Holy Week 2011
Dear Friends,
A dear and blessed Holy Week to you.
As most of you know, Holy Week is more than Easter Day. Sure, Easter Day is wonderful and joyous, and full of festive gatherings for many.
But Holy Week is something else. It involves pensive questioning, vulnerable love, and even suffering and death. Holy Week"”starting with the pomp and circumstance of the Palm Sunday Procession and proceeding through intimacy, suffering, and even death"”might just represent the entirety of the Christian life: from exuberance to despair to resurrection.
I pray that you will experience the grace of God at each of the moments of Holy Week. Of course, I hope you will be present at our Cathedral liturgies. In their drama and prayer, they lead us through holy human experiences to the grace of God.
But I also hope you will experience the grace of God no matter where you are in your own "Holy Week." Some of you have experienced the death of a loved one recently. Some of you are suffering. Some of you are in moments of great intimacy with those you love. In fact, I have gone through some tender funerals and deaths in my own life recently.
These moments, sad and painful as they are, can also be moments of grace and the presence of God. That's what the Christian Holy Week teaches us. God is present in our Palm Sunday experiences, our Maundy Thursday experiences, our Good Friday experiences, our Holy Saturday experiences, and"”finally"”in the great Easter experience of new life and resurrection.
No matter where you are in your "Holy Week," look for the grace of God. If you need help or guidance in that search, go to Church. The Church has been observing Holy Week for a long time"”in more ways than one!
Give to your Church, too, maybe remembering in the gift some moment when God's grace touched your pain, or your joy.
Again, Blessed Holy Week to you. May God's grace touch you, wherever you are in the Holy Week journey.
Love,
The Very Reverend Samuel G. Candler
Dean of the Cathedral of St. Philip
