2017 Annual Blessing of the Animals poster 1
Easter Day at St Stephen’s
ALLELUIA! CHRIST IS RISEN!
and the people respond:
He is risen indeed. Alleluia!
Our Service in the Church is at 11:00 am
Good Friday
Good Friday Inspired
The Cross He carried
Had bruised and battered
His frail, thin body~
This cruel and bloody,
Bleak day that mattered.
The Sacred Triduum
Pulpit Crucifix: Canterbury Cathedral
The last three days of Holy Week are called the Sacred Triduum, the three holy days.
We can look at this period from three perspectives:
These days bring to a climax and conclusion our preparation for Easter.
The season of Lent has pointed us in this direction.
Now we enter the Holy of Holies so to speak – where Christ our great high priest offers himself on the cross for sinful humanity.
These three days are already a part of Easter; for there is an inseparable union between the death of Christ and his resurrection. The two together constitute the Paschal Mystery.
Easter Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ
Bishop Geoffrey Rowell
Without Easter, without the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead, there would be no Christian Church.
All that we do, all that we are as Christians springs from this stupendous event in which the love of God in Christ leaps from the grave to the heights of heaven and draws us into the hope and joy and eternal life of a new creation.
In a powerful phrase the great seventeenth-century Anglican bishop, Lancelot Andrewes, writes that “his resurrection was a second birth, Easter a second Christmas.”
Jesus Incognito
We all have favorite gospel stories and this Easter season highlights one of mine.
It’s the story of two disciples who, travelling back from Jerusalem to the village of Emmaus in the days immediately following the crucifixion of Jesus.