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Attending to Holy Week by Participating
Holy Week is upon us, and the Triduum is here. And I hope you will attend!
We have spent these weeks of Lent preparing—turning our hearts, minds, and lives again toward God through prayer, fasting, acts of mercy, confession, and repentance. Many of you have also been preparing in very tangible ways: learning music, assembling bulletins, tending the altar, readying our spaces, and preparing food that will carry us into Easter joy.
But now the invitation shifts—from preparation to participation.
This week is not something we simply observe. It is something we enter. We participate.
As we now have entered the Holy Triduum—the great three days. On Maundy Thursday, we remembered Jesus’ command to love and serve, and we watched as the altar was stripped bare. On Good Friday, we will stand at the foot of the cross and face the depth of suffering in our world and in ourselves. And at the Great Vigil of Easter, beginning in darkness, we kindle new fire and proclaim with joy that Christ is risen.
In all of this, we are not just attendees. We are participants. We are drawn into the very heart of our faith: the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ—the Paschal Mystery.
To participate in this mystery is not simply to remember something that once happened. It is to allow that reality to take hold of us now. In Christ, death does not have the final word. In Christ, we cross over—from bondage into freedom, from darkness into light, from death into life.
And yet, if we are honest, many of us do not feel like we are standing on the side of resurrection. I know I don’t, not entirely. There are days—and even weeks—when the weight of the world, the fractures in our common life, and the burdens we carry feel far closer to Good Friday than Easter morning.
Which is precisely why we need this week.
We need to step again into this story—not as spectators, but as people who are being transformed by it. We need to be reminded, not just told, that God is at work even in suffering, even in silence, even in what feels like endings. That in Christ, all things are being made new. That somehow, mysteriously, even now, all shall be well.
So come. Come not only to attend, but to participate. To contemplate the mighty acts of God.
Walk the journey of Jesus. Let it become your own: the movement from death to life, from fear to hope, from despair to resurrection.
I look forward to walking this holy path with you as your new rector; in this season and for many more to come.
Rev. Derek
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