If you are a counter-cultural parent, next week’s period of Easter Triduum can be challenging. You need to put in a lot of effort if you hope to raise your children in a society where more people are involved in secularism and commercialism than in spirituality and religiousness.
Most of the culture won’t be focused on the significance of Easter and Holy Week being the greatest feast in the Christian calendar. Instead, they will give their attention next Sunday and the days prior to bunnies, egg hunts, and spring break partying. Thus, Catholic parents need to make a concentrated effort in teaching their youngsters what Easter truly is. It is a celebratory day that represents the fulfillment of our faith. We only have Easter because Jesus loved us enough to go through the excruciating pain of His Passion.
Parents, your counter-cultural, Easter Triduum-instructing efforts begin by explaining to your children the significance of Holy Thursday. The article, “Like a Middle Child, Holy Thursday Gets a Bad Rap,” will provide you with the information you need to pass on to your kids.
The next day in the Triduum, Good Friday, is when mom and dad have to explain that this was a miserable day because Jesus was in two types of pain. He suffered the emotional pain of knowing Judas betrayed Him, His Apostles left Him, and a mob yelled, “Crucify him!” Christ also suffered physical pain when he was scourged, forced to carry a heavy cross, got spikes driven through his body, and was left to hang on a cross to suffocate.
Your little ones may wonder why the day is called “good” if bad things happened. Some may try to explain it is good because something “good” happened on this original Friday – our redemption. Yet the actual origin of the phrase “Good Friday” is unclear. It is likely it originated either from the German “God’s Friday” or from the medieval use of the word “good,” which meant “holy.”
Regardless, it has been tradition for Catholics on Good Friday to not partake in “good” ( aka pleasant or enjoyable) activities. This is mainly relevant between the hours of 12:00 and 3:00 p.m., the “three hours of agony” that Jesus was first hung on the cross until the time he died.
Good Friday is the most grave day in the Church year, and so our actions should reflect that. At a minimum, everyone in the family could silence their phones, devices, TV, etc. for the three hours, making the environment sober.
Additionally, the entire Friday is to be a day to abstain from eating meat, and although Church regulations say only adults age 18-59 need to fast on Good Friday, most elementary and high school age kids should be able to make this sacrifice, too.
An impactful Good Friday activity is to meditate on a crucifix for at least a few minutes. Mom and dad, explain to your sons and daughters that historians have estimated Jesus’s wooden cross could have weighed 200 pounds. This weight not only magnifies how much Christ suffered as He carried it up the hill to Golgotha, but its heaviness represents the weight of our sins.
Also, as you are all contemplating the crucifix, ask your youngsters to examine the wounds in our Lord’s feet and hands, envisioning how much pain He must have gone through. Recall that after a sword pierced His side, both blood and water flowed out.
Families who are able to get to church on Good Friday won’t be attending Mass, as this is the one day of the year no Mass is to take place. What can be done on Friday at church is to walk the Stations of the Cross.
Most churches have beautiful Stations of the Cross carvings or paintings on the walls that somewhat explain the Passion without using words. Of course, you will still want to read about or talk about what each particular event is depicting. Kids should be taught the proper manner of genuflecting or kneeling before each Stationand what the group prayer response is. If you are doing your own private walking of the Stations of the Cross, this “script” is a good version for the family to use.
Also, when in church on Good Friday, ask your children what is different in the church than all the other times they’ve been there. They may notice the Tabernacle is empty, the Sanctuary Lamp next to it is extinguished, and the main crucifix and possibly other statues in the church are covered up with purple fabric. The covering of the crucifix may seem strange, especially since this day is when we recall Jesus dying on the cross. Our senses are heightened when the corpus is covered. We become more aware of what is missing and grow in anticipation of what soon will come.
Moving on to Holy Saturday, this day would be a great occasion for a family-movie-night. Your older kids should be fine watching “The Passion of the Christ,” but it has too intense scenes for those not yet in their teens.
If you have younger children, check out the 1977 TV movie, “Jesus of Nazareth.” Because it was originally a weeklong miniseries, it would actually be better to watch spread out over a number of nights. Another option is to simply skip ahead and watch only the final two hours Saturday night. Other possible films for family viewing on the eve of Easter include “The Gospel of John,” “Superbook: He Is Risen,” and “The Miracle Maker.”
Easter Sunday should need no explanation or helpful hints of what to do as a family. The ultimate celebration of the Church year includes attending Mass to celebrate the resurrection of our Savior and joyfully exclaiming, “Christ is Risen! He is Risen indeed!”
Counter-cultural parents have their work cut out for them to keep the “Holy” in Holy Week. Holiness has drowned under a tidal wave of secularism and modernism in recent decades.
Our agnostic, faithless society has already made Thanksgiving less a day to thank God and more a day for turkey and football. The culture minimizes Christmas by calling it “the holiday season” with the focus on Santa. Our culture has done the same with secularizing and commercializing the Easter holiday.
May God bless Catholic parents’ efforts at this special time. You will have just ended your family’s 40 days of praying, fasting, and almsgiving – acts of self-denial that prepared you to “die” (spiritually) with Christ on Good Friday. Now on Easter Sunday, you will be able to rise with Him in new life in this world. Then in the next world, you will have the promise of eternal life with your loving Lord.
A PRINCIPAL'S PRINCIPLES FOR PARENTING 
We called Holy Week “The Catholic Olympics” around our kids. We never missed a day of Mass or Stations of the Cross during this solemn time, and always attended the lengthy Easter Vigil and dedicated it to the 250-pound cross Christ was forced to carry for His own crucifixion. Our kids realized early that they had it “way, way easier than Jesus did.”
Thank you for your outstanding blog, Dan. Praise God!
Danny Mueller
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