The devotion known as the Way of the Cross is an adaptation to local usage of a custom widely observed by pilgrims to Jerusalem: the offering of prayer at a series of places in that city traditionally associated with our Lord’s passion and death.
After the Concluding Prayers, the pilgrims are invited to take their places in the pews for the Good Friday Liturgy.
In the midst of the sorrow of Holy Week, we rejoice in the institution of the Eucharist. We use flowers and the color white for joy.
The washing of feet symbolizes the law of love and reflects the servanthood of leadership: we remember the story of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples.
After Eucharist, the Altar and Sanctuary are stripped bare representing Jesus’ abandonment in the garden of Gethsemane and his being stripped of his clothes before crucifixion. At the end of the service we follow the sacrament to the Altar of Repose (in the chapel), symbolizing Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. We maintain silence as we leave.
When the Word of God became flesh and lived among us, it was not simply to experience the best that life on planet earth has to offer. In fact, it was to experience the totality of existence—highs and lows, feast and famine, community and loneliness—so that all creation could be presented back to God in a freely chosen offering of love.
We are called to become selectively blind to what our world labels as sinful, and concern ourselves more with seeing the connections we share in our creator.
If our testimony of faith is to have import and a Christ-like shape, then any proclamations we make need to be accompanied by actions that reveal our deepest truth.
Let us contemplate and be transformed by the ways Jesus lives in the desert, the One whose obedience has won righteousness for us.
Getting in touch with our truest and deepest motivations is one of the most important goals of our Lenten observance.
Who among us has not … been tempted to deny the truth that we have received, especially when under heavy duress and when the world seems to be falling apart all around us?
We have been built for blessing, and to serve as true channels of reconciliation, we must choose to grow together in this lifetime in the way that Christ taught and revealed.
