Category Archives: Easter Triduum

Apr 01 2026
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All Fools' Day, Book of Days Calendar, Easter Triduum, Holy Thursday, Maundy Thursday, Passover

April Showers, or Your Convivio Book of Days for April

For your printable Convivio Book of Days calendar for April, we are tuning into the old adage: April showers bring May flowers. Here in Lake Worth, the flowers are blooming already (Amaryllis on the ground, and when we look up, the sky right now is crazy yellow with the blooms of Tabebuia argentea). Spring is most definitely with us. We realize, though, this welcome season takes longer to reach other places. If you’ve seen little evidence of it yet, worry not, it will soon arrive.

If you’re reading this in the morning, beware, for it is All Fools’ Day, when tricks and practical jokes abound until noon. You may, of course, be one of the tricksters, in which case we wish you good luck and healthy fooling. I’ve initiated some good April Fools’ tricks in my day, but this year I am feeling rather dim-witted and so I am sticking to the defensive role, remaining on lookout all morning, with the goal being to avoid becoming un poisson d’Avril, as they say in France, or il pesce d’Aprile, as they say in Italy. Both would translate to An April Fish, the fish being the fool, and very often the unsuspecting fool might find a paper fish stuck to the back of his shirt. Why a fish? I don’t know. I’m going to leave it at that.

The setting sun this evening will bring the beginning of Passover, or Pesach, commemorating the freeing of the Israelites from their slavery in Egypt, and is celebrated with a meal, the seder. A friend explains it thusly: “We are traveling through the desert with our ancestors via a table filled with metaphor and symbolism.” Unleavened bread is a central part of the celebration, for the Israelites had to leave Egypt so quickly there was no time to let the bread rise. Instead, it had to be baked immediately.

The Italians call Passover Pasqua Ebraica, which you might translate as “Jewish Easter,” but in fact in many languages the names of both Easter and Passover are the same. Pesach informs the name given to Easter in Italian: Pasqua. The English word “Easter” does not share this etymological relation to Pesach. It is related more to the the Old English “Eostre,” which is the name of an Anglo-Saxon goddess whose feast day was celebrated around the Spring Equinox.

Among the questions asked at the seder table is this one: Why is this night different from all other nights? And just as I cannot tell you why when it comes to the poisson d’avril, I also cannot tell you why this night is different from all other nights. I’ve never attended a seder. But I will join all who are in spirit tonight and wish you abundant blessings.

In my Christian tradition, it is Spy Wednesday today, which has to do with Judas Iscariot, one of Jesus’ disciples, betraying him and setting the course for the rest of Holy Week. Tomorrow night, on Holy Thursday, we will make our pilgrimage to three churches, deep in the night, moon illuminating the skies above us, for the Night Watch. It is not necessary an easy night, and yet it is one of the most beautiful each year, one of the most special. And so our April will begin. A most eventful few days.

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OPEN SHOP DAY!
We’re planning to open the shop this Saturday from 11 to 4, for your last chance to pick up Easter goods like traditional wooden bunnies from Germany’s Erzgebirge woodworkers, beautiful pysanky eggs from Ukraine, German splintwood baskets and wood wool Easter grass (none of the plastic stuff!), German papier mache eggs to fill with treats, and as far as the sweets in your basket, how about sweet and sour Swedish candies, licorice (some chocolate covered) and fruitful gummies from Denmark, and marzipan piglets from Germany? CLICK HERE to shop, and come on by this Saturday, please!

And please make plans to join us later this month for our annual celebration of Independent Bookstore Day on Saturday, April 25. We’ll be making a full weekend of it, opening the shop on Friday night, the 24th, plus Saturday and Sunday the 25th and 26th. We’ll have some appropriate treats, no doubt, plus a free and simple letterpress and bookbinding project for all who come.

Image: “April Showers, Napa Valley” by Jules Tavernier. Oil on canvas, circa 1880-1884 [Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons].

Mar 30 2026
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Easter, Easter Triduum, Good Friday, Holy Thursday, Holy Week, Lent, Maundy Thursday

The Strangeness of Holy Week

The spring equinox has come and gone, the moon grows larger each night, and our Lenten journey nears completion now that Palm Sunday has passed. We have entered into Holy Week, holiest of weeks, culminating in Easter Sunday and the core of what those of us who profess to be Christians believe: that Christ suffered, died, and was buried, and rose again on the third day.

This is a lot to process, no? And the violence at the week’s end, unnerving. I’ve been reading these past few weeks a book we sell in the shop, Bitter & Sweet: A Journey into Easter. It is a Lenten devotional by Tsh Oxenreider with daily readings for each of the days of this season that began in February with Ash Wednesday. Her welcoming chapter begins with words that have stuck with me since I first read them: “Lent is strange because Easter is strange.” She’s absolutely right. We are asked to believe an awful lot.

But this is my heritage and I enter the week with the reverence that I was taught by those who came before me. I remember them as I proceed with the ceremonies and rituals, as I sit in dark churches late at night, as I gather with the ones I love to cook and bake and feast. There are things we do each year just because we do what we do, and it would be strange indeed not to do them. And so the waxing moon will wax and grow and the days and nights will come and go: Holy Monday, Holy Tuesday, Spy Wednesday. The moon will wax to fullness that night.

