Dear Friends

So we have begun our Holy Week journey; as I said on Sunday we enter into the drama of our salvation, not as onlookers but as participants. The whole of the Christian life is mirrored here in this week, that’s why it is so important. The Word made flesh reveals God’s vision for his creation, a new path for humanity and creation. Jesus spent three years healing, talking, feeding ‘a new flame of faith’ in people. He challenged power, confronted injustice and healed the wounded. The authorities hated him for it. He exposed their neurotic hold on power and the substitution of self in place of God. They thought they had won the battle, but light shines through the tragedy, there is more to life than power, success and the cowardice and evil which sometimes sustains it. There is hope for the marginalized, the dispossessed, the ‘bright but powerless masses’ Jesus lives an authentic and true humanity and calls us all to live the same. ‘And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory…full of grace and truth.’John 1:14

Fr Simon

NB There will be Stations of the Cross in church on Good Friday at 12noon

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Dear Friends,

We are to some extent the fortunate ones. We know how the story ended. We know that when his bloodied and pierced body was carried away by Joseph of Arimathea to be laid in the tomb that death would not have the last word. If you have lost someone you loved deeply you will know the sense of shock, grief, pain and loss. You are literally numb. Time stands still, you forget to eat and drink, nothing matters. It is as though you are an extra in a grim slow-motion film; life goes on around you but you have no connection with it. Imagine the sense of pain and loss the early followers of Jesus felt after his death? And of course, the authorities were on the look-out for them so they scattered and probably went into hiding. The blackness of what we now know as Easter Saturday – that time between Good Friday and Easter Sunday when the corpse of Jesus was lying in the tomb has now to some extent been replaced by a frenzy of activity as we decorate churches and buy Easter Eggs and legs of lamb. I think it’s important to try to reclaim something of the pain and desperation and silence, the mournful silence of Easter Saturday, so that we can fully, alongside the disciples and the faithful women rejoice at the good news of the empty tomb on Easter morning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

With every blessing,

Fr Andrew