Always, we begin again.
This Sunday, we begin Holy Week with the joy and heartbreak of Palm Sunday. Throughout the week we will continue our journey with Jesus through a narrative that will unfold with Tenebrae, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, the Great Vigil of Easter, and a festive celebration of the resurrection on Easter Sunday.
The path through Holy Week mirrors the story of our lives and our world: we live amidst great brokenness and pain, in our own lives and in our wider community. The liturgies of the week are an honest reckoning with suffering and loss that can heal us as we experience Jesus, walking with us. Yet, they are also services that water the seeds of resurrection and hope.
Holy Week is a discipline, one that is richly rewarding. (Note the root of disciple in that word!) I invite you to experience the fullness of the week, or at least as much as you are able. Life being as full as it is, I find it helpful to think ahead, to plan the week to make time to be in church (whether at Trinity or at another, or joining online).
Yet, this is about far more than time management: Holy Week calls us to join Jesus in a place of radical vulnerability. These are stories that break our heart and connect us to the heartache of the world today. Moving into this holiest of seasons, I encourage you to give yourself space for tenderness and quiet, trusting that the Holy Spirit is richly present through the week and especially in the services through which we share in Jesus’ journey to the cross.
You’ll find information on Trinity Cathedral’s great diversity of services here. I encourage you to stretch yourself: come to services you’ve never experienced or try to add to what you’ve done in the past. In doing so, you will enter more intimately into the story of Jesus’s life and turn more hopefully to the promise of resurrection.
Faithfully,
The Very Rev. Bernard J. Owens