March 8, 2026

My dear Kirkland Catholics,

As we enter the home stretch of preparing our candidates and catechumens for the Easter Sacraments, I wanted to share a brief history lesson—both ancient and more recent. The Triduum (the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, the Celebration of the Passion of the Lord on Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil at night) and the process by which adults convert to Catholicism
looked very different less than seventy years ago.

Before the Second Vatican Council—and before the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (now called OCIA) became widely implemented in 1986—an adult converting to Catholicism usually received private instruction from a priest and was baptized and/or fully initiated in a relatively private ceremony. Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Vigil liturgies were generally
celebrated in the morning and were often sparsely attended.

This began to change in the 1950s, when the Triduum was reformed. These reforms emphasized the unity of the Paschal Mystery, the centrality of the Easter Vigil as the “Super Bowl” of liturgies, and the full participation of the faithful in these solemn celebrations. A fascinating part of this renewal was the discovery, in 1884, of the writings of Egeria in a monastery in Italy. She was a laywoman—possibly a consecrated virgin—who traveled to Jerusalem around 381–384 AD and recorded in her travel diary how Christians there celebrated Holy Week. Many of these ancient practices had been forgotten
or had developed in different directions until her writings were rediscovered.

Her account describes a Palm Sunday procession in which Christians gathered on the Mount of Olives and processed into Jerusalem with palms, much as we do today. It describes an evening Eucharist on Holy Thursday, followed by a time of “watch and pray” at the Mount of Olives, similar to our prayer before the altar of repose. It includes the veneration of the Cross and a public proclamation of the Passion on Good Friday. Finally, it recounts an all-night Easter Vigil filled with Scripture readings and baptisms. In short, the Church in the mid-20th century engaged in what is called ressourcement,
a “return to the sources,” in order to recover and renew these ancient practices.

Likewise, the rediscovery of early Christian texts led to a renewed understanding of how adults were formed for Baptism in the first centuries. This formation was clearly public and communal, involving sponsors, scrutinies, minor exorcisms, the dismissal of catechumens after the Liturgy of the Word, and initiation—normally—at the Easter Vigil. The reform of RCIA/OCIA
was also an act of ressourcement: not an invention of something new, but a restoration of something ancient.

Older is not always better. Yet I believe these changes have greatly enriched our experience of Holy Week. I strongly encourage you to plan on attending at least Holy Thursday and Good Friday this year—you won’t regret it.

With love in Christ,
Fr. Brad