“Jesus lives, our hearts know well, nought from us his love shall sever.”
We set off into the new month of April in the heart of the most significant seven days in the church’s year – we are in Holy Week.
On the 1st we celebrate Maundy Thursday – Jesus and his apostles were gathered together for a meal, as they did every year, to celebrate the feast of the Passover; but this time it was to be so very different! Jesus uttered the words “This is My Body” and “This is My Blood” over the bread and wine that they were all to share – an act that is perpetuated every single day by a priest somewhere in the world.
This meal, the one we know as the Last Supper, was the start of the momentous story of the Passion; after the gathering in the Upper Room the tension begins to rise as we see Jesus alone in the Garden of Gethsemane, terrified because he knew what he was going to have to endure yet agreeing to go through with it in order to fulfil the Will of his Father.
The 14 Stations of the Cross take us through the events of the next three days, Good Friday through to Easter Sunday. To many such an account of betrayal, humiliation, brutality and execution would seem an utter failure but as Christians we know that it was just the opposite. Death was not the end; as on Easter morning the stone was rolled away and our Lord and Saviour rose from the tomb. He had conquered death, the way to heaven had been opened up for all mankind.
I pray that you and your loved ones have a peaceful and joyful Easter and that soon the shadow of this dreadful virus will have disappeared from our lives.
God Bless