Dear Friends in Christ,

Greetings and peace to you in the name of our Lord Jesus, a we prepare to enter into this Holy Week and our great celebration of His glorious resurrection.

As we move through this holy time, we are called set our hearts and minds on a contemplative journey with Jesus and His disciples. The Last Week of the earthly life of Jesus was filled with joy and sorrow, assurance and doubt, woundedness and healing, death and new life. In this week we see all of life's beauties and atrocities reflected in the experience of Jesus, both as a human being and as God incarnate in flesh like our very own. In it we see almost unbelievable mercies freely given, forgiveness granted, and love unconditionally bestowed in a garden,  on the cross, at an empty tomb and in an Upper Room where most of the apostles were hiding in grave fear. 

Holy Week and Easter are times to truly see how deeply God loves all of us and wants us to know that we are a forgiven people, a people that can never be separated from the eternal love of God by anything on this earth. As we walk through our remembrance of that time in the life of Jesus, where He so often felt alone and even afraid, we see a God who is like us and wants us to know His presence. We also see in Jesus a way to find the peace of God in the midst of even the most horrifying of life circumstances. At the end of that journey, we find an empty tomb and we hear the voice of the Saviour of the world reminding us that God's promises are true and that we will never be abandoned.

We recall that during the last hours of Jesus's life many of those whom He had loved and chosen to be His apostles abandoned Him in fear. At the same time we see that many others of those who followed Him were able to cast away their fears and stay with Him. They followed Him to Pilate's house and stood in the crowd when the crowd shouted for Pilate to free Barabbas. They stayed with Him as He carried the cross to Golgotha, the place of the Skull. They stood on that cold, dark hill while the Romans nailed Him to the cross and hoisted Him up to die. They stood beneath His tortured body so that as He faced this horror He would see them and feel their presence and their love. They saw Him breathe His last and gently took His body down from the cross, to bring it to the tomb. They saw the tomb sealed. Among these were Mary, the Mother of Jesus, John the Beloved and Mary Magdalene. Can we even begin to contemplate the depth of their grief after what they saw? Can we even come close to
 knowing the exuberant joy that they must have felt when they saw His resurrected body? 

This Holy Week we are invited to do just that, to be as His disciples, to wait and watch with Him for the dawning of that new day which is called Resurrection Day! It will come as God has promised and all of the heavenly host and the creatures of heaven and earth will say, with full hearts and voices, "Alleluia! Alleluia!" This Easter, as we say these words together, may we do so as a people filled with confidence in the fulfillment of the promises of God, knowing that the love of God is always accessible to us and forever alive in us, not only in the present but in all of the days ahead.

On the night when His suffering began in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus asked His disciples to stay awake with Him, to be with Him. May we respond together to our Lord's humble request to wait, watch and journey with Him not only to His cross, but to His glorious resurrection, where death is overcome and every tear is wiped away. 

Please come to the church this week to wait and watch with Jesus. As He promised, He will be with us there, along with all of the heavenly host in God's holy places throughout the world.

May this Easter be filled with every blessing for you, those whom you love and those whom you find difficult to love. May forgiveness, mercy and love fill our hearts and mind with all joy and peace in believing that He is risen, just as He promised.