Dear All,
We have reached the last days of Lent but have still to face the intensity of Holy Week. We are sending you rather a lot of words but hope they may stretch over the coming week. We will also give you again the links for our zoom Reflections for the end of the week.
The blessing this week is John Glynn’s Song of Blessing. We will pray it for all of you who have been walking the Lenten journey with us and with the people of Ukraine who surely have had a Lent like no other.
Reflections:
Maundy Thursday 14.4.22: Reflection on the Washing of the Feet – 5.30pm. (about 25/30 mins)
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88261672004?pwd=Qng3bjBMZHV4UzY3Ylo0SHZrc2EyUT09 ID: 882 6167 2004 Passcode: 987291
Good Friday 15.4.22: Reflection: What is this day about?
7pm. (about 25/30 mins)
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82900556488?pwd=dGNVd0d5a3diclg1MUlZc0dGTUZ2QT09 ID: 829 0055 6488 Passcode: 060489
Holy Saturday 16.4.22: Reflection: A Forgotten Day?
10am (about 25/30 mins)
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85148484877?pwd=RVZpMDZuNEVvSmpVSmF4TXJMaDFkQT09 ID: 851 4848 4877 Passcode: 042996
ALSO: LIVE in Blessed Sacrament Church on Holy Saturday 16.4.22. at 11.30am – A Reflection for Holy Saturday.
Holy Week – as above &
Palm Sunday: 5.30 zoom – gospel reflection & Evening Prayer – usual Sunday link.
(Monday 11th 5.30 – zoom – last session of Lent Course)
Tuesday 12th 5.30 – live in Blessed Sacrament, Melbourne.
No further Evening Prayer until Monday 18th.
With our love
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.
Palm Sunday
Kathy Galloway
On this “ambivalent” day, this day of joy of hosannas and children singing and laughter in the Sanctuary, this day when we prepare ourselves to take the journey of suffering into Holy Week, it is the best of times and the worst of times. It is an ambivalent time. It is to this that we are called. As the triumphant shouts of hosanna fade into the background and the way of the cross lies ahead, we are called to face the temptation of the love of power and to see it undermined by the self-offering of the one who will be put to death by power on Friday but who will rise on Sunday, establishing for eternity the dominance of the power of love. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Approaching Holy Week
Cardinal Hume
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’. This week 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 on Palm Sunday with the crowds in order to follow him. We don’t just meet him when everyone is waving palm branches & singing ‘Hosanna’. He said to us, ‘If anyone wants to be my disciple, they must deny themselves, take up their cross & follow me’. So in what we read in the gospel story & from our own experience of life & what is going on in the world close to home & far away, the experience of the world’s suffering is taken by Christ in order to sanctify it, to give it meaning & significance. This week, almost hour by hour we can follow Christ in those moments of his passion taking with us our own suffering & that of our world.
It is good then to decide 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 follow him more closely & witness to him – Christ who was greeted joyously as he went into Jerusalem, who suffered, died but who then rose from the dead.
Catch me in my scurrying
Ted Loder
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.