Advent to Easter

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; […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

What happened today Jesus, who had spent the night with his disciples at Bethany, asked two of them to go to nearby Bethphage and bring the donkey and colt tethered there. Kings would normally arrive by horse but Jesus rode on a donkey when he set out for Jerusalem. The disciples laid their cloaks on […]

The late Patrick O’Donovan of The Observer said that Holy Week was the peculiar privilege of Christians and their most important week of the year. This year it will be unseen by many without the reminders of the outdoor Palm Sunday processions and pictures of The Queen distributing Maundy money. But throughout the world thousands […]

This Sunday, between Mothering Sunday and Palm Sunday, is Passion Sunday. The name comes from the Latin passio meaning suffering and refers to the suffering of Christ as he approached his cruxifiction. Sunday is the start of the week during which we shall be able to begin following Christ’s last days of his ministry on […]