Day: April 2, 2009

Events

About Holy Week

We enter into the intensity and the mystery of Christ’s Passion with Palm Sunday. It marks the beginning of Holy Week. In the Passion of Christ our humanity is on display in all of its varied array and disarray, in all of our faults and failings, in all our sins and foolishnesses, in all the betrayals and deceits of our hearts. And yet there is a great good that is shown here as well, a greater good which ultimately speaks to our dignity restored. Holy Week shows the height and the depth, the length and the breadth of God’s love for us. Do we care enough to enter into what we are given to behold?

I encourage you ever so strongly to make the effort. The fullness of the Passion is set before us this week from all four Gospels. This week, in a way, is one continuous liturgy. What kind of Easter can there be without Good Friday, without the fullness of the Passion, which this week presents us?

Walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us
an offering and a sacrifice to God.

I remind you of the schedule of services for this week: Wednesday Night, 9:00pm, Tenebrae, meaning shadows or darkness, is a short service of mostly psalm readings which anticipate the Passion; Maundy Thursday marks the beginning of the Triduum Sacrum – the three great holy days –  in which we gather with Christ in the Upper Room and then go with him to Gethsemane (the 1 hour watch); Good Friday takes us to the Cross with Mattins at 7:00am; the 11:00am Ecumenical Service at Windsor United Church and The Solemn Liturgy of Good Friday at 7:00pm; Holy Saturday gathers us first at the grave with Mattins & Ante-Communion at 10:00am and then to watch with a short Vigil at 7:00pm ending with the Lauds of Easter Day leading us to the grand and glorious pageant of the Resurrection on Easter Day beginning with the 7:00am ecumenical sunrise service at Fort Edward, followed by 8:00am & 10:30am Holy Communion services and Evening Prayer at 4:30pm.

Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us,
therefore let us keep the feast!

Fr. Curry
Christ Church ’09

Print this entry

Prayers and liturgy

All Glory, laud and honour

All Glory, laud and honour

Refrain:

All glory, laud and honour
To Thee, Redeemer, King,
To Whom the lips of children
Made sweet hosannas ring.

Thou art the King of Israel,
Thou David’s royal Son,
Who in the Lord’s Name comest,
The King and Blessèd One.

Refrain:

The company of angels
Are praising Thee on High,
And mortal men and all things
Created make reply.

Refrain:

The people of the Hebrews
With palms before Thee went;
Our prayer and praise and anthems
Before Thee we present.

Refrain:

To Thee, before Thy passion,
They sang their hymns of praise;
To Thee, now high exalted,
Our melody we raise.

Refrain:

Thou didst accept their praises;
Accept the prayers we bring,
Who in all good delightest,
Thou good and gracious King.

Refrain:

This 9th century hymn by St. Theodulph of Orleans has, from its beginnings, been associated with Palm Sunday and thus with Holy Week. An apocryphal legend claims that Theodulph sang it from a prison window as King Louis the Pious was processing on Palm Sunday, and was freed as a result of the King’s pleasure! In any event, the hymn, along with its 17th century tune by Melchior Teschner, first published in Leipzig in 1615, has become a memorable feature of the Palm Sunday liturgy. As J.M. Neale, the 19th century translator of many Latin hymns, noted “another verse was usually sung until the 17th Century, at the quaintness of which we can scarcely avoid a smile“:

Be Thou, O Lord, the Rider,
And we the little ass,
That to God’s holy city
Together we may pass.

We sing this hymn in procession, out of the ‘prison’ of the Hall, as it were, on our way to the Church (minus the verse above, though without disrespect to all and any little asses!) Gloria, laus et honor.

Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Print this entry