HOLY WEEK AT CHRIST CHURCH
Assist us mercifully with your help, O Lord God of our salvation, that we may enter with joy upon the contemplation of those mighty acts, whereby you have given us life and immortality; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
- Liturgy for Palm Sunday (Book of Common Prayer)
The heart of 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 in 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 reason 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 a response.
The way the story is told has changed and taken on the language of many cultures and is infused with the skills of artists and enriched with an unimaginable weight of prayer over the ages. The earliest celebration was one event. It began in the night that ended with the Dawn of Easter Day. During this 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 them in sharing the Bread and Wine by which the Risen Christ sustains his people.
After the period of persecutions 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 tradition was being forged in England, the customs were sharply curtailed and simplified. Over the last four centuries, the Anglican Tradition has recaptured much of what had been lost, while never losing the insight that it is in 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 (and of course, children using the palm fronds for a sword fight at coffee hour) to the silence of the watch at the Gethsemane Altar. Some, like the basic shape of the Vigil, come from the earliest days of the Church.
During Holy Week, particularly in one as full and varied as we try to keep here at Christ Church, we draw upon thousands of years and countless cultures as we follow the way of the Cross, pray with Jesus in his agony, and announce the good news of the Resurrection. More is going on in even the simplest Eucharist than we could name or describe; certainly the liturgies of Holy Week are deep and multifaceted. We have an obligation to use the resources that are ours as part of the catholic tradition of Christianity. These Rites are powerful; the yearly repetition creates deep memories and shapes our imagination. It is a demanding week, requiring attention and effort to participate fully. If we answer Jesus’ call to “watch with me,” God will work through word and action to accomplish in us God’s own purposes.
HOLY WEEK
24 March, Palm Sunday: Sunday of Passion
7:30am Morning Prayer
8:00am Blessing of the Palms & Low Mass
9:00am Blessing of the Palms & Holy Eucharist, Rite II,with hymns and choir
11:00am The Blessing of the Palms & Procession, Solemn High Mass.
5:00pm Passiontide Vespers with Buxtehude’s Cantatas on the Passion.
9:00pm Compline
25 March , Monday in Holy Week
8:00am Morning Prayer
12:15pm Low Mass
The Annunciation is transferred to the week after the Second Sunday of Easter.
26 March, Tuesday in Holy Week
8:00am Morning Prayer
5:30pm Low Mass
27 March, Spy Wednesday
8:00am Morning Prayer
12:15pm Low Mass
6:30pm Tenebrae: Psalms & Lamentations sung in a candlelit Church
28 March, Maundy Thursday
8:00am Morning Prayer
6:30pm Solemn High Mass with the Maundy Thursday Rites
A watch continues until the Good Friday Liturgy at Noon
29 March, Good Friday
8:00am Morning Prayer
12:00 Noon: The Solemn Liturgy of the Day
5:00pm Stations of the Cross and Evening Prayer
30 March, Holy Saturday
8:45am Morning Prayer 9:00am Liturgy of the Word
EASTER BEGINS
6:30 PM The Great Vigil and the First Mass of Easter
31 March, Easter Day
7:30am Morning Prayer
8:00am Low Mass
9:00am Holy Eucharist, Rite II, with hymns and choir.
11:00amProcession and Solemn High Mass
9:00pm Compline, with a celebration of the Holy Eucharist
Triduum Guest Preacher: This year we return to a parish tradition of inviting a guest preacher for the Triduum and Easter. The Rev'd Scott Gunn is executive director of Forward Movement, a ministry of The Episcopal Church, known widely for its flagship publication Forward Day by Day. Fr. Gunn works "to reinvigorate the life of the church," which is the historic charter of Forward Movement dating from 1934. Before his call to Forward Movement, he was a parish priest in the Diocese of Rhode Island. Prior to that, Fr. Gunn worked in information technology at a range of places including the MIT Media Lab, The Atlantic Monthly, Education Development Center, and IBM. He was educated at Yale Divinity School, Brown University, and Luther College. While studying at Yale Divinity School, Fr. Gunn attended Christ Church and was confirmed here. Fr. Gunn is married to Sherilyn Pearce and lives in Cincinnati with their dog. He is also one of the priests responsible for Lent Madness (and remember to vote for St Hilda, on March 11). You can read his blog at www.sevenwholedays.org.