sunday reflections The Kingdom of Peace

In my sitting room, I have a footstall that was given to my mum by a French lady called Mrs Ganley who was well into her eighties when I was a child.

Married to an Englishman before the First World War, she had a heart that had been gentled through her life’s experience and was a warm, open person who had time for anyone.

After her marriage she had two children very quickly. Then her husband was tragically killed in a farming accident. Mrs Ganley rolled up her sleeves and got on with life. She took any job she could to make ends meet. It would have been so easy for her to become bitter and angry, but actually the opposite happened. She became more and more loving. Her door was always open and anyone was welcome, not just people who were part of her Catholic ghetto. She was suspicious of nobody and accepted everyone. Her son ran a farm in Lancashire, and she would often arrive with a couple of children and a tired mother, because they needed a break.

Every Palm Sunday am drawn to Chapter 12 of John’s Gospel where we have Jesus’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem. Why did people gather as Jesus entered Jerusalem? Maybe some of them felt that they were on the verge of liberation from the power of the Romans. Jesus does something powerful; he finds a young donkey to show that he does not enter Jerusalem triumphantly but peacefully.

The donkey is a symbol of peace, fulfilling a prophecy of Zechariah who says that the Messiah will banish all the instruments of war. Jesus, the humble king of peace, sits on a donkey and will bring peace to the whole world.

It is at this point in John’s story that some Greeks ask ‘to see’ Jesus. They represent the entire Gentile world who, along with the Jews, were being invited to allow the Kingdom of Peace to reign. That peace will begin when He is lifted up from the earth, through that self-giving love, which will give new life and bring people together.

We, too, are called to love as He did and to allow the violence within to die, in order to bear fruit and be messengers of peace, just as my old French friend did.

The challenge is to become counter-cultural so that love and peace will reign within us.

Do not ignore the challenge of this week that we call holy because it is a week that can lead us into a life of deep peace.

Father Chris Thomas

On a liturgical note Canon Philip Gillespie

And so we enter the Great Week, or as it is perhaps better known to us, Holy Week. The events of this week changed the course of the history of the world, and we are privileged to re-live them through our liturgies of Palm Sunday and of the Triduum. It demands stamina to engage fully and prayerfully with the Liturgies of Holy Week but the rewards are great as we are invited into the very heart of the Mystery of Love which is the love of God poured out for us in the person of Jesus and in his Passion, his Death and his Risen Life.

For the 50 days which flow from Easter Sunday we will keep the Easter season where the white of the vestments, the song of the Alleluia and the brightness of the Paschal candle will invite us to walk with those early followers of Jesus whose lives are recounted to us in the Acts of the Apostles. They sought each day not only to give thanks to the Father for the gift of Jesus, but also, in the

Sunday thoughts

As a 12-year-old boy at Upholland I was fortunate to be a member of the choir, the Schola Cantorum. Father Kevin Snape was the choirmaster. Apart from singing at High Mass every Sunday, we came into our own during Holy Week. In addition to the usual services of the Sacred Triduum – Holy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil – we sang at Tenebrae, three successive days of Matins and Lauds.

One candle from a huge triangular candelabra was extinguished after each psalm until there was just one remaining. It left the church in darkness – hence the name Tenebrae.

We sang the responsories – verses from scripture that followed each reading, set to music by the 16thcentury Spanish composer Tomas Luis de Victoria for three or four unaccompanied voices. I was a boy treble – and we got to sing the top line. After rehearsing separately, it was only on the eve of Holy Week that trebles and altos joined with tenors and basses to experience their full magic.

In the early 1960s the liturgy was still in Latin. Even as a 12-year-old, found these Holy Week responsories achingly beautiful. We studied Latin in class, but those responsories conveyed a haunting melancholy and sadness even if the literal meaning of the words escaped us. Some were phrases from the Old Testament, repeated in enthusiasm and joy of his Holy Spirit, to be a people whose love and care for each other in all things mirrored that of their Lord Jesus.

The liturgies of the Easter season, through the sprinkling of the newly blessed Baptismal water, the carrying of lighted candles in procession, the Word proclaimed and the sacraments celebrated, invite us to be in their company; we may be separated by nearly 2,000 years in history but we are one in faith, in hope and in the love that we bear to all. Perhaps that is one aspect of synodality which can easily be forgotten or overlooked.

So as we enter this Great Week I encourage you to be as generous as you can in giving your time to the celebration of the Holy Week and Triduum Liturgies – God loves a cheerful giver and is never outdone in His own generosity!