Preparing for Holy Week and Easter

See the Holy Week service schedule here.

Someone once called Lent “the annual Episcopal revival.” That bears some truth. We stand the chance of having our faith freshened and our devotion strangely warmed as we engage in communal acts of prayer and adoration during the forty days of Lent.

If Lent is the revival, Holy Week is the altar call. The Church calls the faithful to come forward, to come around, to come home during the climactic week of Lent, the apex of the Church Year.

Time after time those who set aside Holy Week as a special time to move deeply into the memory and meaning of Christ’s Passion find themselves making connections between their lives and his. And those connections, after all, are the heart of the uniqueness of Christian faith.

Now is the time to get ready.

Start by understanding what we are doing and why.

On Palm Sunday, the community re-enacts Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem by gathering at the font and then processing with palms around the church. When the liturgy of the Word begins on Palm Sunday—also known as Passion Sunday—we are deep into Holy Week, all hosannas faded. This year we read St. Luke’s passion story. Expect it to hear different voices reading.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of Holy Week prepare us for the Triduum, the three great days preceding Easter. The community gathers for the Holy Eucharist at 8:00am each of those mornings.

Tenebrae, a service growing in popularity, is a moving and beautiful office whose name means “shadows.” At 7:00pm on Wednesday, it moves us towards the Triduum.

Maundy Thursday has twin emphases. Following the chronology of the first three gospels, we mark Christ’s giving us the Holy Communion on the night when he was betrayed. Following the sequence of events in John’s gospel we commemorate the washing of feet as the annual ritual recalling us to the standard of Love within the Christian community and its expression in selflessly serving the world in Christ’s name.

As we grouped ourselves around the baptismal font on Ash Wednesday, so we will return to the font on Maundy Thursday for the annual foot washing. Everyone will be invited to participate. Those who wish to do so may lay hands on and pray for others while their feet are being washed. Planners are attempting to construct the foot-washing liturgy in a way that we are inescapably mindful of community, not engaging in a fundamentally private devotional act.

Following the communion, the Blessed Sacrament will be taken from the altar and solemnly processed to the font where it will be placed and kept until Good Friday. This will remind us that the font is the place of burial: “by baptism we were buried with Christ and lay dead…” (Romans 6:4).

Our Maundy Thursday service is a bilingual service, with members of our Spanish- and English-speaking congregations joining together this evening.

On Good Friday, after The Way of the Cross in which we again trace the story and the steps of Christ’s passion, the Good Friday Liturgy includes the reading of the St. John Passion, solemn prayers for the Church and the world, and the veneration of the cross. As with the foot-washing on Thursday night, the community will go to the font for the veneration. Led by the cross, we will assemble around the font, singing the traditional hymns and anthems thanking God for the gift of Jesus’ life and saving death on the cross.

By encircling the font, we will again recall how our humanity in baptism is united to the humanity of Jesus, and how in baptism our mortality is redeemed and blessed by his death. We venerate the cross not in a private, personal act, but in a communal recognition that on the cross, Jesus draws all humans to himself and to each other. Following the hymns and anthems extolling the glory of the cross, the Blessed Sacrament will be taken from the font, processed to the altar where we will receive communion in thanksgiving for Jesus’ death and in anticipation of the resurrection.

Holy Saturday’s Liturgy of the Word, when we are gathered around the empty font, is quiet and meditative. Following the liturgy, we will decorate the church for Easter.

At 8:00 on Saturday night, the Great Vigil of Easter begins. After hearing the story of salvation in the traditional lessons from the Old Testament, we will renew our baptismal vows. Easter thus becomes a celebration not only of Christ’s resurrection, but our resurrection to Life in Christ through baptism.

 

Here are specific ways to answer the call of Holy Week, to make the most of the high point of the Church Year.

Mark your calendar so that your emphasis the entire week of March 28 through April 4 will be your participation in the Assembly of God’s People. It is unlikely that you can do everything. And the point is not to see how many times you can be in church. But treat the Week as what it is: the high holy days that give depth and meaning to everything else in your life.

Remember our whole Lenten emphasis has been welcoming the stranger. Think of it as expanding St. Stephen’s to include people who have not yet become a part of us. One of the nicest invitations you can extend is to a friend, a family member, a co-worker, to join you for the most important time of the year.

While the community is primary, what we do individually supports our corporate efforts. Read the Passion gospel one or more times (Luke 22:14-23:49; John 18:1-19:42). Check the parish library for a book to read. Or make a decision to fast on Good Friday and perhaps to keep a limited fast on the other days of Holy Week. Use the prayers in the Book of Common Prayer (available online: www.bcponline.org) to center yourself for five or ten minutes of meditation when you rise or before you go to bed.

And finally, be a part of the Easter celebration. There is a place for you and those you bring with you at any one of the Easter liturgies.

The Rev. Frank Dunn, Senior Priest