What is Tenembre? This Holy Week I've been discussing Tenembre a lot. I think maybe my favorite part of Holy Week.

I like the Holy Saturday Pasco Vigil Mass, but I find something just stunningly and sorrowfully beautiful about the Tenembre rights.

I was able to first witness one in person two years ago at my local Latin Mass parish.

Since then, I have somewhat of a great obsession, an appreciation for Tenembre.

Tenembre in short is the Matins and Lodz. These are the Divine Office, the Brevery, that are recited by monks, nuns, priests, by requirement,

and lay people voluntarily. The first two sections of prayer, which we call hours, are called Matins and Lodz.

Matins traditionally was recited over three nocturns or three vigils during the night.

Lodz is celebrated just before and at the daybreak, at the sunrise.

And in Holy Week, those three days, which we call Tenembre, Monde Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday, the Matins and the Lodz are anticipated.

That means that they're bumped back into the evening before.

And what you see is here on the screen is there's this thing called a hearse and has 15 candles lit on it.

And every time a Psalm or a canticle is prayed, they extinguish one of these candles until just one is left.

So it gets darker and darker and darker. Now what is Tenembre? Tenembre is Latin. It means darkness.

And we read about this in the Volgate version of St. Luke's Gospel, chapter 23, verse 44.

You can see it here on the screen. And it was almost the six hour and there was darkness. Tenembre, over all the earth until the ninth hour.

So we know when Christ was on the cross from the sixth hour of daylight, that is noon, 12 p.m. until the ninth hour of daylight, which is 3 p.m. there was Tenembre.

There was darkness over the earth. And so on these three evenings, we come together as a church to listen to and to enter into the darkness of the Lord.

That is Tenembre. Now what is the history of Tenembre? Well it goes back to the eight hundreds, this custom of chanting anticipated the evening before these beautiful prayers.

Psalms, scriptures. So the scriptures read are Lamentations by Jeremiah. Lamentations is about the destruction and the abuse and the desolation of Jerusalem in the Old Testament.

And as Christians, as Catholics, we believe that Christ is the new temple. He says, destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.

So we read Lamentations not just as a lament over the destruction of Jerusalem, but as a lament over the crucifixion and death of Christ on the temple, the body of his temple being abused and destroyed.

But then we know it will rise on the third day. And this is why in Tenembre, as you get to the very last candle at the top of that triangle of that hearse,

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