Holy service a throwback to the beginning

This year I did something I had not done for 50 years – I attended the liturgical services for the Triduum at St. Joseph Abbey outside Covington, La. The Triduum is the celebration of the most sacred three days in Christianity – Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Resurrection of the Lord.

As a seminarian, I attended St. Joseph Seminary for six years (four years of High School and two years of junior college) and graduated in 1958. I then attended Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans for six years (the other two years of college and then four years of theology).

I have been a priest for 44 years and have been involved in the liturgical ceremonies in the various parishes that I have been assigned. Since I am now retired, I had the opportunity of attending these beautiful services led by the monks of St. Joseph Abbey.

It was a great experience. The services brought you into a different time dimension. Nothing was rushed. The music was exquisite and led everyone to a deeper sense of prayer. The homilies by Abbot Justin were right to the point.

The Easter Vigil Mass was the longest service I had ever attended in my entire life. It lasted for three hours. It started at 10:40 p.m. Saturday and did not end until 1:40 a.m. The amazing thing about this was you had to arrive about an hour ahead of time to get a seat. The church was packed. The people who came from all over really wanted to be there. They appreciated the beauty of the ceremonies. I would recommend to any of my readers that they try to visit the Abbey and attend one of their services.

As you look at the Abbey Church, the murals on the walls were all painted by Fr. Gregory deWit, O.S.B. in the ’40s and ’50s. In the dome of the sanctuary is a creation scene depicting Jesus in the words of John, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . . All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.” (John 1:1,3)

Angels are holding up the earth and in the arches above the windows are nine diabolical scenes representing the seven deadly sins plus two.

Making out exactly what these scenes represent is difficult since the colors are black and dark red. We know the traditional seven sins are sloth, envy, gluttony, greed, lust, wrath and pride. Pope Gregory the Great in the 6th Century AD issued these seven deadly sins. Dante and St. Thomas Aquinas brought them into the mainstream of our teachings. The extra two stand for the devil and gossip. Fr. deWit was ahead of his time. He suggested that there were more than seven deadly sins.

Recently, a Bishop Gianfranco Girotti, a spokesperson for Vatican, suggested that there are more than seven deadly sins. These new seven sins have more of a social aspect to them. They are: “Environmental pollution, genetic manipulation, accumulating excessive wealth, inflicting poverty, drug trafficking and consumption, morally debatable experiments and violating fundamental rights of human beings.”

I want to explain the seven traditional and these new deadly sins in more detail in next week’s column. Many people are not familiar with the true meaning of the traditional seven deadly sins much less the new ones.

Going back to the Abbey Church, over the entrance above the doors is a painting of the last judgment. Between the Creation scene and the Last Judgment are pictures of the saints that remind us that we should be living life as members of God’s family. Let’s do it!