Lectionary Reading for Palm Sunday The week begins: the palm branches are waving and the cries of “Hosanna!” can be heard resounding. We can get caught up in the crowds, the celebration, the hope of glorious salvation. But the triumphant entry is only the first step of this journey that we begin together through Holy […]
Category Archives: Lent 2014
A Written and Visual Reflection for Holy Saturday: Today, we cultivate sacred space as we keep vigil together in this Holy Week: First, a visual and poetic reflection this Holy Saturday by Jan Richardson, author of the Painted Prayerbook: Visual Reflection: Enduring On this holiest of days on our journey together, we experience the transformative […]
Good Friday This is not a virtuous story. This is a story that writers would call the wild terror of love. It only becomes a story of love when we don’t look away. The sight is terrifying. Refuse to stand at a distance. Weep and tremble, tremble. On this cross hangs God’s sure and certain […]
Some of you may remember that it was last year, on Maundy Thursday, that Pope Francis made a deliberate choice in his own ritual of footwashing on Maundy Thursday. Instead of esteemed or socially “worthy” footwashing, he washed the feet of two young women detained at a juvenile detention center. He didn’t do it to […]
The Wednesday of Holy Week at St. Thomas, we are holding a Tenebrae Service. This may be a new liturgy for some people. Tenebrae, “The Service of Shadows”, offers us a time to be prayful and reflective together in the midst of the darkness that is part of the Lenten season. This is a quiet […]
The journey of Holy Week is one of vastness, and of smallness. How vast is the nature of God’s love for all of God’s people. How small are we in the great sea of time and space. How vast is the Universe of interstellar space. How small are we on this small earth, our island […]
Readings for Palm Sunday Palm Sunday This is the story of two trees… The man from Nazareth entered the town not on a horse of conquest, but the beast of the poor. Yet the people came running to see him as he rode by the palm trees that shaded the courtyards of the rich and […]
Fifth Sunday in Lent: April 6, 2014 Weekly Lectionary Readings This week’s readings give us two poignant images to consider: a prophetic dream of Ezekiel where dry bones rise into life; then, the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from death into life. In the middle of these stories, the Psalmist urges us to wait on the Lord […]
Fourth Sunday in Lent: March 30, 2014 Weekly Lectionary Readings This week as we continue on our Lenten journey of “Cultivating Sacred Space” we are invited to see the light in new and inspiring ways. We begin in the Old Testament reading with Samuel grieving over Saul; surely, the darkness that can accompany grief and […]
The story of Jesus meeting the woman of Samaria at the well is unquestionably my favorite Gospel story; in my faith community, it is the reading for this Third Sunday in Lent. Here is a link, if you’d like to take a read: John 4:5-22 For me, this story is rich with all those aspects […]
Sacred Space 