Holy Week 2024

Greetings from the St. Paul Center for Theology and Prayer!

FORMING DISCIPLES OF JESUS IN EVERY CONGREGATION

The St. Paul Center for Theology and Prayer exists to form disciples of Jesus in every congregation. It seeks to do this by equipping and resourcing local congregations for the tasks and joys of faith formation, teaching and learning, catechesis, and the life of prayer.

Following on from our Lent newsletter, we move through the theme of PENITENCE to FORGIVENESS and ultimately RESURRECTION - as we draw near to Holy Week. We wish all our readers a profound journey to the foot of the cross and beyond, to that astonishing joy of new and eternal life.

Don’t forget, you can find our previous newsletters online. If you’re reading this because someone shared it with you, and you’re not yet on our newsletter mailing list, please do sign up here, so you’ll be sure to receive all future news from TSPC!

A THOUGHT FROM TSPC

Forgiveness. The word can conjure up many feelings—perhaps depending on what side of the matter we find ourselves—be we the offender or the offended. Forgiveness is not an unusual word or concept for us. We encounter it frequently in our liturgies—found in the Confession and Absolution, in the Lord’s Prayer, and hopefully often in sermons. Yet, forgiveness is still something we find difficult to navigate. This is especially true when those who have offended cannot own up to what they have done, perhaps too afraid or possibly unaware they have even caused harm.

Lent is a time to grow. Lent is a season to uproot the things in our lives that draw us away from God and one another. All too often, forgiveness, whether we are unable to offer it, or unable to ask for it, can be a block in our lives, robbing us of the chance to move on and be free.

If Lent is a time to unburden ourselves, wouldn’t the unresolved grievances we have also be something to give up, to see transformed, and leave in the tomb - the tomb of our hearts, our minds?

Resurrection is liberation. In Resurrection is the invitation to rise to a new life that’s not held down by another’s sin imposed upon us, even when, and especially when, no one takes ownership of that offense and tries to make things right. Liberation is finding life despite the trappings of the grave, our hearts and minds … and dancing.

This Eastertide and beyond, my hope for all of us is that we might know, and fully embrace, a kind of liberation that allows us to dance, even when things are not just, even when things are not as they should be, for we were not designed to be anything but free. Gloriously, truly, wholly, limitlessly liberated.

The Rev. Andrew Suitter, Rector of St. Elizabeth’s Episcopal Church, Sudbury

WHAT’S ON AT TSPC

holy week 2024

Learning to Pray

Did you know…? Our Learning to Pray Video Series includes a video about The Triduum, which you may enjoy watching this Holy Week. You can find it here - where you’ll also find a link to our conversation guide, should you wish to share and explore the videos with others.

We’re keen to expand the Learning to Pray videos we have on offer! Do you have a particular area of prayer you’d like to explore and share with us? Send us an email and let us know!

A thought from the Rev. Rita Powell, Episcopal Chaplain at Harvard, on Penitence and the Spiritual Body

Poised at the threshold of the Week we call Holy, it is time for our final preparations. Whatever we have practiced or given up or reflected on or forgotten during these long weeks of Lent, now we get another chance to turn, to return, to come home. Home to our own bodies, home to our streets, to this land. To enter the Passion is to enter a difficult history, to face our own complicity, to look agony in the face.

The more I walk and sit with the sorrow of the legacy of slavery, the lived reality of the unimaginable violence our cultural ancestors visited on this land and its people, and still enact today, the more I find I need my body, and this land to bear it.

This week we dare to walk with our beloved Jesus, and to sit with his sorrow, his suffering. In order to pray through and into this difficult story, we may wish to call upon the intelligence of our senses, the knowing of our bodies, the wisdom of the land which holds us and all our stories.

As you take yourself to the prayers and liturgies of this week, give thought to how you get there. Greet each doorway as a threshold, a way of entering something. Breathe as you first settle into your pews, focusing your posture to presence. Let your eyes close and hear every tiny sound, and let the swell of organ and voice move you.

My prayer for Holy Week is this: I wish to let all the feelings run through like a river; grief, inadequacy, shame, the urgency of need. And then to discover that what is required of me is just this: to attend to this story of passion and suffering and sorrow simply with Real Presence. My prayer is that I may let go, and witness this story, this Holy Week, with all my being. Just This.

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coming eastertide 2024

Finding Our Way: Developing practice of contemplation with land to reckon with trauma

Tuesdays in April (2, 9, 16, 23, 30) 6-7pm, online

A reminder that this exciting course is coming up - starting right after Easter Sunday! There are still a few spaces left; please do sign up to join the Rev. Rita Powell, Episcopal Chaplain at Harvard.

