Tenebrae with All Souls' April 16, 2025

The Wednesday of Holy Week
A Service of Tenebræ
All Souls' Episcopal Church of Point Loma
Sunday April 16, 2025 7:00pm

Bulletin:
https://www.allsoulspointloma.org/_fi...

CONCERNING TENEBRÆ
Tenebræ, which is Latin for “shadows” or “darkness,” is an ancient monastic office for Holy Week. Although it began as two pre-dawn and daybreak services (known as Matins and Lauds, respectively) held on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday, it soon became the tradition to sing Tenebræ on the evenings preceding these days. Now that proper liturgies are appointed for these days, Tenebræ is usually held only on the Wednesday evening of Holy Week.

The theme of Tenebræ, as its name conveys, is darkening: the darkening of Jesus’ earthly life as he proceeded, inexorably and yet obediently, toward death; the darkening of our spirits as we prepare to remember those events once again, on Good Friday; and the darkening that can mark our Lenten repentance as we contemplate the human sinfulness that made Jesus’ suffering and death necessary.

Because it is an office (akin to Morning or Evening Prayer) and not a Eucharist, the key elements of Tenebræ are the reading of Scripture and the singing of psalms. The service is still structured according to the ancient offices of Matins, which is divided into nocturns, and Lauds. Each nocturn of Matins begins with a psalm(s) (called an “antiphon”) and then features a series of three readings. Lauds, which more directly anticipates the Crucifixion, is a series of antiphons, followed by an anthem, a psalm, a collect and a short ceremony: first, the hiding of the last light remaining in the room; the strepitus —the making of a loud noise, which may call to mind the earthquake that occurred at the moment of Jesus’ death (Matthew 28:2); and then, because we are—always—people of the Resurrection, the return of the Christ candle’s light among us. All then depart in silence.

Tonight, we hear François Couperin’s eighteenth-century setting of the lesson for the First Nocturn, the text of which is taken from the Lamentations of Jeremiah. It will be sung by Pamela Narbona and Anne-Marie Dicce Valenzuela, accompanied by Heather Vorwerck (viola da gamba) and Bruce Neswick (organ).