Holy Week Excurstions

A few days late, but I figure that I should write up what I did for Holy Week. Admitedly it’s a bit like what I did on holiday, but hopefully less cheesy and more spiritually enlightening.

I spent the week, along with 3 other ordinands along a gruelling Holy Week. this seemed to mostly be because I spent the week suffering from new bed syndrome. It was a very High, or at least, trying wanting to be High Church, so morning and evening prayer, with at least Eucharist once per day. We spent some time taking part in the services, mostly by being thrown in the deep end. We would show up, to find that nothing had really been organised, and we would be pressed into leading the service, or reading.

We had been asked before the week to lead the 3 hour Good Friday devotion, but everything else was being worked out by the seat of our pants. We had a brief meeting on Monday, but that was mostly allocating the visits to the retirement homes, and the home communions. Everything else was pretty much based on the plan of services that had been laid down.

There were four activities that I took away with me from this week. Each that affected me in a different way, and all, mostly, surprising.

The first was a full day of reading the Gospels. People were allocated a 10 minit slot, and a slice of one of the 4 gospels to read. They could bring their own Bible, or use the Bible left on the Lectern. The wonderful thing about this was the kids that were there from the “Sunday Club” (what was traditionally called Sunday School). They had all arranged/been allocated slots next to each other, and were all sat together to support each other in their readings. There was something moving about it. Though there were not many people actually sitting for the readings, the visitors to the church (it being a popular tourist town) were hearing the gospels read as they wandered round. There was something powerful about the whole experience.

The next was the service foot washing service on Maundy Thursday. The actuall foot washing, though effective, was not nearly as affective as it could have been. It is possible this is because it was the first time that the Church had tried something like it, so a lot of people were a little confused about it all. The message seemed to have been lost because of what it felt like a lack of cohesion of the service. That said, having had my feet washed, I opted to wander around the church barefoot, because the length of time it would have taken for me to put my boots back on would have had me sat in the chairs while the Eucharist prayer began. There was something raw and spiritual about wandering around barefoot in that sacred space.

The Good Friday service was… intense. Yet it worked. We took a dark approach to it. We left very little room for hope, but tried to get people to think about the sacrifice. We had addresses from the point of view of Thomas, the Centurion, Peter and Mary. After the address by Mary, we got someone to sing Let It Be. What surprised us was that there were people in tears. We were told that people were coming in from the streets. We had also been told that by the end of the three hour service, there would only be a handful of people left. That was not the case. It stunned all of us. It was a simple service, one that we had not thought that we’d put a lot of work into, but it appears that the message we had put forward was one that people had wanted to hear. We reached out and touch people. A wonderful reminder of why it is that we’re going through these three years of stressful training.

The Saturday Easter Fire. This was an interesting service, though there was something about the timing that was missing. It starts with a fire outside, which is blessed. Then this light is carried into the church, where all the candles are lit, as well as the candles that are being held by the congregation. It contains a re-affirmation of baptismal vows, where the congregation are sprinkled with holy water. It felt like it needed to be a bit higher, perhaps with a thurable being swung, and a large stone cross. This would have been a powerful service, appart from one parent with a very, very board child, that insisted on screaming through the service. It child was repeatedly being silenced, but it was obvious that the child needed to have been taken outside. I don’t mind children in Chuch during a standard service, but this special service was successfully ruined by this child. A few loud screams, not a problem, but consistent noise throughout the service is what did it.

There were a few other things that happened there. The strangest being meeting a woman who was unsure about her calling, mostly because she felt that the Church that she was working for was full of all those hypocrites that she despised, that nothing new was happening there. She had put her calling on hold. Our presence there, answering her questions about college, about the training, her being able to see the service that we did on Good Friday and assuring her that it was a fairly standard service, all of that seemed to help. We all made a friend that week.

It was an experience that I hope will stay with me for a long, long time. It reminds me why it is that we’re going through the process of training. It reaffirms our calling, and knowing that we are going in the right direction.

He is very good to us.

~BX