Walking with Jesus

I write between Christmas, 2009, and the New Year, 2010. Like most people, I cannot help looking back over the past year, recalling some of the main events. Like many others, I am also looking forward to the New Year, wondering how I can live my life better in the future.

Actually, I spend a considerable time planning ahead. This is necessary for all of us, to some extent, but I need to plan and prepare some of our services and activities quite a way in advance. So, I am currently preparing: a New Year service on 31st December; a Wedding on January 2nd; a baptism and the Epiphany services on January 3rd; the Epiphany Carol service on 10th January.

I have more services “in mind” although I have not got to the active planning stage with these yet. These include Candlemas on February 2nd, the “Baptism Celebration” on February 7th, Ash Wednesday on February 17th, and all the services for Lent, the services for Palm Sunday and the rest of Holy Week. As you can tell, the pattern of the liturgical year plays a significant part in my forward-planning, my thinking and my preparative activity.

You would expect me to encourage you to think about how to make Lent a time of significant spiritual growth and development for you. If you look back at the past articles I have written before Lent, this theme has recurred. How can we, individually and collectively, strengthen and confirm our Christian Faith during this holy time? I would urge you to ask yourself that very question. I have some (fairly obvious) answers to suggest.

I ask you to take the opportunity to read your bible in a systematic way, preferably with the use of bible notes. I suggest that you set aside some time for reading of a serious and uplifting kind.

I ask that you try to get to the ecumenical talks being given by prominent Christians on Monday evenings in Lent. Perhaps you could attend the Lent Course I am running on Thursday afternoons.

I hope you will set aside a little extra time daily for prayer. (Why not make use of the times that our churches are specially open for that very purpose?) I would ask you to attend an extra service per week, Morning or Evening Prayer, perhaps, or Stations of the Cross.

As your priest, I exhort you to do take up one (or more) of these suggestions. No doubt you will think of other activities helpful to you. I remind you that I am here to offer further suggestions and to help in any way that I can. Spiritual growth is important – nay, essential – for all of us. If I had to encourage you all to do just one thing in Lent, it would be to take Holy Week and, of course, Easter itself, very
seriously.

Easter Day is a “Day of Obligation”, a day when Christians should, if at all possible, make their communion. (Of course, in the past Easter was the only time when people received the Holy Sacrament.) However, Holy Week is not simply a week in which we remember the last week in the life of Christ. Nor do we merely re-enact those events during this time.

The original Holy Week took place, as it had to, in a particular place at a particular time. But in a spiritual, mystical sense these events are timeless, outside time, for all time. So, in this mystical sense, Christ enters Jerusalem as we enter our Church on Palm Sunday. Christ shares the Last Supper with his friends on Maundy Thursday. He dies upon the cross on Good Friday. His body lies lifeless in the tomb on Easter Eve. He is raised from the dead on Easter Day. In a small, but certainly not insignificant, way we share with Jesus in those ageless, eternal, timeless – I struggle for le mot juste – events.

We cheer him as he enters his holy city. We eat with him at the home of Lazarus. We hear his words to those Greeks seeking the truth. He gives the bread and the wine to us; he washes our feet. We are the ones who sleep as he prays so earnestly in that garden. We watch from afar as he hangs on the cross. We wait in despair as he lies cold in the tomb. We rejoice with exceeding joy as we meet him again on Easter morn.

It takes not an inconsiderable effort to attend all the services of Holy Week; I realise that few people can manage it. But I ask you – yes, you – to be at as much of this most holy week as you can. I know that you will arrive at the end of that week moved and weary. But I assure you that the journey you will have made will be worth it!

We are still a little way off Lent, but I ask that you start thinking about, and planning for, it now!

As always, I write with love.
Fr. Andrew