Dear All Saints and St Marys
Holy Week starts this Sunday. This week we enter into, as the very first friends of Jesus did
- the celebrations of Palm Sunday,
- the intimacy of Maundy Thursday,
- the desolation of Good Friday
and then
- the hope and resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday.
It is a week of different moments. It is a week that seems to compress into it every possible human emotion and experience. It is a week that speaks of a God who loves the world in death and resurrection life.
No Holy week is the same.
This year is different to last, and the year before that.
Even before a pandemic, no Holy Week was the same. Each year brings something new to our spiritual journey with God as individuals and as communities, and each year I am often struck by one of part of this last week of Jesus life, as chiming in some way that is pertinent to my own and our own as churches. I hope and pray that as we gather in different ways this coming week, to remember as God’s people this most precious and important journey, that we are also renewed, refreshed and met on the way by God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Services this Holy week
Palm Sunday | 8am | All Saints | BCP Holy Communion and Blessing of Palms |
​ | 10am | St Marys | Holy Communion and Procession and Blessing of Palms |
​ | 10.30am | All Saints | All Age Service of Palm Sunday with Palms
|
Tuesday | 7:30pm | St Marys | Reflective Service praying for Ukraine |
Wednesday | 7:30pm | All Saints | Reflective Service praying for Ukraine |
Maundy Thursday | 6:30pm | All Saints | Agape Meal |
​ | 7.30pm | St Marys | Holy Communion with Foot Washing and Watch till Midnight |
Good Friday | 10:00am | All Saints | Family Activities and Worship with Easter Eggs |
​ | 1:30pm | St Marys | Liturgy of Good Friday |
​ | 2:00pm | All Saints | Last Hour at the Cross – Reflective service of the Passion |
Easter Saturday | 7:30pm | St Marys | Easter Fire with Holy Communion and Celebration Party |
Easter Sunday | 10:00am | St Marys | All Age Easter Communion |
​ | 10:30am | All Saints | All Age Easter Communion |
​ | 6:30pm | St Marys | ​Choral Easter Evensong |
Here are the Roots materials for those using them at home
I re-read this week a poem by Malcolm Guite that focused on the cross and Jesus word from St Luke 23:34 I leave it for you here.
Father, Forgive
Father, forgive, and so forgiveness flows;
Flows from the very wound our hatred makes,
Flows from the taunts, the curses and the blows,
Flows through our wasted world, a healing spring,
Welling and cleansing, washing all the marks
Away, the scores and scars of every wrong.
Forgiveness flows to where we need it most:
Right in the pit and smithy of our sin,
Just where the dreadful nails are driven in,
Just where our woundedness has done its worst.
We know your cry of pain should be a curse,
Yet turn to you and find we have been blessed.
We know not what we do, but heaven knows
For every sin on earth, forgiveness flows.
Blessings for this most holy of weeks ahead
Revd Lizzie
Revd Lizzie Kesteven
Vicar of All Saints Church and St Marys Church, Fishponds
Interim Co Area Dean of Bristol City Deanery
Advisor for Spirituality for Bristol Diocese
0117 9650856
07973917720
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