Walk with Jesus through the Week of the Passion
In previous years, I have often said that I believe we can fully understand Easter only if we first walk the way of Jesus’ Passion. The profundity of Easter escapes us, unless we experience and understand the wild emotional swing of the Jerusalem crowd, the anxiety felt by Jesus as he prayed that the cup might pass from him, and the grief of God when Jesus dies so that we might experience resurrection.
And then, this year the coronavirus arrived almost exactly with Ash Wednesday. Since the beginning of Lent, we have experienced wild emotional swings. We have felt anxiety. We have grieved as we have read the news. This entire Lenten season, it feels as if we have walked the way of the Passion, and so I believe that we will grasp Holy Week and Easter this year as perhaps we never have before.
There is a theological word worth knowing in these days: prolepsis. It means living now as if something in the future has already come to pass. This coming Easter Sunday, we will experience the resurrection of Jesus, which assures us that light always ultimately overcomes darkness, and that life always ultimately triumphs over death. As we continue to endure the coronavirus, may Easter give us present joy but also proleptic joy, as we rejoice in the new life of God’s promise, which we will experience when we can all return together. Soon, and very soon!
The Easter Offering
As we move through Holy Week, your Cathedral staff are all fully engaged in ministry. The pastoral care, outreach, worship, and program ministries of the Cathedral carry on, and supporting Cathedral ministries is as important as ever. Each year, our Easter Offering is an important part of our Holy Week observance. Though we are unable to send the Easter Offering mailing via the postal service, you can make your offering in any of these ways:
The Easter Hat Photo
For the past several years, Cathedral parishioners wearing Easter hats to church have gathered in the Bishop’s Courtyard after Easter services for a photo. This year, we invite you to take a photo of yourself in your Easter hat and email it to Christy Orman at [email protected]! The deadline to receive photos is noon this Thursday, April 9.
Holy Week Worship
and Easter Season Programming
This Thursday through Easter Sunday, the Cathedral will post daily Holy Week services on the Holy Week services page of the Cathedral website.
On Maundy Thursday at 7 p.m. we will provide worship services in both English and Spanish. The Spanish service will be traditional. The English service will be interactive. In the early Christian church, believers gathered for an “agape meal” or a love feast in reenactment of the Last Supper. This year, you are encouraged to gather with your family and friends around your dinner table or on the phone and share an agape meal, after which the service will walk us through the importance of breaking bread together as well as the ritual of washing one another’s feet, which embodies the servant love Jesus commands us to express toward one another.
The Good Friday service will be posted at noon and will be Stations of the Cross, filmed in the Cathedral itself. As the officiants move through the Cathedral, you will be able to see the poignant and moving stations that are customarily hung in the nave during Lent as we walk the Via Dolorosa with Jesus on his way to Calvary.
On Holy Saturday, we will share Easter in Memory of Her at 4 p.m., a dramatic presentation of word and song from the perspective of the women at the Passion. This program is from Brigid’s Place. At 8 p.m. will be the Easter Vigil, where we move from the darkness of the tomb to the light of resurrection.
On Easter Sunday, the darkness of Good Friday is dispelled! Our joy explodes forth in song as we sing such hymns as “Jesus Christ is Risen Today.” In doing so, we celebrate Jesus’ rising from the grave and, in his rising, his gift to us of new life. Services will be at 11 a.m., 1 p.m. (en espanol) and 5 p.m. (The Well). Through the wonder of video editing, our 11 a.m. online service will even include the brass ensemble that Cathedral parishioners so dearly love.
And, beginning the Sunday after Easter, I’m excited to announce Acts in Easter, a new way for the Cathedral to engage our faith and stay connected with one another during the fifty days of Eastertide. On Sunday, April 19, the Cathedral community is invited to begin reading the Book of Acts together. Acts is about how the Holy Spirit forms and shapes Christian community in times of uncertainty. I hope you’ll join us in reading the book together, but even more so, I hope that you’ll join one of our weekly online small groups for discussion and fellowship. Our children, youth and family ministries are also programming around Acts, so Cathedral members of all generations can participate. Stay tuned for more information about Acts in Easter.
Grace and peace,
The Very Reverend Barkley Thompson, Dean
English