Prayer for Holy Week
In the Christian calendar, this week is the most important of all weeks. It is the week often called “Holy.”
If you identify with the Christian faith, you know that last Sunday was the final Sunday in Lent. This is the day often called “Palm Sunday,” in which Christian churches around the world commemorate the occasion of Jesus entering the city of Jerusalem. Within a week of that occasion, Jesus would be crucified.
Prayers and blessing from me to you as you observe (if you so choose) the days of Holy Week.
I often feel a kind of dissonance in my own spirituality during this week. There are still so many things to do. There are tasks and work, even religious work for people like me. There are occasions for great joy and anticipation as the season of Spring arrives. In this part of the world, each day at this time of year brings out more beauty with flowers blooming and trees enlightening with colourful blossoms. All of that is happening while, in the events of Holy Week, Jesus is headed to the cross.
That which he is doing is singular. He alone is taking this course and he alone is able to accomplish what is accomplished.
So, no matter how much I have to do, no matter how many services in which I preside as pastor, my observance holds with it a humility with the knowledge that no words or prayer of mine could ever even express the depth of what Jesus is doing. With that in mind, as I offer Holy Week prayers for you, I offer the following words from Jürgen Moltmann about death being overcome by life in Jesus, from Son of Righteousness, Arise;
“Death is not only the natural end of a mortal life. The destructive powers of death reach deep into personal, social and natural life. Lived life everyday is a struggle against death. Every morning life must be affirmed and loved anew, since it can also be denied, refused and rejected.”
“The powers of death make themselves felt in social life through rejection, isolation and growing loneliness. Through exploitation, oppression and alienation, the powers of death reach into political life.”
“The origin of the Christian faith is once and for all the victory of the divine life over death: the resurrection of Christ. ‘Death is swallowed up in victory’: that is the heart of the Christian gospel. It is the gospel of life. Where Christ is present there is life and there is hope in the struggle of life against the powers of death. Jesus didn’t found a new religion: he brings life into the world, the modern world, too.”