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From Tenebrae to Easter Joy
In the final moments of the Tenebrae service, senior Vicki Baran sat in the darkened church with girls from her Bible study and watched as one candle remained lit — the final candle symbolizing Christ. As the church fell into near-total darkness, the moment struck her in a way she had never experienced before. “It was so quiet,” she said. “There was just this ache in my heart. I felt like Jesus kind of helped me enter into that complete abandonment and loneliness — how alone He was.”
For Vicki, that final candle — and then the darkness surrounding it — became a powerful entry into Holy Week. The silence felt unlike any other silence she had known. “It was painful, but in a good way,” she said. “Being able to enter into that.” In many ways, that moment captured what Holy Week became for students at Catholic Noles this year: not simply a series of liturgies to attend, but an invitation to enter more deeply into Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection together.
For many students, college life moves quickly, filled with classes, deadlines, meals on the go, and the steady rhythms of campus life. But Holy Week offered something different.
“It can kind of stop you in your tracks,” said Miles Rittenhouse. For him, Holy Week created a chance to step out of routine and enter more intentionally into the heart of the faith. As students moved through Tenebrae, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil, many found not only powerful liturgies, but a deeper sense of meaning, mercy, and community.
For Miles, Holy Thursday stood out as especially meaningful. After the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, a large group of students, FOCUS missionaries, and seminarians traveled across Tallahassee to several altars of repose, stopping at each church to pray with Jesus.
“It was both very spiritually nourishing,” Miles said, “but also kind of fun.” He described the late-night pilgrimage as “a great way to build community during the most meaningful time of the year for our Catholic faith.”
For Vicki, Holy Thursday became deeply personal in a different way. While many students moved from chapel to chapel, she chose to remain in one chapel in adoration until midnight.
“That was the first time I spent that much time consecutively in adoration with Jesus,” she said. “I had so many insights, and I just felt Him speaking to my heart.” As she prayed and read from The Diary of St. Faustina, she found herself reflecting especially on God’s mercy. “I think that night, I felt so close to God,” she said. “I felt Him speaking to me.”
By Good Friday, the tone shifted into mourning and reflection. Students gathered for Stations of the Cross and later returned for the Good Friday service at the Co-Cathedral. For Vicki, one of the most powerful parts of the day was being surrounded by others who were entering into the same solemn reality.
“We were able to have a day of mourning, and just focus solely on Jesus,” she said. She described being part of the crowd in the Gospel reading that cried out for Christ’s crucifixion as especially sobering. It was a moment, she said, of recognizing human sin, but also Christ’s mercy.
That combination of sorrow and solidarity was part of what made the week feel so different from an ordinary week on campus. Vicki said that from Wednesday through Saturday, there was a sense that a whole community was entering into something sacred together.
“It was definitely different because, again, you had a whole community who was entering into this experience with you,” she said. Some of the girls in her Bible study were experiencing Holy Week this deeply for the first time, and getting to see them each night made the week even more meaningful.
Miles said that is exactly what Holy Week reveals about the deeper purpose of Catholic Noles. In the middle of a college culture that can feel repetitive and fragmented, he said, Catholic Noles helps students step into the rhythms of the Church together and find something more lasting there. Holy Week, in a particular way, shows that the ministry is not only about events or programs, but about helping students encounter Christ in the life of the Church and alongside one another.
He reflected that much of campus life can begin to feel like “the same things over and over and over again,” but Holy Week interrupts that pattern by inviting students to reflect more deeply. In his words, “the Church offers meaningfulness in the face of so much meaninglessness.” And because students enter into the week together, he said, they are able to share “the same highs and the same lows,” walking through sorrow and joy not in isolation, but in community.
That sense of community was central to both students’ experience. For Vicki, it was part of what made the liturgies so impactful. “It helps enter into it when the people around you are going through the same thing,” she said. “I’m around the people who are gonna go with me to the Good Friday service and be solemn.”
By the time the Easter Vigil arrived, the sorrow of the week had opened into joy. Vicki watched as catechumens received the sacraments and entered the Church, and she said seeing their faces, along with the joy of the bishop and Father Chris, was unforgettable
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Miles described the Easter Vigil as “the Mass of the year,” a moment when everything the Church had been preparing for finally broke open into light and joy. He remembered the beauty of the dark church filling with candlelight and the witness of seeing the bishop remain long after the liturgy, smiling and taking photos with the newly baptized and confirmed. “You just can’t help but see Christ in him,” Miles said.
For Vicki, Easter joy felt fuller because she had first walked through darkness. “After Good Friday, after death, there’s a resurrection,” she said. “That applies to everything in our lives as well.” After entering deeply into Christ’s Passion, she said, the resurrection felt not abstract, but real. After the Vigil, students gathered at the missionaries’ house, broke their Lenten fasts, and celebrated together.
And the impact of the week did not end there. Vicki said that walking through Holy Week together deepened friendships and left her with a stronger sense of God’s mercy.
“My relationships with some of the people have just gotten deeper,” she said. “And God’s mercy has been on my heart, and it’s been harder to despair of God’s mercy after moments like that.”
Miles said the effects lingered in the community even after Easter passed. “It is palpable,” he said. “Easter does something to you.”
Looking back, Vicki described Holy Week as an invitation not to rush past the most sacred days of the Church year, but to enter them fully.
“Just prepare your heart, and just let Jesus speak to you,” she said. “It is one of the holiest weeks of the entire year, and it’s the pinnacle of our faith.”
For students at Catholic Noles, Holy Week was more than a set of liturgies on the calendar. It was a shared journey through silence, sorrow, mercy, and joy — one that drew them more deeply into the heart of the faith, and closer to one another.
