Dear friends
Palm Sunday celebrations last weekend marked the start of Holy Week, the most important week of the Christian year. Each day is charged with meaning that builds up through the week into a rich and complex drama of human conflict, longing and failure. Powerful religious and political forces collide and collude to bring about the death of Jesus. He is deserted by all but a few of his friends. He is crucified, he dies and is laid in a tomb. But this is not the end, because with the dawn of the Sabbath comes the joy of resurrection. Darkness and death are overcome by the overwhelming and unstoppable life and light of God.
As some of you know, my dear Mum died last year. As we planned her funeral service and how to mourn her loss and celebrate her life, my siblings and I were looking for the right music. Perhaps surprisingly one of the pieces we all chose was ‘Oh what a beautiful mornin’’ from the Rogers and Hammerstein musical, Oklahoma! Mum had seen the show when it came to London in 1947. After wartime privations she said that seeing the show was like the sun rising again, full of light, life and joy.
I came to see that this simple song can hold a profound theological truth and we played ‘Oh what a beautiful mornin’’ as the final music at Mum’s funeral. For me, it expresses the faith that, having fallen asleep for the last time, in this world, she had woken to into the light of the next. It expresses the faith that the moments of beauty we experience here on earth, when ‘all the sounds of the earth are like music’, are in fact a glimpse of God’s kingdom. I believe that all the joy, light and love she shared in this life, are just a foretaste of the joy, light and love of eternity.
The Revd Francis Kilvert, writes of the joy of Easter Sunday morning in his Diary, ‘…the bright silent sunny morning, and the lark rising and singing alone in the blue sky, and then suddenly the morning air all alive with music of sweet bells ringing for the joy of the resurrection. ‘The Lord is risen’ smiled the sun, ‘The Lord is risen’ sang the lark. And the church bells in their joyous pealing answered from tower to tower, ‘He is risen indeed’.
I do hope that you have a profound and meaningful Holy Week. Do come and take part in person in the Cathedral services and activities, or join the live-stream, if you can. We will journey with Christ, with his teaching and through his suffering; we will witness his death and wait in the emptiness of Holy Saturday; and finally, we will experience Easter with a renewed and deep joy.
I’ll close with a contemporary Common Worship Easter prayer:
God of glory,
by the raising of your Son
you have broken the chains of death and hell:
fill your Church with faith and hope;
for a new day has dawned
and the way to life stands open
in our Saviour Jesus Christ.
Amen
With blessings and best wishes,
The Very Revd Catherine Ogle
Dean of Winchester
