A RICH TRADITION
IN SO MANY Areas of life things seem to change so quickly that it's good to be able to tap in to some things which never change.
God's love for all his creation is one of the great universal unchanging truths. And our ability to respond to that love through worship, prayer and praise is one of the great blessings which God bestows on us, his human creatures.
God gives us also his Church to be the medium through which we can offer him our thanks and praise. And in the worship of the Church we find a rich tradition of actions, words and music through which we can respond to God's love shown to us in the life, the death and the raising to new life of his Son Jesus Christ.
At no time is this tradition richer than as we journey through the season of Lent towards the testing time of Passiontide and Holy Week and finally to the great release and joy of Easter.
Tradition, of course, is never static - it develops all the time. Often it delves back to rediscover and revive glorious devices from the Church's past. Sometimes it takes today's practices forward to develop a new liturgy appropriate for changing times. All we ask is that God's Holy Spirit may breathe life into our worship and through it draw us nearer to the Author of our being and to Jesus the bringer of our salvation.
Our pilgrimage of faith begins on Ash Wednesday (8th March) when, in an ancient symbol of penitence (an acknowledgment of past wrongs), we receive on our foreheads in ash the sign of the cross.
A far younger tradition is that of the Lent Study Group and this continues this year with a sequence of five sessions on worship and the sacraments, focussing in the end upon the worship of the Easter celebration.
Mothering Sunday (2nd April) is an old tradition which has been refocussed in recent years as a celebra-tion of life within the Christian family.
And then, of course, we move towards Holy Week - the remembrance of the terrible events of the final week of Jesus' earthly life and ministry. On Palm Sunday we recollect the story of how Jesus entered the city of Jerusalem riding on a donkey to the praise of the crowds which assembled to welcome him. On Palm Sunday we each receive a cross made of palm leaf so that we can share in that worship.
Then on Maundy Thursday we remember the final supper that Jesus shared with his disciples. And how, afterwards, he went out to pray in the garden to which his betrayer brought the temple police to arrest him.
The worship of Good Friday holds before our minds that most terrible of days. We hear Christ's reproaches from the Cross and remember how we too have failed to be his faithful disciples.
The mood of reflection continues on Easter Eve (Holy Saturday), when, in a darkened church at the Evening Vigil, we reflect on the whole story of God's love for his people as recounted in the words of the Old Testament. And then we strike the new fire and light the Easter Candle. And so once more, the risen Light of the World fills the church.
The celebration continues on Easter morning as we dedicate our Easter Garden and renew our commitment to Christ made at our baptism.
There is a real richness of tradition in the Church's celebration of the coming seasons of Lent, Holy Week and Easter. Come and make use of it to anchor your life to the unchanging God at the heart of all being.