In ‘Finding our Way’, the goal is to connect to the land around us, and the history of that land, in prayerful, healing and transformative ways. Attendees will be able to take the ideas explored in the course back to their own parishes and landscapes.

Here is Rita’s description of this exciting program:

If we are Christians and we are in America, we need spiritual help and healing. The ongoing living legacies of slavery, colonization, and greed are entwined in our own tradition, poisoning our culture. It is the call of the prophets to help us lament and understand this, and, with God’s help, be transformed by examining our past.

Building on the “Landscape of Slavery at Harvard Tours,” this course will draw from the wisdom of the Christian desert tradition. Theology and practice which recognizes the Land around us as pastoral teacher, living source of wisdom, can offer us a way to live and move and have our being in the face of all the challenges we face. We will learn from women, black activists, and poets as we imagine new ways to be faithful to the promise of the Incarnation.

Each session will be made of three parts: storytelling, examination of a text, and creative writing. The methodology for the course is inspired by visionary leader Adrienne Marie Brown’s Emergent Strategy, practices for collective transformation. The storytelling draws on moments of hope and possibility happening in our own time, in and through and with the Episcopal church and others. The course is an invitation to develop a practice or experience within your own context.

World Around Us As God’s Letter to Us (April 2nd)
Egypt: Sacred Ground–Divine Presence (April 9th)
The Living Mountain: Prayer of Paying Attention (April 16th)
Bodies as part of Land: Word Made Flesh (April 23rd)
Honoring what can not be named: God of the Visible and Invisible (April 30th)

The course will run Tuesdays in April, 6-7pm. The online component of the course will be followed by an optional ‘pilgrimage’ together (planned as a group, to find a date which works for all) to walk the land and explore how to put the ideas into practice. Please sign up to attend this dynamic program at Eventbrite, here. If you have questions about the course, please contact rita@harvardepiscopalians.org

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Coming Soon!

TSPC Learning Communities

Clergy are every parish or congregation’s theologians in residence, to whom people turn and from whom people expect wise teaching and direction. But clergy (many of whom are now part-time) are often weighed down with so many tasks and pastoral responsibilities that developing robust spaces for theological exploration and spiritual formation is overwhelming.

TSPC’s regional Learning Communities will support clergy at a time when they are hard-pressed, and provide the space for their own spiritual nourishment. These communities will gather every six weeks or so to pray, reflect on experiences bringing theology into the life of the parish, and share resources for teaching prayer practices and preaching. They will allow clergy to make connections with one another while also taking advantage of the wisdom and expertise of colleagues, brainstorming relevant and innovative programming outside of weekly services, and participating in the complex task of visioning for the church during changing times.

There will be three learning communities, based in the North, center and South of the Diocese. The plan is that these groups will meet roughly seven times per year, occasionally in person but mostly via zoom. Each session will have a topic (such as ‘Baptism’, ‘Hope’, ‘Deepening Advent’) and discussion will be led by two facilitators. Our goal is to provide a space for clergy to bring concerns and questions, pray for one another, be nourished in their faith, and develop themselves as spiritual leaders in their parishes and congregations.

Look out for invitations to your local Learning Community, coming during Eastertide!

Closing with … INSPIRATION for HOLY WEEK

Descending Theology: The Resurrection

By Mary Karr

From the far star points of his pinned extremities,

cold inched in—black ice and squid ink—

till the hung flesh was empty.

Lonely in that void even for pain,

he missed his splintered feet,

the human stare buried in his face.

He ached for two hands made of meat

he could reach to the end of.

In the corpse’s core, the stone fist

of his heart began to bang

on the stiff chest’s door, and breath spilled

back into that battered shape. Now

it’s your limbs he comes to fill, as warm water

shatters at birth, rivering every way.

(Many thanks to the Rev. Mary Beth Emerson for suggesting this poem.)

In Holy Week we enter into the last week of Jesus’ life with him. We rejoice, we lament, we fear, we cower, we shout both “Hosanna!” and “Crucify Him!” We move with Jesus into Jerusalem, to the upper room, to the garden, to the trial and the cross, to the tomb, and to resurrection glory. I encourage you to do all you can to move through Holy Week in attentive prayer—treat it like a retreat in the midst of daily life. And ask God where God wants to meet you. Are you striding into the city with Jesus, waving palm branches in hope and joy? Are you with Jesus in a place of desperation in the Garden of Gethsemane? Do you find yourself at calvary, lamenting and grieving? Are you with Jesus in the tomb, in a time of uncertainty, stillness, or potentiality, not knowing what comes next? Be attentive to yourself and to the voice and touch of Jesus this week; where will you encounter him?

The Rev. Dr. Jarred Mercer

What helps or inspires you as you practice penitence? Let us know your thoughts - our email inbox is always open!