Vicar's Letter

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

I must be getting old, for time is rattling away and I have no idea how to catch the train as it is leaving the platform without me. I don’t know about you, but it only feels like 5 minutes since Christmas and here we are nearly halfway through Lent. I have to make some hasty decisions as the magazine is due, as to what we do this Holy Week and on into glorious Easter. 

I love Holy Week, much as I love Christmas, (as you all know), yet for very different reasons. Holy Week stops me in my tracks every year. It never fails to move me some times to tears and sometimes to deep inner meditation on my life, my ministry and of course my faith. Christmas is sheer joy, fun and business. Holy Week is sorrowful, thought provoking, challenging and leading to the climax of the Christian Year - Easter. Why? Because we are Easter people. Without Easter Christianity would be as nothing, a sect of Judaism perhaps. It is Easter which gives us the hope that sustains us through the year and even our lives as Christians. The hope of the resurrection of our own bodies and souls gives us reason to exist, reason to follow a man from over two thousand years ago and reason to get up in the morning thanking God for Jesus as he leads us to acts of kindness and love; love of God and of our fellow humankind. 

We begin Passiontide with the pre-passion reading on Passion Sunday. This begins the journey, it sets up the characters and situation that Jesus finds himself in. We hear it instead of a sermon and we ponder all that will take place in the next two weeks. We move to Palm Sunday, the entry into Jerusalem of Jesus riding the donkey. We will again leave church at 09.55 and if you want to walk with us to the roundabout at the top of Torrington you need to be in church by then, gathered and ready. We walk to witness to the immediate neighbourhood of the Passion of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. We reach the roundabout by 10.00, hear the Palm Gospel, bless the palms and set off for church, singing ‘Ride on, Ride on,’ down Torrington to be approaching church by 10.15. This year we are being joined by members of the Methodist Church - a real act of unity and ecumenical worship, who we will say farewell to at the Methodist Church and say a prayer of unity to set them on their way to their own act of worship. When in church we will have the full Passion Reading and no sermon. Each night during Holy Week (Monday - Thursday), there will be Mass at 8.00pm followed by a short act of meditative worship as we did last year. Thursday will include the washing of feet and leading in to the Vigil until Midnight. 

Good Friday is kept between 12.00 and 3.00. We will begin with meditative and inclusive dramatic content, followed by Hot Cross Buns and then at 2.00pm we will begin the Good Friday Liturgy. Holy Saturday is always busy, with cleaning, decorating and preparing, but this year we will have the first Mass of Easter with the fire and Entry of the Paschal Candle at 9.00pm at night. This is something I haven’t been able to do before either because I was at the Cathedral or we had COVID. Do come along and enter in to the joy of Easter from darkness to light. Bring bells, whistles and other noisome things ready to signal the beginning of Easter. 

The following day gives us more time, as the fire and candle will have been done, and we can rejoice together in full knowledge that we have walked with Christ on his new life as risen Saviour and Redeemer.

Blessings,

Fr Michael