Sharings

Bilingual Triduum

I work in a multicultural parish in Lexington, Neb. I recently read Diana Kaulback’s article in which she made reference to a bilingual Triduum celebration (Planning Guide, “MusicalLiturgy,” ML 26:1).

This year in our parish we will celebrate our first English-Spanish Easter Vigil. I am wondering if you can help with some suggestions for putting this celebration together. I am particularly interested in how you were able to rework the readings using English and Spanish narrators and readers. I am intrigued with the idea of creating one continuous story.

If you have any samples, suggestions or references I would appreciate it. In the last nine years our parish has grown from approximately 500 families to almost 900 families, half are English-speaking and the other half Spanish-speaking from Mexico, Central America and South America. We also have a few Asian families from Laos and Vietnam. I am always looking for ways to celebrate the seasons as one Church.

Thank you in advance for any help that you may be able to provide.

Theresa Stuart
Lexington, Nebraska

Diana Kaulback replies:

I appreciate your question. Any effort to make the Triduum celebration more inclusive and reflective of our diversity is most worthwhile but, yes, quite challenging. I’ve only had one experience of a bilingual Vigil celebration, one which I and the liturgy team at St.Benedict’s Catholic Church in Montebello, Calif., crafted together. This was the parish’s first bilingual Vigil (and I hear it was not their last — they continued using the same structure after I left the community).

While I was a campus minister at UCLA, the pastoral staff there adapted the seven vigil readings so that it would be one seamless narrative connected by music, acclamation, and narrator. I took this adaptation and arranged it for eight voices in Spanish and English. At UCLA we had used one common psalm acclamation (Bob Hurd’s “Let All the Earth Cry Out” [OCP]) with varied verses. We even added gestures for the assembly during the refrain.

At St. Benedict’s, I used Julie and Tim Smith’s “The Story of Salvation/La Historia de Salvacion” from their I Will Sing/Cantare collection (Resource Publications, Inc.). Each refrain was cantored by both the English and Spanish cantors. The verses were chanted in either English or Spanish.

The key to this adaptation’s success (and to any proclamation of the word) is to use strong lectors who are prepared to bring this story to life. In rehearsing with them for this reading, I encouraged them to imagine that we were all gathered around a campfire and that they were telling us the legends of our people. (In essence, isn’t that what we are doing?) When you tell stories around a campfire, you try to be more dramatic, more deliberate in your dynamics and in your tone. You make eye contact, you use your whole body, you tell the story “by heart.” When telling our legends, there’s a dignified solemnity and holiness in our voices. We have gathered around the paschal candle, our fire; by the light of this fire, we keep watch and retell the ancient stories to excite us once again; we hand them down to those closest to the fire — our elect.

When parishioners hear that a celebration will be bilingual, I often get the complaint from one person or another that he or she will not understand what is being said. That is true. Not everyone will understand every single word. But in my experience, and from what the majority of people tell me after a well-celebrated bilingual liturgy, the meaning of what was being said and done was very clear. The community’s struggle to worship together was more valuable to them than being comfortably separated by language. In the ritual actions, words that were not understood in one language were made clear to all by strong universal gestures and symbols. In the proclamation of our story, narrators assist in including both language groups in the movement of the story. And of course, catechesis and discussion of these readings during Lent would help everyone “hear” better during the Triduum.

Good luck with your preparations. Ihope your community continues to find ways to become more united with each other. Blessings!

Diana M. Kaulback

Ed. Note: Do you have stories of how you made your Triduum celebrations bilingual? Send to Triduum Stories, ML, 160 E. Virginia St. #290 San Jose, CA 95112-5876. Or e-mail them to MdrnLitrgy@aol.com.

ML

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