From the Rector

Dear Friends in Christ,

The series of liturgies we know as Holy Week (really just one liturgy now celebrated over three days) plus Palm Sunday form the heart (the crux even–meaning the Cross) of the Christian life and year.

The heart of the Christian Faith is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We see in Jesus the full glory of God’s own life and the full development of human dignity. Every story of the Gospels adds to this fullness; the events we commemorate during Holy Week bring us to the heart of the story. What we see requires a response.

It is quite possible to look at Jesus and find nothing to attract us or even reasons to scoff. It is possible to find something compelling, and still to finally turn away. There are those who follow if only at a distance and there are, in every generation, those who can stand by the cross and who will arrive early at the Empty Tomb. Holy Week exposes us to the story each year and requires from us, those who name ourselves Christians, a response.

The History of Holy Week
The earliest celebration of Holy Week (also called the Triduum) was one event. It began in the night that ended with the Dawn of Easter Day. During that long night the Church told the key stories of Scripture, kept vigil, and prayed as new converts were baptized into Christ’s Death and rejoiced as they joined with them in sharing the Bread and Wine—the Body and Blood of Christ by which the Risen Lord sustains his people and binds them together as One Body.

After the period of persecutions had ended, in the Church in Jerusalem, it became a custom for the various events of Jesus’ last days to be remembered with prayers, hymns, and ceremonies in the places where they occurred. A Spanish Nun, Egeria, made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem about the year 400AD.

She returned inspired by what she had seen and the customs of the Church in Jerusalem spread through Western Europe. Rites were developed that re-enacted the events of the week. The full range of human creativity exploded in poetry and music, painting and statuary, to impress the story on the hearts and minds of Christians.

In the 16th Century, as our particular Anglican tradition was being forged and fought over in England, the customs were sharply curtailed and simplified (this coincided with events like the sacking of the monasteries of England and the destruction of much sacred art). Over the last four centuries, the Anglican tradition has recaptured much of what was lost, while never losing the insight that it is gleaned from hearing and responding to the story—and not the ceremonies themselves. That is central.

The ceremonies vary from the exuberance of Palm Sunday’s procession (complete with children using palm fronds for sword fights at coffee hour) to the silence of the watch at the Altar of Repose from just after the Maundy Thursday liturgy to the next day’s Good Friday solemnities.

The final liturgy of the week, the Easter Vigil, will end with the point just before we proclaim that Christ is Risen. We will save that joyous and raucous acclamation for the first service when we can worship together again as a community. Christ is still risen and we will celebrate.

With every proclamation of the Resurrection, we remember that things are different— that because of Christ's victory our lives are changed. So as we worship, sing, and celebrate, let our hearts be restored and renewed by that old story we tell again and again. Christ has died. Christ is Risen. Christ will come again.

Yours in Resurrection Hope,

—Fr Robert