As for Lent: it will come to a close with the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Maundy Thursday (also known as Holy Thursday). The Mass sets in motion the Easter Triduum, as we are taught, through Christ’s example at that Mass, to be humble and to be of service to our fellow human beings––a sentiment so very out of favor these days.

After Mass, the Night Watch will begin, only after the sun has set and night has fallen. The Pange Lingua, the beloved song of St. Thomas Aquinas, will have been sung, the statues in the church will have been covered in purple cloth (purple, the color of penitence), the blessed sacrament will have been set amongst lit candles, as the lights in the church are dimmed. The crowds, by this time, will have gone, leaving but a few hardy souls who will sit and hold their vigil.

Seth and I, we will sit in the close and holy darkness of three different churches that night. This is the old pilgrimage, usually beginning at your home parish, but then processing beyond, out into the world. It is a custom taught to me by my grandmother, Assunta, and I will think of her, and I will think of all who have come and gone through my life, for this, too, is what we do. The night will grow late, and it will get quieter and quieter, and the moon will be ever present, and it will follow us, constant companion, on our pilgrimage. Good Friday will come the next day, followed by the stillness of Holy Saturday. On the third day will come Easter Sunday. All of it, a most strange week, when you really think about it.

 

OPEN SHOP DAY!
We’re planning to open the shop this Saturday (Holy Saturday) from 11 to 4, for your last chance to pick up Easter goods like traditional wooden bunnies from Germany’s Erzgebirge woodworkers, beautiful pysanky eggs from Ukraine, German splintwood baskets and wood wool Easter grass (none of the plastic stuff!), German papier mache eggs to fill with treats, and as far as the sweets in your basket, how about sweet and sour Swedish candies, licorice (some chocolate covered) and fruitful gummies from Denmark, and marzipan piglets from Germany? CLICK HERE to shop, and come on by this Saturday, please!

 

Image: “Christ on the Mount of Olives” by Paul Gauguin. Oil on canvas, 1889 [Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons]. This is one of my favorite paintings, set on the night of Maundy Thursday, and it resides locally, here at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach. I need to go see it again soon.

 

Apr 18 2025
4 Comments
Easter Triduum, Good Friday, Holy Thursday, Maundy Thursday

Pilgrimage

We went to Holy Thursday Mass tonight, Seth and me and our niece. We went to the grand basilica on Palm Beach, a church that feels a bit like I imagine the Vatican might feel like. My niece and I both had the same thought at precisely the same moment: as the pipe organ belted out the Gloria, full choir in the loft behind us, the altar boys ringing the bells continuously for the duration of the triumphant hymn: We both stood there, singing and thinking, “This is not at all like the Shakers.”

We had brought the kid with us to Maine last month where she did, in fact, experience Shaker Sunday Meeting. It was the Third Sunday of Lent and the theme of the readings was suffering. But even with that drudgery, Meeting was lovely and beautiful in its simplicity. Everything about Shaker Meeting is beautiful that way. And everything about St. Edward’s Basilica is beautiful in the opposite way: in its richness and opulence. I love them both. It was a joy to be at Shaker Meeting that Third Sunday of Lent, and a joy to be at Holy Thursday Mass at St. Edward’s tonight.

St. Edward’s was the first stop on our annual nighttime Holy Thursday pilgrimage to three churches, a tradition my grandma taught me. We went to St. Ann’s next, the old church on the mainland, and then back across the lagoon to Bethesda by the Sea, but the Episcopalians let us down this year: the church was locked and there was no keeping watch there, no vigil. But we wandered the grounds, and we commiserated with other pilgrims in this world who, too, were trying all the doors to the church, only to find them locked, as we had, too. We’re counting the wandering around the grounds as a visit to the church all the same… and so we completed our pilgrimage. By the time we got home, it was well past 11: a night well spent with two of my favorite people.

Lest you get the wrong idea about me, you should know that church and Shaker Meetings are rare occasions for me. I pray to myself (and sometimes out loud, as I’m driving –– it helps cut down on my swearing) and I sing hymns and Shaker songs as I go about my day (because I like to sing and I like old songs like this). But my attendance at formal religious ceremonies is spotty, at best. I don’t necessarily want it to be so, but it is. And perhaps this is a great disservice to myself. Another thing that drifted through my head, through the readings and the hymns, the ones that dealt with love and respect and the dignity of the people around us, was the realization that the people running the country lately were most likely not at a Holy Thursday Mass tonight. I don’t see how they could be listening to the Gospel According to John –– where Jesus humbly washes the feet of his disciples, then asks them, Do you realize what I have done for you? –– or singing the same hymns we were singing at St. Edward’s –– the ones about compassion –– and still continue to act as they do. And I acknowledge that perhaps that is the old Democrat in me thinking, but gosh, I do have to believe that that is the human being in me thinking, sans political affiliation.

This Holy Thursday, this Good Friday, this Easter Triduum: may we ascend from darkness and suffering to light and compassion and greater understanding, and to integrity once more.

Visit our Instagram page (@conviviobookworks) for photos from our Holy Thursday pilgrimage. I’ll post them some time on Friday. Visit our shop in Lake Worth Beach this Saturday, from 11 to 4, for last minute Old World Easter shopping. And visit our shop the weekend after Easter for Independent Bookstore Days, April 26 & 27: We’ll be printing on our 1950s Nolan Press and I’ll teach you how to make a simple book, too.

Image at top: Ceilings and angel at St. Edward’s Basilica, Palm Beach.

 

 

 

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