It all starts and ends with Love, Holy Week.
It all starts and ends with Love, Holy Week.
On Monday we remembered our vocation as the body of Christ – to love one another and serve – which echoes our Maundy new commandment that we have love one for another. Each person in the body of Christ is equally important; each gifted talented human is encouraged and affirmed. At the Chrism Mass we are given three oils for anointing: the oil of healing for all are sicknesses, the oil of baptism to bless us at the beginning of our journey of Christian Faith and the oil of Chrism for
confirmation, ordination, and consecration to bless our ongoing vocational journeys.
This service is offered to us, in love. So that we too go out in Love just as Jesus did amongst us. We, the body of Christ, are to be his hands and feet now. Alleluia! Christ is risen! He has risen indeed, alleluia!
During Holy Week we walk the way of the Cross. We spent time with pilgrims from Student Cross, making their way to
Walsingham through Swannington and also Weston, Lyng and Elsing, hearing their journeys of faith and why they
travel with the Cross across the country. Walking the way of the cross is a hard road to travel recalling Christ’s journey
of pain. At compline this week we have been reminded of the last time the disciples spent with Jesus before they all
fled worried about being captured themselves. We are reminded that they fell asleep in Gethsemane when Jesus needed them most. It reminds us of our own stories of when we run away, deny and doubt Jesus in our own lives. Some of us skip this bit, the way of the Cross, as it seems too painful.
The pain of the Cross is there to show us that God knows how pain works and completely understands our pains and
burdens. Of course, Jesus’s love is what holds him there, in the garden he asks God ‘to take this cup from [him] but not
my will but yours.’ Jesus is abandoned by his disciples and walks the way of the Cross alone. Good Friday shows us the
deepest pain of all, the Cross, the symbol of our Christian faith and this is hard to bear.
Yet on Easter Sunday we celebrate because Easter starts and ends and is infused with Love.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, alleluia!
The humility of love, the hospitality of love, the pain of love, love winning for love’s sake, the joy of love and the resurrection of love. What is not to love about resurrection power, it’s God holding out his Son to us and showing us that death is ended. Love defeats death once and for all, so that love wins completely.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, alleluia!
The women go to care for the body, and they are overwhelmed with surprise and sadness, worry and wonder, fear, and
freedom: all emotions running high.
Love is gone….. what does this mean, angels explain. Then with noticing, wondering it becomes clear Jesus is risen. Whatever are understanding of Resurrection Power, Faith in Jesus is what brings us back to love again and again, drawing us close to the tender gracious heartbeat of God- longing for us to be in a deeper richer relationship with him. Him the source of all love, the creator of love’s resurrection. Are we willing again to commit ourselves to this love, which is immeasurably wide deep and vast so that our sins, our blocks from love, are cast as far as the east is from the west. This is resurrection, that
he loves us first.
May this Easter Day resonate with us afresh.
May our eyes, hearts, souls and minds be opened wide to love anew.
May our noticing, wondering and seeing enlarge our faith.
May Loves resurrection power fill us again.
May love win, deep within so that can boldly
proclaim…
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed, alleluia!
