It has been our custom to process from the Heroes Public House, through the precinct to the church, following a donkey, representing the animal that Jesus rode as ‘King’ into Jerusalem. Sadly, it has been impossible to requisition a donkey this year. However, scripture does not say that Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey at all. Mark, the earliest of the gospels to have been written down, says that it was a ‘colt’, and Luke also says the same. Matthew says it was an ass and a colt, and John that it was ‘an asses colt’. At any event a colt is technically a young male horse and, at the time of writing, that is what we have managed to obtain for the procession into our metaphorical Jerusalem to St George’s Church – so perhaps we are being more authentic!
On Maundy Thursday we reflect upon Jesus washing the feet of the disciples, an act in which we see the one who came to serve and not to be served, Jesus, the Messiah, who bids us do the same. We recreate the Last Supper in the Eucharist, and move with Christ into the Garden of Gethsemane, to watch and wait with the Christ who will be betrayed to death.
On Good Friday we mourn with Christians the world over as Jesus is crucified and laid in the tomb.
And then, on Holy Saturday, we celebrate the Easter Vigil, in which we reflect on the story of our redemption through the Old and New Testaments and end with the first Eucharist of Easter, when we praise God for the glorious resurrection of Christ, an event which we will celebrate again on Easter Day, as indeed we do at every celebration of the Eucharist.
The message of Holy Week, indeed of our own Christian pilgrimage, is the transformation of doubt and despair to faith and Easter joy, as summed up in the last verse of that great Easter hymn, Thine be the Glory, which we will doubtless sing this Eastertide:
No more we doubt thee,
glorious Prince of Life!
Life is naught without thee;
aid us in our strife.
Make us more than conquerors
through thy deathless love.
Bring us safe to Jordan
to thy home above.
Thine be the Glory
Risen, conqu’ring Son,
endless is the victory,
Thou oe’r death hast won.
With my love and prayers
Fr Colin
‘By the time you read this we will be some way through the penitential season of Lent, and looking towards the events of Holy Week, culminating in the great Feast of Easter. During Holy Week we journey with Christ through his last earthly days. I hope you will try to join with us for all of the liturgies of Holy Week, so that, having been through the pain of betrayal, denial, rejection and death, we can truly experience the joy of the resurrection at Easter.
I am hoping this year Holy Week will be as near to normal as possible.
Palm Sunday marks the beginning of this great week, so called because as Jesus entered the holy city of Jerusalem the crowds who had gathered cut down branches from the trees and spread them in the road in front of him, crying in joy ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the Highest!
