By Paul Inwood, April 28, 2026
I was playing keyboard for an enclosed religious community for the Triduum this year. The Easter Vigil began with a massive bonfire outside — a real rogus — in 40 mph winds, which made lighting the Paschal Candle rather difficult (it took almost twenty minutes to do it).
Everyone had been given proper candles instead of the usual tapers with cardboard circles to catch the drips. These were pillar candles about two inches tall, standing in a solid plastic flowerpot base that you could carry in the palm of your hand. Back in the church, all the people’s candles were lit after the third Lumen Christi but none of the church lights were switched on.
Yes, I know that’s not what’s supposed to happen, but for many years they have had the Exsultet and Liturgy of the Word by candlelight and they do not intend to stop now! The church was hushed and not light at all, with about twenty candles in the community, and about twenty-five candles in the congregation in a sizeable chapel with a high gabled roof. (They turned all the lights on at the Gloria with the ringing of bells and the lighting of the altar candles, in case you were wondering.)
The point of all this is that, from where I was seated behind the keyboard and behind the community, I could not actually see the lectors at all during the Liturgy of the Word. The Word came to me seemingly out of almost total darkness, and I realized that I was listening to the readings in a different way: more intense, using only my sense of hearing. Not being able to see anything made me concentrate, focus more deeply on what I was hearing; and the lectors were very good, which helped.
Now let us contrast this with something that many reading these lines may have experienced earlier in Holy Week: the reading of the Passion with the congregation taking the crowd parts.
I have never been happy with people taking the crowd parts in any of the Passion readings. For a start, we can find ourselves awkwardly experiencing pathos. This is especially true on Palm Sunday in Year C, the Year of Luke. The first intervention by the crowd comes after a long-ish stretch.
They grunt,
“No, nothing.”
A few lines later, they say,
“Lord, look, there are two swords here.”
Some time after that, they ask,
“Lord, shall we strike with a sword?”
It could be straight out of Monty Python. This is surely not what celebrating the Word of God is about!
More importantly, having the people take the crowd parts changes the way in which they listen.
First of all, they are reading along instead of really listening (remember my experience at the Easter Vigil) because they need to follow the text in order to know when their next spoken contribution is coming. I am not a fan of reading along in general unless the lectors are so bad that it is necessary for comprehension (and yes, I do appreciate that those with hearing difficulties may also need a text in front of them, and that sound systems can be less than ideal). Tne problem with reading along is that you don’t completely listen to whatever is coming to you from the lector’s mouth. By reading simultaneously, you “control” the meaning of the text you are hearing. Just listening means that you may well hear things in the text that you didn’t previously appreciate, even if you have heard the reading a hundred times before. This is God’s word for you today. (And yes, I do know about the different learning intelligences — aural, visual, kinesthetic, and so on. Here, I am convinced that the aural must take precedence.)
Secondly, and crucially, if the people speak the crowd parts, the way they listen is changed because they are waiting for the next time they are to come in. This means that they are not completely focused on the Word but always have in the back of their minds the need to be alert to their next cue. If we do not really hear the Word, the whole Body suffers.
I often feel that the words in our liturgies, whether readings, prayers or the homily, tend to go straight over people’s heads because they are not actually listening to every single word, not truly listening and absorbing what they hear. It may be that the lectors are not very good, and have not captivated the people (without being over-theatrical, of course). It may be that the people are tired, or have other pressing things (family crises, world events….) on their minds which distract them from listening well. It may be that they have not been properly prepared to listen to the Word by what has preceded in the liturgy (and that would be the subject of another article). The Liturgy of the Word can so easily become a liturgy of words.
Now apply all this to our routine Sunday liturgies. How can we work to produce the same sort of effect as the readings at this recent Easter Vigil had on me?
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