The Holy Week services, from Palm Sunday to Easter Day, are quite unlike anything else in the church’s calendar. For once we are not spectators: instead we are here to take our part in the events around us. We are the people of Israel, waving our branches of palm and shouting Hosanna to the Son of David. We are the disciples, eating and drinking at that solemn and mysterious last supper in the Upper Room. With St Mary and St John, we watch in shock and despair at the death of Jesus on the Cross. And, with Mary Magdalene, we see an open tomb and, singing Alleluia, we run to tell our friends the glorious news of Christ's resurrection.

The week begins with Palm Sunday. We process through the church to symbolise our Lord's entry into Jerusalem. Together with the people of Israel, we have followed Jesus and been amazed as he has performed his miracles and pulled the crowds. And as he dramatically enters Jerusalem, on a donkey, we bathe in the sunlight of the superstar and wave our palm branches to welcome him.

But the people who will crucify Jesus on Good Friday are the same people who honour him today. They don't crucify an unknown or a stranger. They crucify a man who has extended to them a love, a dignity and a majesty. Today they shout, ‘Hosanna to the king’, and on Friday they will shout, ‘we have no king but Caesar’.

Why? Because we human beings are fickle, we change our minds, we are swayed by others - because we are made up of a mixture of different people and different feelings. And because of that thing inside us which makes it so difficult to receive unrestrained, unlimited, boundless and undemanding love.

Our choral service will include the St John Passion, set to music by Spain's great Renaissance composer, Tomas Luis de Victoria, and sung by members of the Choir La Vid y La Vida.

The Stations of the Cross are a series of 14 images depicting Christ on the day of his crucifixion. The stations were a way of re-enacting the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem, the path that Jesus took to Calvary and his crucifixion. The idea was to help people make a spiritual pilgrimage through contemplation of Christ´s final steps.

Here in Spain many towns have created a pilgrim route in the form of the stations of the cross and most churches have the 14 stations around their walls.

At Salinas, we will meet in church at 12 noon and follow the stations on the church walls and on the altar (see photo attached). As with other events in Holy Week, we are no longer spectators, but participants. As we walk the 14 stations with our Lord, we meet Simon of Cyrene, the women of Jerusalem, St Veronica who wiped Christ's face with her veil; we feel the weight of the cross and the weight of betrayal, and we suffer the pain as Christ is whipped, as he stumbles and falls, and the humiliation as he is stripped of his clothes. And the despair as he carries his cross up that sweaty hill, to be nailed to it at the top. And to die...in agony.

"Lord, … You accepted patiently and humbly the rebuffs of human life, as well as the torture of the cross. Help us to accept the pains and conflicts that come to us each day as opportunity to grow as people and become more like you……… that we can come to live more fully - only by dying with you, that we can rise with you." (Mother Teresa)

The picture shows the Stations of the Cross, drawn by young people at the Salinas Roman Catholic Congregation

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