We do have a female subdeacon now, and she does a
superb job at it, but she's direly needed as a thurifer. I've been
asked to get trained as a thurifer but have resisted so far as I want
to reduce such things, not take on more of them. We just need more
people stepping up, especially since several key ones have stepped
out.

It'll be holy and wonderful...we've got a guest preacher, the Rev.
Robert MacSwain of Sewanee, and our choir is sounding excellent again
with interim director Simon Thomas Jacobs. And our rector is clearly
at home and happiest in liturgy; so nice not to have to spend this
week on pins and needles trying to avoid ticking off our late rector
who was at an emotional low every Lent and especially Holy Week (a
favorite expression of his every year: "Lord, who threw out these
forty days?").

-- 
Scott R. Knitter
Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois USA