Author: Leigh Hatts

Leigh Hatts is the author of 'Keeping Advent and Christmas' and 'Keeping Lent and Easter' (DLT).
Updates

Low Sunday 2020

Easter continues today Low Sunday 19 April with Alleluia!, unheard during Lent, coming at the gospel acclamation and the dismissal . We are still living the events in Jerusalem in real time and today’s gospel reading (St John 20: 19-31) is the account of what happened on the first Low Sunday. There are many names […]

Leigh Hatts 
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Hare Pie 2020

Letter in The Daily Telegraph on Easter Monday: Here’s to the hare pie and the bottle kicking SIR – I was interested to read in Helena Horton’s report (April 10) that Iron Age Britons idolised hares. Every Easter Monday, we host one of Britain’s oldest continuing sporting events: the Hallaton Bottle-Kicking and Hare-Pie Scramble. A […]

Leigh Hatts 
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Easter Monday 2020

No egg rolling at Preston or hare pie scrambling at Hallaton but it’s still Easter Monday. And it is still the second day of Easter. It will be Easter every day for forty days to Ascension Day on Thursday 21 May when we hope and pray that life will be a little better.

Leigh Hatts 
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Easter Day 2020

We might not have Easter eggs, or even fresh eggs, lamb or Easter cake but we can still recall why today is Easter Day just as prisoners of war or those behind the Iron Curtain did. We can live the first Esater Day in real time. What happened today Matthew 28.1-15; Mark 16.1-18; Luke 24.1-49; […]

Leigh Hatts 
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Holy Saturday 2020

It’s not Easter yet. Today 11 April is Holy Saturday. (Easter Saturday is the end of next week, Easter Week.) This year Holy Saturday feels even more a day of limbo and abnormal. It will feel a long day as it must have for the disorientated disciples. We cannot shorten it by lighting an Easter […]

Leigh Hatts 
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Good Friday 2020

A Good Friday meditation before the crown of thorns will be broadcast live from inside the Notre-Dame Cathedral this morning. The event is being streamed online by France’s Catholic television station, KTO, from 10:30 to 11:30am. The Good Friday Liturgy with Pope Francis can be seen on Vatican TV at 5pm. What happened today Matthew […]

Leigh Hatts 
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Maundy Thursday 2020

The word Maundy comes from the Latin word mandatum meaning commandment found in the gospel acclamation for today: Mandatum novum de vobis (I give you a new commandment: love one another just as I have loved you) from St John’s Gospel 13.34. On the first Maundy Thursday, Christ commanded followers ‘to love one another’ and […]

Leigh Hatts 
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Spy Wednesday 2020

In normal times several churches, especially in London, would tonight be offering the opportunity to attend Tenebrae which art historian Brian Sewell described as ‘the most disturbing and convincing service’. It has many graphic references to Judas Iscariot. But at home we can read about Judas and his secret role in what is about to […]

Leigh Hatts 
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Holy Week Tuesday

Today, on the way in to Jerusalem for the third time, Jesus and his companions pass the fig tree which appears to have withered. In the city he spends the day teaching in the Temple where the wary chief priests asked him, without direct success, by what authority he acted and spoke. But he attempts […]

Leigh Hatts 
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Fig Monday 2020

Today is Fig Monday which until the end of the nineteenth was the familiar name for this second day of Holy Week. Flora Thompson, who wrote Lark Rise to Candleford, mentions eating dried figs at this time. The tradition comes from the mention in the Gospels of a fig tree noted this morning by Christ […]

Leigh Hatts 
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