From the Rector: Looking Toward Holy Week

If we have been united with Christ in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. (Romans 6:5)

Dear friends,

As we come close to Holy Week this year, we carry with us many joys and many sorrows—as does our world.

The mystery of the cross and resurrection of Jesus is big enough to embrace them all.

At the cross we see just how far God is willing to go to be with us. To the foot of the cross we can bring all our sorrows, all the laments of the world’s pain. And, strangely, at the cross there is also a kind of solemn joy—the joy that comes from the assurance that nothing, not even this, can defeat God’s love for us. That love carries us, as it carried Jesus, through the worst of what the power of death can do, and into the new life of the Risen One.

The Great Three Days from Maundy Thursday through Easter are the heart of the church year. Whether you have never experienced these profound liturgies or whether you have celebrated them for decades, please take the opportunity to participate as fully as you can. I promise you will be transformed.

Our Holy Week and Easter schedule is now online and is also going out by mail to our church mailing list. In addition to the central services of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Great Vigil of Easter, we also have many precious devotional opportunities that enrich this time, including the Stations of the Cross; a time of labyrinth meditation on Good Friday; and, for the first time since 2019, the liturgy of Tenebrae on the evening of Wednesday in Holy Week, a service of chant and darkness that is a moving prelude to the Great Three Days.

I can't wait to celebrate Easter with you. May the joy of the risen Lord touch your hearts in this sacred season.

In Christ's love,

Stephen