Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

I’ll begin this week’s note in a shocking way and grumble a little about modern liturgical practice.

In 1969 the Roman Catholic Church abandoned what was traditionally called Passiontide (now the last two weeks of Lent beginning today) and made this week the Fifth Week in Lent…rather than the first Sunday of a two week season called Passiontide which ended with the liturgies beginning at Tenebrae (the Wednesday evening before Maundy Thursday).

Traditionally, what was called Passion Sunday (which is today) was the day when red veils were put over crosses, icons, and the like.

When Rome sneezes, Anglicanism gets a cold. So we, too, abandoned Passion Sunday and Passiontide.

This was all in the hopes of doing something quite laudable.

The centrality of the liturgies of Holy Week to the entire Christian calendar, theology, and faith was finding a renewed focus. The inclusion of this brief season of Passiontide seemed to be a distraction from the move from Lent into those liturgies which are at the crux, literally the cross, of Christian tradition and practice.

So the Passion, traditionally sung on Passion Sunday, was moved later to Palm Sunday. It’s an odd movement and I’m not entirely sure I’m in favor of it. But I’ve probably bored you with enough details!

I suppose my anxiety about the change comes from the fact that I think we need time to face reality.

Lent’s abrupt end with the Passion on Palm Sunday drops us into the middle of the story. We don’t spend time with the whole scope of the mysteries of Holy Week—which begins with the triumphal entry into Jerusalem and finds its way through the betrayal, the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection.

Passion Sunday used to set up these two weeks of devotion in a particular way that let us know our attention was to shift. We were to take a deep breath and realize the story we were about to enter as followers of Christ.

It was a down-shift, if you will, into the real purpose of Lent—which is not our repentance per se but Christ’s forgiveness from the Cross and beyond for all time.

We need time to face the reality of the intersection of our sins, individually, and the world’s.

We need time to face the reality of our own brokenness and the world’s.

We need time to focus, in a frenetic world, on what matters. On what is important. On what is at the crux of our faith and hope.

So I encourage you to take this week to prepare for next week.

Pray with a cross. Offer your prayers and your thanksgivings with a particular focus on the days to come remembering that all we do as Christians finds its shape in the weeks ahead.

Whether it is Communion given to us at Supper with friends, humble service commanded of us in washing the feet of followers, an atonement bought on a Cross, or eternal life found in an empty tomb—all that is central to who we are unfolds in Passiontide.

It is worth our focus and prayer—and we need time to face its powerful reality.

Yours in Christian Hope,

—Fr Robert