Read "Lothair" by Benjamin Disraeli online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
There were Tenebrae on the following days, Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, and Lothair was present on both occasions.
"There is also a great office on Friday," said Father Coleman to Lothair, "which perhaps you would not like to attend-the mass of the pre-sanctified. We bring back the blessed sacrament to the desolate altar, and unveil the cross. It is one of our highest ceremonies, the adoration of the cross, which the Protestants persist in calling idolatry, though I presume they will give us leave to know the meaning of our own words and actions, and hope they will believe us when we tell them that our genuflexions and kissing of the cross are no more than exterior expressions of that love which we bear in our hearts to Jesus crucified; and that the words adoration and adore, as applied to the cross, only signify that respect and veneration due to things immediately relating to God and His service."