Holy Week

The Rector draws inspiration from the fourth century pilgrim, Egeria, to rediscover the power and grace of Holy Week.

The Holy Land has long been a place of Christian Pilgrimage – at the time of writing a group from Chester Diocese, led by the Bishops, is there, and in May a group from West Kirby will be making the journey to the Holy Places. Even in times of danger and difficulty there has been a steady stream of pilgrims visiting the Holy Places and seeking to enter more fully and more deeply into the story of our salvation, inescapably rooted in particular events and in a time and a place.

Back in the fourth century, despite the vagaries of transport, there were pilgrims, especially in Holy Week and Easter. Remarkably, we have the Journal of one of them, a devout Roman lady called Egeria. She writes of a complex pattern of worship centred on Jerusalem, of gathering to walk the way of the Palms on Palm Sunday, to celebrate the Eucharist and to keep watch on the evening of what we now call Maundy Thursday, to attend to the starkness and bareness of the Cross on the Friday, to watch and wait in the darkness of the Garden on Holy Saturday and then to celebrate with great joy on Easter Day.

It was not so much a series of services which Egeria and her fellow pilgrims attended, but one extended meditation and celebration, interspersed with space to rest and relax before returning to the way of the Passion. As the keeping of Holy Week spread from Palestine into the dispersed Church this concept of one extended celebration was retained. Over the centuries and in many different settings Christians have found it helpful to follow the events of the Lord’s Passion through a whole week – as they do so they have found great depth and richness and new truths and understanding breaking forth from what we thought was the “old, old story”. Above all they know that they have met with God afresh and anew, and their relationship with him is transformed. Holy Week is powerful and filled with grace.

See http://users.ox.ac.uk/~mikef/durham/egetra.html - scroll down to Holy Week – for Egeria’s own words.

Of course, the Church doesn’t pretend that it does not know what happens to the crucified Jesus – Holy Week is not a Passion Play – we can only look on the events of the Upper Room, the Betrayal, The Cross and the Tomb in the light of resurrection and the knowledge of the forgiveness and love declared there, but we need to enter again and again into the story to discover the depths of meaning, and the costly love of God.

The pattern of Holy Week services can seem “rather a lot” to tidy minds that like spirituality ordered and safe, but without it we become impoverished and risk losing the meaning of our faith altogether. Kenneth Leech, an influential writer on spirituality (and politics, and the drug culture, and the parish church, and a great deal else ……) writes in his most recent book, a distillation of forty years of ministry: I see more than ever how dangerous and spiritually damaging it is to jump from the Hosannas of Palm Sunday to the Alleluias of Easter Day, bypassing the anguish of Gethsemane, the dereliction of Calvary and the perplexity of the ‘descent into hell’. If we try to bypass this, then spirituality becomes a form of kitsch – a nice feeling, offering comfort without transformation.

Strong words, but I sense that he is right – the pattern of Holy Week allied to open and searching hearts can be the making of us and of a church community. Holy Week and Easter is not a time to pick and choose, but to enter into the one celebration, spread throughout the week, and so enter afresh into the wonder and awesomeness of the love of God. As we encounter the events of salvation in liturgy and symbol and word and silence, they will work their transforming power on us, and through us on this place where the Lord has called us to be.

Let’s keep Holy Week, the whole of the week, together and discover again the amazing grace that lies at the heart of being a Christian !

Wishing you a good Holy Week and a glorious Easter,

Roger Clarke

April 2007

“Doing Theology in Altab Ali Park” – Kenneth Leech, Darton, Longman and Todd 2006 (ISBN 10: 0-232-52571-4 or ISBN 13; 978-0-232-52571-7) - a very readable, often anecdotal, account of the church’s ministry in the East End of London, but with profound implications far beyond and full of challenges and insights for anyone who wants to take seriously what it means to be a Parish Church and a priestly people. Highly recommended.