“Our society needs to be healed, to make peace with our world, to make peace with our neighbors and to make peace with each other in the way that the Risen Lord taught us,” writes the Bishop of Macau, Most Rev Stephen Lee Bun Sang, in his Easter Message for 2022.
During the period of the Triduum that leads up to Easter Sunday, Catholics are invited to recall step- by-step the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the fundamental moments that are at the heart of their experience of faith. The Triduum ceremonies were mainly concentrated in the Cathedral of the Nativity of Our Lady this year.
Although we are inured by a violent world, it is the mystics and saints that draw out compunction and repentance for sin with their intimate revelations of the true depth of cruelty our Lord and Savior was subject to.
The first two days of the Easter Triduum, Holy Friday and Holy Saturday, are truly singular from the point of view of the liturgical signs and their balance is rather delicate. It is expected that on these austere days, the candles will be completely extinguished and the altar will be bare. In its concrete realization, this indication undergoes difficulties that many have pointed out, which, however, must be overcome in order to give the two days a liturgical configuration that is truly consistent with the mystery celebrated and suitable for expressing it effectively.