Holy Week at Christ Church Anglican
Thoughts on Holy Week
This coming Sunday is Palm Sunday, which means we are getting ready to move into deep Lent, or Holy Week, an intensive time of prayer and preparation immediately before Easter.
What makes Holy Week so holy? In a very important sense, nothing. By Christ’s atoning death and mighty resurrection, he has extended his glorious reign over all time and space. Every day is a new day in his inaugurated kingdom, as we look forward to the culmination of his victory on that day when he returns to finish his work.
Christ secured his victory not in an eternal now or ethereal abstraction, but in time and space. God the Son became incarnate and lived a normal human life like we all do, bound like our lives all are by a particular locale and a particular culture and language and, most importantly, but a particular set of days and years. The liturgical Holy Week corresponds to the last actual week of Christ’s human life, which ended in his crucifixion and death. In that sense, Holy Week reminds us of the concrete actuality of Christ’s life and most especially his Passion, his one sacrifice once made for all. As it draws our attention and focuses our devotion on this most climactic moment of our Lord’s ministry to us, that moment when death was truly swallowed up by life, Holy Week is most holy indeed.
At Christ Church, we will be offering a number of services to help us focus our attention on this singular moment of our redemption in Christ which climax in the great "Three Days" (or Triduum in Latin), Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. As his victory is truly assured and not in any real sense repeated by our remembrance of it, hints of resurrection hope and glorious victory will be peppered throughout even the most solemn of our liturgies. We remember his Passion in the light of his resurrected glory. Even in Holy Week, the Lord is risen indeed!
What makes Holy Week so holy? In a very important sense, nothing. By Christ’s atoning death and mighty resurrection, he has extended his glorious reign over all time and space. Every day is a new day in his inaugurated kingdom, as we look forward to the culmination of his victory on that day when he returns to finish his work.
Christ secured his victory not in an eternal now or ethereal abstraction, but in time and space. God the Son became incarnate and lived a normal human life like we all do, bound like our lives all are by a particular locale and a particular culture and language and, most importantly, but a particular set of days and years. The liturgical Holy Week corresponds to the last actual week of Christ’s human life, which ended in his crucifixion and death. In that sense, Holy Week reminds us of the concrete actuality of Christ’s life and most especially his Passion, his one sacrifice once made for all. As it draws our attention and focuses our devotion on this most climactic moment of our Lord’s ministry to us, that moment when death was truly swallowed up by life, Holy Week is most holy indeed.
At Christ Church, we will be offering a number of services to help us focus our attention on this singular moment of our redemption in Christ which climax in the great "Three Days" (or Triduum in Latin), Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. As his victory is truly assured and not in any real sense repeated by our remembrance of it, hints of resurrection hope and glorious victory will be peppered throughout even the most solemn of our liturgies. We remember his Passion in the light of his resurrected glory. Even in Holy Week, the Lord is risen indeed!
Palm Sunday, March 29
Perhaps one of the most dramatic of all our liturgies throughout the year, the Palm Sunday liturgy is meant to contrast the extremes of Jesus’s own final week. On the first day of that week, he was ushered into Jerusalem as King David’s long-awaited heir on the praises and exaltations of an enthralled crowd. On the last day of that week, he was dead in a tomb, a mob of that same city having cried out “Crucify him! We have no king but Caesar! Crucify him!” We will process and sing his praises as David’s heir, and then we will take the part of the crowd in a dramatic reading of the Passion account of Mark’s Gospel. We will at once sing his praises and demand his public execution, a potent reminder that our sin has hopelessly confused us and makes us ultimately responsible for our Lord’s death.
Maundy Thursday, April 2
This service celebrates the Last Supper of our Lord, his establishment of Holy Communion, and his command (Latin mandatum, from whence the day’s name comes) that we love one another as he loved us and gave himself up for us. The service traditionally concludes with a solemn stripping of the sanctuary, as our Lord’s own body was stripped bare before his final humiliation. The service will be held jointly with the Methodists at 7:00 pm and will be about an hour long.
Good Friday, April 3
Noonday: We will partner with the Wayne Ministerium for the annual ecumenical service of the Passion at noon, the hour Christ was nailed to his cross. The procession will start at Wayne Presbyterian Church at noon and will conclude at St. Katherine of Sienna Roman Catholic Church on Lancaster Avenue in Wayne for the service proper.
Evening: Holy Communion is not traditionally celebrated between Maundy Thursday and the Easter Vigil. For that reason we will have a contemplative service of meditation and adoration of Christ’s Passion. The service will follow the format of Evening Prayer, with simple plainsong music, special intercessions for the world (the “solemn collects of Good Friday,” one of the most ancient parts of the Good Friday or any other liturgy), and a final meditation on the Passion using a Nigerian devotion adapted from the medieval Latin “Reproaches.” The service will be a little longer than one hour, starting at 7:00 pm at Wayne UMC.
Evening: Holy Communion is not traditionally celebrated between Maundy Thursday and the Easter Vigil. For that reason we will have a contemplative service of meditation and adoration of Christ’s Passion. The service will follow the format of Evening Prayer, with simple plainsong music, special intercessions for the world (the “solemn collects of Good Friday,” one of the most ancient parts of the Good Friday or any other liturgy), and a final meditation on the Passion using a Nigerian devotion adapted from the medieval Latin “Reproaches.” The service will be a little longer than one hour, starting at 7:00 pm at Wayne UMC.
Holy Saturday, April 4
The Easter Vigil is one of the most ancient Christian liturgies of any kind, and has been celebrated in its basic form for over sixteen hundred years. How can we at Christ Church Anglican not do such a service? The service will begin in the dark, symbolizing the darkness of Christ’s sealed tomb. The Easter Fire will be lit, symbolizing the beginning of his resurrected life out of death, and by this light we will read from the Old Testament of the gradual unfolding of God’s plan of salvation up to Christ. Then with the great “Easter Shout,” we will transition out of Lent and officially into Easter with the First Eucharist of Easter. The service will be about two hours long, starting at 8:00 pm at Wayne UMC.
Once again I want to stress that none of these services, while focusing as many of them do on the particulars of Christ’s suffering, are meant to convey that his final victory has not already been achieved once and for all time. He is risen! But as he calls us all who follow him to take up our crosses after him and marvel at the divine glory revealed by his self-emptying to the point of death, it is appropriate that we should set aside some time every year specially dedicated to that purpose. I hope that our Lord meets you richly as you worship with us at Christ Church Anglican this Holy Week.
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