SPECIAL WEEKDAY MESSAGE –  March 22nd  – Fr. Thomas

/in /by

Only three more days left in Lent.  For those of us quarantined in our homes, time “doesn’t fly,” to paraphrase the familiar quote. But in reality, what is time really?  During Holy Week, we are not simply recalling some historic events which happened a long time ago in Jerusalem.  Nor, under normal circumstances, do we re-enact a pageant with no meaning.  The liturgical ceremonies which we would normally observe this week make us more aware of another world, an eternal kingdom of heaven, an unseen world of mystery where all things are being made new, and where we might be even more at home than we are in this world.

If Holy Week teaches us anything, it’s that we have little or no control over events, both inwardly and outwardly, which affect us in the most serious ways. Well, hopefully, we’ve learned that by now over the past three weeks.  However, the Good News is that we have a God who through the person of Jesus, was also subjected to the same constraints and forces beyond His control, and who has shown us how to live in the midst of them.  Easter begins this Sunday.  Even though we can’t worship together in person, we can make our “spiritual communion” by watching the mass provided on our website and Facebook page.

  • View – Good Friday service & Easter Sunday mass – a video will be posted on the church’s website, Facebook via our YouTube channel. Don’t forget to subscribe free so that we will in the future be able to retain our site.
  • Urgent Message – Please continue to pray for an end to the COVID-19 virus and its victims and thank you for your continued financial support (check, automated bank transfers or electronic donations via myeoffering.com )to the life and witness our congregation in this community.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, Physician of the body and soul, You restored sight to the blind, healed the lame and cured those with leprosy. Grant, we beseech You, the necessary knowledge and perseverance to all who are working on a vaccine to quickly end the spread of COVID-19. Have mercy on those who have died, and grant comfort to all who are affected in any way and those who are living in apprehension. Give us the grace each day to trust in You and Your loving mercy. We ask this in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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Good Friday 4/10/20

Isaiah 52:13-53:12

Psalm 22

Hebrews 10:16-25

John 18:1-19:42

 

The Veneration of the Cross

In the seventh century, the Church in Rome adopted the practice of Adoration of the Cross from the Church in Jerusalem, where a fragment of wood believed to be the Lord’s cross had been venerated every year on Good Friday since the fourth century.  According to tradition, a part of the Holy Cross was discovered by the mother of the emperor Constantine, Saint Helen, on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 326.  A fifth century account describes this service in Jerusalem.  A coffer of gold-plated silver containing the wood of the cross was brought forward.  The bishop place the relic on the table in the chapel of the Crucifixion and the faithful approached it, as the priest said, “Behold, the Wood of the Cross.”  Adoration of an image of Christ’s cross does not mean that we are actually adoring the material image, but what it represents.  In kneeling before the crucifix we are paying the highest honor to our Lord’s cross as the instrument of our salvation.  In reverencing His Cross we are, in effect, adoring Christ.  Thus we affirm:  “We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee because of Thy Holy Cross Thou has Redeemed the World.”

 

The Reproaches

The Reproaches are often chanted by a priest during the Good Friday service as the people are venerating the Cross.  In this haunting and poignant poem-like chant of very ancient origin, Christ himself “reproaches” us, making us more deeply aware of how our sinfulness and hardness of heart caused such agony for our sinless and loving Savior.  The text comes from the Lamentation of Jeremiah, written at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.

 

The Stations of the Cross visiting its sacred sites, the faithful made a custom of making simple replicas of those sacred sites in during the late Middle Ages, when the Turkish occupation of the Holy Land prevented pilgrims from Europe, where they could come to pray.  Medieval Christians sought more details about the Passion of the Lord, beyond what was provided by the succinct stories of the gospels.  They turned to the writings of the mystics and the apocryphal gospels for more information about the last hours of Jesus.  From these sources came the meeting of Jesus and his Mother, the story of Veronica, and the various falls of Jesus, which became part of the Stations of the Cross.  One of the most popular of these “pilgrimages at home” was to pray the Stations of the Cross, which were erected in imitation of the stations (or stopping places of prayer) on the street in Jerusalem that led from the judgment hall of Pilate to Calvary.  By the end of the sixteenth century the present fourteen stations became the standard for this devotion.