There is a Holy Eucharist with hymns every Sunday at 11.30am. After the service there is a time of fellowship when refreshments are served outside the church.

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 gather tomorrow morning at the English Cemetery gates for the blessing and procession of palms to begin at 11:30. (If the weather is inclement we will gather in the church). We process to 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. You are welcome to bring your own branch of something suitable.

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 had 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.

To see 'Holy Week in 3 minutes', a video by the Catholic media agency, Busted Halo, click here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=qdrPhxqRP9I&si=dWO6pDuZRU8jKyI5.

Every Tuesday morning at 10am

Simply tune in on Zoom and enjoy a few moments of quiet, prayerful reflection as the week unfolds. It will last no longer than 10 minutes.

Meeting ID: 892 2955 4820 Passcode: 836488
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86523047387?pwd=cZ8g29z3nUYTbXh1VlxdGedrf7Pvid.1

A time to pause, pray, reflect and reconnect.

No preparation needed.

Time for conversation for those who can stay.

“….Waiting on God, learning to be passive in a way creative for your inner life, is not a question of thinking about God, but of growing in stillness. It has to do with prayer, and with music or from the simple contemplation of the world about you.” (Michael Mayne, ‘A Year Lost and Found’)

In our Holy Week services, we are no longer spectators but participants. Tonight, we sit with the disciples eating and drinking at a solemn and haunting meal with Jesus in the Upper Room. As Jesus invites us to share in bread and wine, he says those mysterious words that have become central to our celebration of the Holy Eucharist: ‘this is my body, this is my blood’. And soon afterwards, that trusted disciple, Judas, makes a hasty exit.

At the end of the Eucharist, the altar is stripped. Why? The altar represents Christ, and the stripping of the altar reminds us how he was stripped of his garments and was exposed naked to the insults of his persecutors.

After supper we go to the garden of Gethsemane to pray. Or in our case, at the end of our Eucharist, we go to the cemetery garden to watch and pray. Jesus didn’t sleep that night, and his disciples slept only fitfully. In fact he didn’t hesitate to rouse them….as if perhaps he wanted companionship during those late night hours. So let us give him ours.

And then, suddenly, Judas returns, the disciple now turned betrayer, and we share the shock and fear of the disciples as he is accompanied by armed soldiers, and Jesus is arrested. And so Maundy Thursday ends ....in chaos.

Today we remember Christ's crucifixion on the hill of Calvary.

Traditionally the Eucharist is not celebrated today. Instead we celebrate a Mass of the Pre-sanctified, in which we receive the Sacrament that was consecrated at an earlier Eucharist.

This liturgy had already been developed by the Second Trullan Synod, at the end of the 7th century. and is used only on Good Friday,

"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)

One of the things people challenge Christians with is the apparent absence of God in the world. When there is tragic loss of life, where there is famine or gross injustice, where then is God?

So it is an extraordinary twist of fate that at the heart of the greatest Christian festival of Easter, there is an absence – the absence of a body in the tomb.

When Jesus died on Good Friday, his disciples scattered - confused, fearful, without direction, without a future. But the absence of a body on Easter Sunday was altogether different. Now they saw Jesus everywhere – in the garden, on the road to Emmaus, as they fished, as they gathered together. And not as some spooky ghost of the past, but as the recognisable presence of the Son of God, risen from the dead.

This is what we are celebrating this Eastertide – our God, real, alive, recognisable and present. Martin Luther wrote: “Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime”. He has also written that promise on every human heart.

Click More Info below to hear Surrexit Christus, an Easter song from the Taizé Community in France.