tenebrae's origins

[Jerky]

At 02:55 PM 4/25/00 -0500, you wrote:
>A paragraph from the mass guide handed out at my parish on Saturday night:
>
>                                 Tenebrae
>The office of Tenebrae (meaning darkness or shadow) is a Holy Week 
>devotion dating back to the 7th or 8th century A.D. and is characterized 
>by scripture readings and the successive extinguishing of candles as the 
>service progresses.

After the final candle is snuffed, the Tenebrae ceremony becomes even more 
impressive, culminating (in Montreal, anyway), with the rapid, cacaphonic 
opening and closing of large wooden boxes in the dim, stained-glass 
half-light of the cathedral, meant to symbolize the other "occult" 
phenomena which accompanied the darkness.

Cheers,
Jerky