Let us pray to the Father through his Son That we, with those who have died in faith, That they may find support and encouragement,įor those who, weighed down with hardship, failure, or sorrow,įor those who are tempted to give up the way of the cross, That our common life may be ordered in justice and mercy,įor those who still make Jerusalem a battleground,įor those who have the courage and honesty to work openly forįor those in the darkness and agony of isolation, Through Christ who gave himself for the life of the world.įor forgiveness for the many times we have denied Jesus,įor grace to seek out those habits of sin which meanĪnd by prayer and self-discipline to overcome them,įor those who make laws, interpret them, and administer them, Let us bring to the Father our prayers of intercession Praise to you, O Christ, King of eternal glory. Praise to you, O Christ, King of eternal glory.Ĭhrist humbled himself and became obedient unto death,Īnd given him the name that is above every name. Rather than stretch out our hands to bless: We confess we have failed you as did your first disciples. Hear me, O Lord, as your loving kindness is good In that, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.īy confessing our sins in penitence and faith.Ĭhrist himself carried up our sins in his body to the tree, Seasonal Material Invitations to Confession This places a double responsibility on those who lead the keeping of Holy Week today: to be faithful to the act of collective memory, but also to be sensitive to the ways in which an unreflecting use of traditional texts (like the Reproaches) can perpetuate a strain of Christian anti-Semitism. The ‘Ioudaioi’ of St John’s Gospel have all too easily been identified with ‘the Jews’ as a whole, or more specifically those Jews who were neighbours of a Christian church. At the same time, the services and ceremonies of Holy Week have in the course of Christian history been the occasion of, or have actively encouraged, hostility towards the Jews. This solemn season preserves some of the oldest texts still in current use, and rehearses the deepest and most fundamental Christian memories.
But within the silence there grows a sense of peace and completion, and then rising excitement as the Easter Vigil draws near. It continues bare and empty through the following day, which is a day without a liturgy: there can be no adequate way of recalling the being dead of the Son of God, other than silence and desolation. The church remains stripped of all decoration. It is a widespread custom for there not to be a celebration of the Eucharist on Good Friday, but for the consecrated bread and wine remaining from the Maundy Thursday Eucharist to be given in communion. The first is now sometimes incorporated into the structure of the second. The veneration of the Cross is older the sequence of meditations and music known as the Three Hours’ Devotion was introduced into the Church of England in the nineteenth century. Maundy Thursday (from mandatum, ‘commandment’, because of the use of John 13.34 in the Antiphon) contains a rich complex of themes: humble Christian service expressed through Christ’s washing of his disciples’ feet, the institution of the Eucharist, the perfection of Christ’s loving obedience through the agony of Gethsemane.Īfter keeping vigil (‘Could you not watch with me one hour?’) Thursday passes into Good Friday with its two characteristic episodes. The procession with palms, which was already observed in Jerusalem in the fourth century, is accompanied by the reading or singing of the Passion Narrative, in which the whole story of the week is anticipated. Through participation in the whole sequence of services, the Christian shares in Christ’s own journey, from the triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday to the empty tomb on Easter morning. Over time, the Pascha developed into the articulated structure of Holy Week and Easter. This Pascha (a word derived indirectly from pesach, Hebrew ‘Passover’) was at first a night-long vigil, followed by the celebration of the Eucharist at cock-crow, and all the great themes of redemption were included within it: incarnation, suffering, death, resurrection, glorification. It is still uncertain when Christians first began to make an annual (as opposed to a weekly) memorial of the death and resurrection of Christ. The Liturgy of Good Friday Introduction to the Season The Renewal of Commitment to Ministry (C)
The Renewal of Commitment to Ministry (B1)Ī Form for the Renewal of Diaconal Commitment (B2) The Renewal of Commitment to Ministry (A)
0 kommentar(er)
