Holy Week
There is a mysterious intensity to Holy Week that begins with Palm Sunday. It is the intensity of Christ’s Passion. 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 of our sins and foolishnesses. And yet there is a great good that is shown as well, a great good which ultimately speaks to human dignity restored. Holy Week shows us nothing less than ‘the height and the depth, the length and the breadth’ of God’s love for us. How will we respond? With indifference or with devotion?
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: the Morning and Evening Services held each day of Holy Week; especially, Wednesday’s 9:00pm Service of Tenebrae, meaning shadows or darkness, a short service of mostly psalm readings, which anticipates the Passion; Maundy Thursday which 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; Good Friday which takes us to the Cross with Matins at 7:00am; the 11:00am ecumenical service at the Windsor United Church and The Solemn Liturgy of Good Friday at 7:00pm; Holy Saturday which gathers us, first, to pray, at the grave, reflectively, with Matins & Ante-Communion at 10:00am, and, then, to watch expectantly 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, 8:00am & 10:30am Holy Communion services, and Evening Prayer at 4:00pm at Christ Church.
Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us,
therefore let us keep the feast!