Tenebrae: a liturgy of shadows before the light

During Holy Week, the most solemn and significant period in the Church’s calendar, some parishes offer Tenebrae, a service that can be traced back 1500 years. This ancient liturgy is sometimes regarded as a prelude to the day of the resurrection, a time to experience—through song, prayer and silence—something of the loss that Jesus’ disciples felt at his death.

The word Tenebrae means ‘shadows’ or ‘darkness’ in Latin, as represented in a canticle chanted during the service: ‘Darkness covered the earth when Jesus was crucified.’

Central to Tenebrae is a large, triangular candelabrum known as a Tenebrae hearse, which holds 15 candles. As the liturgy progresses through psalms and readings, the candles are gradually extinguished.

It’s a wonderful, evocative, meditative, contemplative liturgy that’s very beautiful.

‘You work from the left-hand lower candle, which gets extinguished first, and then you do the right-hand lower one, and you keep alternating up until there’s just one candle left at the top, which represents Christ,’ explains Prof Clare Johnson, Director of the ACU Centre for Liturgy.

Prof Johnson says that the earliest references to Tenebrae date back to the fifth century, and over time it became a staple of Holy Week observance. That changed in 1955, when Pope Pius XII restructured the Sacred Triduum—the three-day liturgy of Holy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil—into a continuous celebration.

‘What that meant, of course, was that Tenebrae was displaced,’ Prof Johnson says. ‘[However,] it’s had a revival in recent years, recent decades really, because people love it. It’s a wonderful, evocative, meditative, contemplative liturgy that’s very beautiful.

‘And the kind of music that is set for Tenebrae is some of the most beautiful and mournful music that the Church has in its repertoire.’

Tenebrae services are held ‘at some time during Holy Week,’ Prof Johnson says. Often the liturgy takes place on the Wednesday, sometimes referred to as ‘Spy Wednesday’, the day Judas and his collaborators spied on Jesus to find a time to betray him. Some churches, like St Patrick’s Cathedral this year, will hold Tenebrae on Good Friday night, having held the Solemn Liturgy of the Passion of the Lord in the afternoon.

One has this sense that we are enveloped in darkness.

Less often, a traditional Tenebrae is held over three nights, as is the case at St Aloysius’ Church in Caulfield North.

The Office of Tenebrae is special, says St Aloysius parish priest Fr Glen Tattersall. ‘It evokes the metaphoric sense of darkness, that this is happening at the height of the drama of Holy Week.’

The first of the three services at St Aloysius’ will be held on the Wednesday night: ‘We’re anticipating Holy Thursday, the next morning, so we’re on the threshold of Christ’s betrayal and then his death, and then the vigil at his grave,’ Fr Tattersall says.

He says there is a drama on the first night, felt though the music and the texts. These begin with the Lamentations of Jeremiah, which focus on ‘the abandonment of the destruction of Jerusalem, the abandonment, seemingly, of God’s people. And this is transferred to Christ. It finds fulfilment in him. One has this sense that we are enveloped in darkness and that there’s just this candlelight.’

Fr Tattersall explains the ‘tension’ is resolved over the three nights, which he says each have slight differences of ceremony, text and music. By Good Friday night, he says, there is a sense of peacefulness, a sort of acceptance.

The service arrives at the point of a single candle alight at the top of the Tenebrae hearse. That one is not extinguished but rather removed from sight, and the congregation sits in silence for a few moments.

Then comes the strepitus.

‘This is a very loud and unexpected noise, so you can either let people in on it and let them participate in creating the noise at the right point, or you can do it out of sight,’ Prof Johnson says. ‘It’s designed to shock people. This is hopeful—it’s designed to represent the earthquake, the rendering of the earth at Christ’s death. The strepitus is a really dramatic part of this liturgy in the darkness that’s meant to jolt worshippers, physically and emotionally.’

The final candle is then returned to its place, and the congregation leaves the church in silence, to meditate on Christ’s death and look to his resurrection.

It is a powerful service that, despite its resurgence in popularity, is not simple to hold. Prof Johnson says cathedrals and parishes with the resources to do it are best placed to host Tenebrae.

‘The music can be quite complex, and if you’re doing it in a traditional way, it does require that you have a highly trained choir and a very good set of cantors,’ she says. ‘It isn’t necessarily something that amateurs can do particularly well, as it wouldn’t have quite the same impact.’

The music is the quintessential element of Tenebrae. The psalms and readings are chanted or sung entirely without instruments. Composers like Tomás Luis de Victoria, Carlo Gesualdo and Gregorio Allegri wrote settings specifically for Tenebrae, designed to echo off the stone walls of ancient churches. Music composed for broader liturgies also forms part of the Tenebrae musical tradition.

Allegri’s exquisite Miserere is sung towards the end of the service. Fr Tattersall says the piece was kept within Rome’s Sistine Chapel for more than a century, with no one else allowed to use it or copy it. Then in 1770, he explains, a teenaged Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is said to have heard it sung by the Sistine Chapel choir and reproduced it entirely from memory.

Fr Tattersall says the ‘genius’ of the music—from the Gregorian chants to Miserere and the responsories by Palestrina—has a tremendous effect on people, but it is more than just the music. ‘I have seen people extraordinarily moved by this office. It’s the word of God, first of all: the Psalms, the Lamentations of Jeremiah.

‘[Tenebrae] is the prayer of the whole Church. One has the great sense that we’re praying together as members of the mystical body—the clergy and the laity are united in participating in this.’

It’s a chance to go really deep into why Christ died for our sins, and to understand what the world would be like without him.

Liturgical expert Prof Johnson agrees the stirring elements of Tenebrae are what are making it an increasingly popular part of Holy Week, saying that people are looking for something that touches their hearts.

‘It is so unusual, and it gives people an opportunity to delve into an aspect of their faith that they can’t delve into in this way at any other time of the year.

‘It’s a chance to go really deep into why Christ died for our sins, and to understand what the world would be like without him. Entering into the darkness is metaphorically a way for us to understand what our world would be like if Christ the Light didn’t come into it.

‘[But] it’s not stopping at this point of despair or darkness. It’s understanding that this is necessary so that we can find hope in God, that God is with us in that moment and leading us to the light.’