Newsletter 9th April 2017
Today is Palm Sunday.
The Palms will be blessed in garden before the 9.30 Mass and we will then process into the Church. During the Mass we will read the account of the Passion of the Lord from Matthew’s gospel. You are asked to share in the crowd responses.
Blessed palms will be available at the later Masses.
There will be stations of the cross at 6.30pm.
This is the beginning of Holy week, the days in which we recall the events of the Passion and death of the Lord.
There is no Mass on the morning of Maundy Thursday. There will be a Mass for children at 4pm and the Solemn Mass of the Last Supper is at 8pm. At the end of Mass the Blessed Sacrament is taken to the Altar of repose and the High Altar is stripped of all its furnishings. The Church will remain open for prayer until 10pm.
During the Mass the Eucharistic Ministers are invited to renew their dedication for a further year and they are asked to make a special effort to attend this Mass.
After the gospel there is the washing of the feet of twelve members of the parish – I have put a list in the porch and hope that there will be 12 names. I can tell you that as the years go by – the washing is quite hard work!
On Good Friday morning there is the service on the Heath at 10.30 am. We will be leaving from outside the Church at 10.10.
The solemn liturgy for Good Friday begins at 3pm and includes the reading of the Passion from John’s gospel, the veneration of the cross and Holy Communion. There is a collection for the upkeep of the Holy Places.
There are stations of the cross at 8pm with the veneration of the relic of the true cross.
A reminder that Good Friday is a day of fasting and abstinence.
There is no Masses on Holy Saturday in the morning or in the evening at 6.30.
The Easter Vigil begins at 9pm – it starts in the garden – as long as it is dry – with the blessing of the new fire and the lighting of the Paschal candle – we then process into the Church for the singing of the Exultet – the solemn Easter hymn – the readings from the Scriptures – the blessing of the font and the Easter Mass. Altogether the Easter Vigil takes about two hours.
Masses are at the normal times on Easter Sunday – I am sure that the children will have a special reason for wanting to come to Mass on this day. Instead of the Creed, we renew are Baptismal promises and you are sprinkled with water from the font, blessed during the vigil.
So when does Lent end officially – at the Easter Vigil Service on Saturday – so no creeping out for a quick G and T before lunch on Saturday.
Lots of information this week so not much space for anything else: I always like George Herbert’s Easter poems
I got me flowers to straw thy way
I got me boughs off many a tree;
But thou wast up by break of day,
And brough’st thy sweets along with thee.
And as a prayer the formal Latin grace we used to sing before lunch :
Oculi omnium, in te spirant Domine, et tu das escam illorum in tempore opportune. Aperis tu manum tuam et imples omne animal benedictione.