Dear All,
Palm Sunday this weekend. If we join the crowd in the gospel we are one moment cheering and strewing our garments out in front of Jesus & shouting ‘Hosanna’, and not much later in the week shouting ‘Crucify him’ – our moods too can swing quickly. There is a lot written about Palm Sunday and we hope that something here will help you to reflect on the day and the week ahead. Next week will bring us along the Holy Week road and into Holy Saturday & Easter Sunday. All so quickly.
For the blessing this week we will have Libera’s Deep Peace. May you experience that deep peace this week even as we follow the Holy Week story.
With our love & prayer for you all
Information:
For those who join us for Evening Prayer:
- In person at Blessed Sacrament Church: we will not be there this coming week on Tuesday, 24th or Wednesday 25th – we will be there in Holy Week, Tuesday 31st & Wednesday 1st April. We won’t be there in Easter week, Tuesday 7th & Wednesday 8th but we will be back again on Tuesday 14th & Wednesday 15th.
- Zoom: we won’t be zooming from Thursday 2nd until Sunday 12th April.
Easter 2026 – If you might be interested in spending the Easter weekend with us at New Hall, please look on our website for details – ‘Canonesses of the Holy Sepulchre’. It can be fully or partly residential – Maundy Thursday afternoon until after Easter Sunday lunch – or you can choose the parts of the programme that fit round other commitments. The liturgies will be creative and participative, and hopefully will relate to our lives and the lives of people across our world with its many areas of conflict.
At New Hall, alongside the main services over the Easter weekend, there will be
- Good Friday 7.30pm in the chapel: Music and readings for Good Friday including extracts from Handel’s Messiah. Either come and sing or just come and listen.
- Reflections on the themes of Holy Saturday. Meet at the school front door 11.15am to walk to the canopy for 11.30am liturgy
Catch me in my scurrying
Catch me in my anxious scurrying, Lord,
and hold me in this Lenten season:
hold my feet to the fire of your grace
and make me attentive to my mortality
that I may begin to die now
to those things that keep me
from living with you
and with my neighbours on this earth;
to grudges and indifference,
to certainties that smother possibilities,
to my fascination with false securities,
to my addiction to sweatless dreams,
to my arrogant insistence on how it has to be;
to my corrosive fear of dying someday
which eats away the wonder of living this day
and the adventure of losing my life
in order to find it in you.
Catch me in my aimless scurrying, Lord,
and hold me in this Lenten season:
hold my heart to the beat of your grace
and create in me a resting place,
a kneeling place,
a tip-toe place
where I can recover from the dis-ease of my grandiosities
which fill my mind and calendar with busy self-importance,
that I may become vulnerable enough
to dare intimacy with the familiar,
to listen cup-eared to your summons,
and to watch squint-eyed for your crooked finger
in the crying of a child,
in the hunger of the street people,
in the fear of the contagion of terrorism in all people,
in the rage of those oppressed because of sex or race,
in the smouldering resentments of exploited third-world nations,
in the sullen apathy of the poor and ghetto-strangled people,
in my lonely doubt and limping ambivalence;
and somehow
during this season of sacrifice,
enable me to sacrifice time
and possessions
and securities,
to do something …
something about what I see,
something to turn the water of my words
into the wine of will and risk,
into the bread of blood and blisters,
into the blessedness of deed,
of a cross picked up,
a saviour followed.
Catch me in my mindless scurrying, Lord,
and hold me in this Lenten season:
hold my spirit to the beacon of your grace
and grant me light enough to walk boldly,
to feel passionately,
to love aggressively;
grant me enough peace to want more,
to work for more
and to submit to nothing less,
and to fear only you …
only you!
Bequeath me not becalmed seas,
slack sails and premature benedictions,
but breathe into me torment,
storm enough to make within myself
and from myself,
something …
something new,
something saving,
something true,
a gladness of heart,
a pitch for a song in the storm,
a word of praise lived,
a gratitude shared,
a cross dared,
a joy received.
Ted Loder
Lead us into Holy Week
We tell your story, we follow in your footsteps,
Lead us into Holy Week.
We walk towards the city, we wait in the garden,
Lead us onto holy ground.
We journey towards death, we hope for resurrection,
Lead us into holy joy.
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 depths of your suffering
for love of us all?
Forgive us for the shallowness
of our faith,
and the timidity of our following:
forgive 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 & 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.
John Harvey
What ‘Good’ is this?
Stephen Brown
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.