Welcome
Everyone welcome,
no exceptions
Everyone welcome,
no exceptions
Our Festival Easter Mass starts at 10.30am. Here we bless the Easter garden and renew our baptismal vows: we die with Christ and are raised by him into new life.
Our readings for both services recount the resurrection and a God who can transform death and failure to new life and hope. This is ultimate power and yet it is shown in vulnerability: God never coerces us, never exerts power over us and so we remain free to respond. In Acts 10. 34-43 Peter responds with confidence, joyfully proclaiming the resurrection. Yet in Mark 12:1-8 the first witnesses of the empty tomb stay silent, for they are afraid. The angel at the tomb offers the possibility of a new beginning, calling the disciples to return again to Galilee. The choice is ours: will we risk following Christ who has gone ahead of us, or we will we hang back, fearful of the new life offered?
Our dawn service starts before the sun has risen at 5am when we light the Paschal Candle from the new Easter fire outside of the church and carry the light of Christ into the dark church. It’s worth getting up early for this magical service where we sing the first alleluia of Easter by candlelight.
Today we commemorate Jesus’ last supper with his disciples before his death. Our beautiful evening service at 8pm includes feet washing and ends with the stripping of the altar and silent candlelit prayer.
Our Old Testament reading, Exodus 12:1-4, 11-14, recalls the first Passover when God’s people were protected by the blood of the sacrificial lamb. In all the other gospels Jesus dies on the eve of the Passover but in John’s gospel, 13:1-17, 31b – 35, Jesus dies on the Passover, he is the sacrificial lamb who gives his life for us. Teaching us that God’s justice comes not by violence but by vulnerability. Before his death, he kneels to wash his disciples feet, asking us to do the same for one another, to learn both how to serve and be served.