Clergy Notes — April 13, 2025

I am always a little surprised at how quickly the season of Lent goes by. This year, at St James’, there are so many things going on that I imagine many of us feel like we hardly had a chance to experience Lent in its fulness.

And, now here we are at the beginning of Holy Week, perhaps feeling a little like the disciples – not really sure how we got here, but trusting that God is still doing a new thing – in us, and in the world.

And so, we begin this week with Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem, and then celebration of the Last Supper, which quickly gives way to the horror and desolation of the cross. Like the disciples, we may find ourselves experiencing true sorrow, even though – unlike them – we know death is not the end.

We know that just as the excitement of Palm Sunday gives way to the anguish of the cross, so too does the sorrow of Good Friday give way to Paschal joy. The hope of resurrection is more than just relief; it is the defiance of the darkest powers the world can throw at us. It is an unexpected experience of being utterly amazed at what God is doing.

I hope for all of us that we may allow ourselves to enter into the fulness of Holy Week. The rich liturgies this week are an opportunity to truly walk with Jesus moment by moment, allowing our hearts to experience each one as if we did not know what was going to happen next. For we, too, cannot really grasp what is about to happen.

God is doing a new thing: do you perceive it?

Mother Amanda

Click here to find the Liturgy at Home for Sunday

/by

Clergy Notes — April 6, 2025

The reflection I chose for this week is a modern translation of the Anima Christi – a prayer which became most well-known through St Ignatius Loyola and his Spiritual Exercises. Although it was not he who originally wrote it, one can see distinctly Jesuit qualities in its content: it is passionate and intimate as well as deeply sacramental. What more fitting prayer for the beginning of Passiontide?

Reflecting upon it this week, I found myself particularly caught on the words, ‘on each of my dyings’ – for Christians have many dyings in our lives, do we not? There is the first one, at our baptism, and the ‘little death’ each night when we fall asleep. And, of course, the final death of our mortal bodies.

But there are also many other kinds of deaths: the death of our innocence and childish fantasies; the death of our first love; the death of illusions we create of ourselves and those whom we come to know well. There is the call for all Christians to a daily dying of self to Christ, which further urges us to a death of ego and self-will. And although each of these deaths may carry with them some pain and loss, they are not all bad, for they help us to learn and grow. Yet, without the light of Christ’s love, all those deaths would feel very desolate and hopeless.

As the crucifixes and images are shrouded this week and next, and we are deprived of the familiar images we take comfort in and maybe take for granted, I wonder where else we may find Christ’s light and love, and what deaths we may need to die in order to discover them.

Mother Amanda

Click here to find the Liturgy at Home for Sunday

/by