Dear Ones of St. Columba's,

 We have made the long journey through Lent, and Holy Week is here. Tomorrow night we will begin the longest liturgy in our tradition - the Triduum (Tri-doo-um), which is a single liturgy in three parts: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and The Great Vigil of Easter. Triduum means Three Days - and we will experience each one of these services as a transition into a new day of the great three. Each ending is but a pause, until the next day's liturgy picks up where the last left off.

One way of looking at these services is as memorials - ritual ways that we remember the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. This way makes sense. This is the central story of our tradition, the well we come back to year after year to renew our hearts and minds and turn us ever more toward God. 

And yet - Holy Week is more than one long extended memorial service. The story of Jesus is not a story that ended two thousand years ago, and the work of worship, liturgy, and ritual that we do together is not a re-enactment of a long ago event. Holy Week is an invitation to participate in an ongoing story. The story of Jesus is not just a then and there story, it is also a here and now story. The story of Jesus is our story, and when we walk alongside Jesus during this holy week of ours we are invited to live alongside Jesus in ways that shape our lives now, not just our collective memory of what happened then.

What might it mean, to live Holy Week, instead of just attending the services? What might it mean to let the rituals we gather to do together become more to you than a memorial? What if washing each other's feet this Maundy Thursday was a doorway to loving each other better and finding new ways to care for each other? What if standing in the presence of the cross this Good Friday becomes a doorway to facing all the ways we fail God and each other, and letting the grace of loving the God who loves us no matter what shape who we are in the world? What if Easter Vigil becomes a doorway to new life here and now, in this community and in each of our lived lives in the world?

I believe this is the opportunity and the challenge of Holy Week, every time we come to this moment. Yes, we remember our Jesus in this ritual way. But these rituals are not about something that is over - they are windows, doorways, invitations to life here and now, to relationship here and now with the One whose life and love for us has never ceased. 

Come on in. Holy Week is here, now.

with care and gratitude,

Alissa