OUR HOLY WEEK AND EASTER WORSHIP SERVICES

I was so blessed by and grateful for the beautiful worship services of Holy Week and Easter at St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church. This was my first Holy Week at St. Gregory’s, as well as my first Easter Sunday. I was genuinely awestruck by my experience of worship here. The worship of Holy Week kicked off with the contemplative and elegant service of Tenebrae on Wednesday evening. This service featured readings and psalms paired with anthems from the church choir, almost like a “Lessons and Carols” service for Holy Week, and I was genuinely touched by the way the Scripture selections and the choral anthems gently played off each other to tell the story of Jesus’ final days in Jerusalem. Out of all the services of Holy Week, this was my favorite, and I wish more people would attend. The service of Tenebrae is monastic in tone, which allows the congregation to sit gently with Jesus’ story and to enter into a prayerful state of quiet contemplation. The music was exquisitely beautiful, and Tim Brumfield, our Music Director, shared with me later that the choir works very hard on this service and rehearses it very carefully. That was very evident to me: the music was simply outstanding. I hope you will plan to join us for Tenebrae next year. It made a significant difference in my prayer life, and it is a beautiful way to enter into the solemnity of Holy Week and to begin the special journey that the church takes every year to pause with sacred intent at each step of Christ’s journey to the cross.

The next services in Holy Week were on Thursday, involving the liturgy for Maundy Thursday from the Book of Common Prayer as well as the reenactment of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet during his Last Supper. Now, it is a longstanding joke among my female friends that I have the most ticklish feet in the world. I can’t go out with them for pedicures because, despite my best efforts to keep calm, I squirm and jump every time the undersides of my feet are touched. I have never really enjoyed foot washing liturgies at church for this very reason. However, I was deeply moved by our Maundy Thursday services at St. Gregory’s this year. Father Andrew gave me the liturgical role of anointing people with holy oil, and the phrase that I spoke while I anointed people’s foreheads was, “Christ is set as a seal upon your heart: for love is stronger than death.” What a powerful affirmation of God’s love, especially as we gathered to remember Jesus’ last meal with his friends. At the end of the evening Maundy Thursday service, all the liturgical vessels and candles and fabrics from the altar area were removed. Then Father Andrew and I washed the empty altar, to prepare it for Good Friday, and knelt to contemplate Christ’s betrayal and arrest. It was a sobering moment, and our hearts began to grow heavy out of compassion for our Lord.

The services of Good Friday on the next day allowed us to further contemplate the sufferings of Jesus. I was deeply touched by the congregation’s veneration of the cross during these services. Each person in the church had the opportunity to kneel at the foot of a giant wooden cross made of rough boards, which had a crown of thorns positioned around the top with the biggest and most painful-looking thorn spikes I have ever seen.

The highlight of Holy Saturday, the day before Easter Sunday, was the magnificent Easter Vigil. This Saturday evening service was truly remarkable, and if you didn’t get a chance to experience it for yourself, I hope you will join us next year. First, we kindled the Pascal Fire outside the church and then had a candlelight procession into the dark chapel, where we brought in the light of Christ by processing in a brand-new Paschal Candle. Readings that proclaimed the wonders of salvation history were read and the congregation renewed their Baptismal Vows. Then the church lights came on and the organ sounded the ancient hymn of joy, the Gloria in Excelsis, as we processed into the main Nave and Chancel of the church to celebrate the first glorious Eucharist of the Feast of the Resurrection. With the lights now on and the organ thundering joyously, we could now fully see and delight in the exquisite Easter flowers, and our hearts lifted in joy. There was no doubt that Christ is alive, risen from the dead – alleluia, alleluia!

Easter Sunday continued the joy and the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection over five different Sunday worship services (five!). I loved our sunrise Easter Eucharist at the beach, where four new brothers and sisters in Christ were baptized right in the ocean. Alleluia, indeed! When they came up out of the water, we gave them our new St. Gregory’s branded fluffy white towels, to keep them warm in the ocean wind and to help them dry off. At the end of both the 9:00 and 11:15 a.m. services in the church, the choir and the special Easter musicians performed a joyful rendition of the “Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s Messiah. That really blew me away. Our choir under Tim Brumfield’s direction is truly an awe-inspiring group of musicians, and they made our Easter joy complete by singing their hearts out and lifting up our praise to God.

I am very grateful for the hard work that so many talented people put in to all of our Holy Week and Easter services. As a new person at St. Gregory’s, I was deeply moved by our worship, and I hope your heart was moved as well. Let the Easter joy continue! I look forward to seeing you in worship over the Great Fifty Days of Easter, to continue to praise God for our new life in Christ, “for we are raised with him” (Romans 6:5). The Lord is Risen Indeed! Alleluia!

In Christ,

Robyn+

The Rev. Dr. Robyn M. Neville, Ph.D.