Holy Week and Easter services

All welcome for services in Holy Week and throughout the Easter season (50 days between Easter Day and Pentecost Sunday).

Liturgies are available here.

You can also join via Zoom – Meeting ID: 879 3746 4388
; Password: 087151.

Holy Thursday – Thursday April 6, 6pm in the church and online.
We commemorate the “last supper” Jesus shared with his disciples, his giving them a “new commandment” to love one another, and the “sacrament” of foot-washing as loving example of friendship and service.

The story has depth, the story goes on.

This year our liturgy incorporates a witness to holiness in the life of Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day, co-founders of the Catholic Worker movement.

You might like to bring a small plate of food to share.

Good Friday – Friday April 7, 9 for 9.30am in the church and online.
Hot-cross buns, tea and coffee before the service. Prayers with friends from Cana Communities. Liturgy includes Solemn Prayers.

PSALM 22

God, I feel abandoned even by you.
I cry in the dark;
my pain seems endless.
I recall the trust placed in you
by people through the ages.
You have brought comfort in the most difficult times.

Fear and pain make me feel that I am nothing.
Others seem to mock me;
they don’t see my deep despair.

Yet, I know that you too have mothered me.
In my mother’s womb and at her breast
you have watched over me.
This loving closeness I need to feel, now!

(Patricia Stevenson, rsj)

GOOD FRIDAY LITANY

When I’m lost and disoriented, find me,
My God, my father, my foundation.

Turn to me in my restless hour,
My God, my mother, my maker.

Hear my body and heal my mind,
My God, my soul and sustenance.

Through divine love, reframe my memories of pain,
My God, my past, my future.

By Jasmin and Andrew, Liturgy Resource SSUC, 2023.

GOSPEL (John 18:1 – 19:42)

What is truth? The life, the love and hope that rises in community.

Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin and the Catholic Worker communities. The 78ers and the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. Students, workers, teachers, parents and grandparents – Global #ClimateStrike – demanding no new coal, oil and gas, including the Narrabri Coal Seam Project and the Kurri Kurri Gas Plant, 100 per cent public renewable energy and exports by 2030, funding for a just transition and jobs for fossil fuel workers and their communities, real carbon cuts, not offsets, resourcing First Nations-led solutions that guarantee land rights and care for Country. Faithful Palm Sunday marchers insisting on the dignity and legality of human beings seeking refuge from persecution and violence … 

Truth is the life, the love and hope that rises in Cana Communities, with and between members of this Uniting Church congregation-community-garden …

Holy Saturday Vigil – Saturday April 8, 6pm in the garden and online.
We will gather in the garden for prayers, then move to the church at 7.30pm for a screening of Fool for Christ: The Story of Dorothy Day (Directed by Barbara Rick, Performed by Sarah Melici), 2007. The movie is also available to view here.

Jesus preaches to the imprisoned spirits … Jesus stands by all those who are imprisoned, isolated, fearful or anxious (see 1 Peter 3:19). 

For Orthodox Christians, this is a most significant verse. It not only gives rise to the bold statement in the Apostles’ Creed – that Jesus “descended into hell” – but informs the Icon of the Resurrection (also called the Icon of the Harrowing of Hades/Hell), which shows Jesus rising from the dead, not alone, but hand in hand with human beings no longer imprisoned, isolated, fearful or anxious (pieces of various locks and chains strewn about).

Jesus rises from the dead in the dark hour of the night … We inhabit the darkness with purpose because it is in darkness, not in the glare of full sunshine, that our hope is found …

Easter Day – Sunday April 9, 10am in the church and online.
Celebrating Baptisms and Reaffirmations of Baptism. For whom might we roll away the stone? All welcome.

There is a story familiar to Orthodox Christians of Mary preaching the truth of Christ crucified and risen. Tiberius Caesar scoffs and says he no more believes in a crucified criminal rising to life than in the egg in Mary’s hand turning red. At which point the egg in Mary’s hand turns red. The story speaks of Mary’s bold and effective preaching …