Passion-tide Letter 2006
Saint John's Church

Passion-tide Letter 2006

Dear Members and Friends,

We are now entering the most sacred time of the Christian Year: Holy Week. Every year as your priest I urge, cajole, and nag you about being present for services as often as possible, every day, if you can. Is it because I want to make you do something useless? Of course not. It is because I believe each of you would benefit enormously from making this Holy Week pilgrimage with Jesus. In spending this one week out of the year walking purposefully with Jesus you can get to know him, and yourself, better than in a year's worth of Sundays.

When you mindfully join in the services on these days, you become actual participants with Jesus in the events of your salvation. Participation with open eyes, discerning minds, and breaking hearts is, in a very real sense, a participation in the events themselves. It makes them alive in the present in all their breathtaking tragedy, gore, and joyous glory. Genuine searching participation places you in the events and gives you a wholly new perspective on Jesus and your relationship to him.

The right motivation for participating in these services is not guilt. The only benefit of coming to them out of guilt is that you might be moved to a right participation by God's Holy Spirit once you are there. The right motivation is above all else profound gratitude for what God has done for you in Jesus, and then hunger for the presence of God in re-living those days.

Out of this most sacred week, three days are considered so important that attendance is obligatory for all Christians, whether they understand why it should be so or not. Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and, traditionally, the Great Vigil on Easter Eve are the most important and sacred days of the Year. You, and all members of the Church, need to hear again every year, and as for the first time, what the Holy Spirit is saying to you as we commemorate Jesus' institution of the Holy Eucharist, his execution, and his resurrection. Bringing these events into your present life as a reality can completely transform it, if you truly participate in them with open minds and hearts.

Let me urge you to think again about your schedule this Holy Week. Let me urge you to make your choices wisely. This week and these three days mark the possibility of a new year of grace for each one of you. Be your life long or short, may it be lived in holy, joyful participation in the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus, so that when dying calls you to your own passion, you may enter it confident that you have learned in truth what it is to live, both now and forever. With every prayer for you all in this wonderful and ironically joyous season, I remain,

Yours faithfully in Christ Jesus,

(The Rev'd) Jesse L. A. Parker
Rector of Saint John's Church