Dear Friends,
Hopefully you are still on board the Lenten journey. It can seem a long one if we are trying to take it seriously. But it isn’t too late. If we have made a sluggish start, or maybe, given up en route, these last days are time enough to get back into it.
I hadn’t come across ‘Going up to Jerusalem’ before but found it worthwhile to reflect on. I hope this or one of the other attachments will be good for you.
The blessing this week comes a John Rutter composition: ‘Go Forth’.
Sending love to you all, and wishing you well in the next week
Journeying through the Triduum:
20-25 minute reflections – music word and visuals
Maundy Thursday (28th March): 5.30pm
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83740974343?pwd=OFBqTisramNpVEJ6dEhTV1UxV1J2dz09
Good Friday (29th March): 7pm
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81587370030?pwd=Vmc0QXUyZGs4Z3JtRU41TVZ4ZElnUT09
Holy Saturday (30th March): 10am
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82974784734?pwd=ZkFuc3c5YmVBemgwWmlrbkRGYmMvZz09
On Holy Saturday we are also having a zoomed Evening Prayer – all welcome.
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89209375224?pwd=NVkvVXU4WkdSWCs5bTdrS1NsMk9pUT09
Palm Sunday
Today, Palm Sunday, we remember how the crowds went out to meet Christ, calling out: ’Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’ Then we listen to that part of the gospel which describes the passion & death of our Lord. This week, then, we are to set out to meet Christ in his passion, in those last days of his suffering. We go out to meet him first in order to follow him. He said to us: ‘If you want to be my disciple, you must deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me.’ So in what we read in the gospel story and from our own experience of life and what is going on in the world around us, the experience of the world’s suffering is taken by Christ in order to sanctify it, to give it meaning and significance. This week, almost hour by hour, we can follow Christ in those moments of his passion.
It is good then to decide now that this is indeed going to be a Holy Week, a different week, a week when we meet Christ in his passion, in order that when the resurrection is celebrated we can, after Easter Sunday, follow him more closely and witness to him – Christ who suffered, died and rose from the dead.
Cardinal Hume
What ‘Good’ is this?
Living Lord,
was this the lifting high?
Humiliation seems complete:
forsaken by God;
deserted by friends;
mocked by many.
And in our ‘Holy Week’
we call this ‘Good’!
What ‘Good’ is this?
Loving Lord,
you bore our shame:
in truth our names
inscribe the gallows wood.
And in our ‘Holy Week’
we call this ‘Good’!
What ‘Good’ is this?
Good for us:
your isolation for our community;
your capture for our freedom;
your life for our sin.
And in this ‘Holy Week’
we call this ‘Good’!
but not to gloss
the pain endured
as if your loss
was somehow spared.
STEPHEN BROWN
Going up to Jerusalem
John Harvey
Loving God, at this time,
we remember that going up to Jerusalem
cost Jesus his very life.
So we come before you,
conscious of the way religious words
and holy phrases
can slip so easily from our lazy lips
and our hardened hearts.
What do we really know
of your mountainous truth,
your rock-hard integrity,
the depth of your suffering
for love of us all?
Forgive us for the shallowness
of our faith,
and the timidity of our following:
forgive us for the ready excuses
we make for going our own way
and claiming it as yours.
Turn us round again, we pray,
by your Holy Spirit,
active within us and among us.
Show us how to be open again
to your faithfulness
and to your freedom,
that we may live
new lives
and be again bearers
of the seeds of the Kingdom
of Jesus.
From Introducing Liberation Theology – L & C Boff
……..Christians see in the poor the challenging face of the Suffering servant, Jesus Christ. At first there is silence, silent and sorrowful contemplation, as if in the presence of a mystery that calls for introspection and prayer. The Crucified in these crucified persons weeps and cries out, ‘I was hungry …in prison…naked’. Here what is needed is not so much contemplation as effective action for liberation. The Crucified needs to be raised to life. We are on the side of the poor only when we struggle alongside them against the poverty that has been unjustly created and forced on them. Service is solidarity with the oppressed and also implies an act of love for the suffering Christ, a liturgy pleasing to God.