As usual on Easter Sunday morning, an empty cross is transformed through the services to one full of flowers to represent new life after Christ’s Resurrection. Today the cross was started with the All Age Worship and then following by the congregation of the Communion service.
This superb banner was made by children at the Children’s Activity Morning last Saturday. Each child made a butterfly to represent the new life of Easter, and they were all stuck to this banner which was hung high above the chancel of the church for Easter Sunday!
We couldn’t find a Fireman Sam to look after the fire for lighting the Paschal Candle at the Easter Eve Vigil, so we found this chap called Derek . . .
This service is one of the most amazing of the church year. The congregation gathers outside the church door, in the gathering gloom of dusk, and the first ancient tradition of the service is to light the new 2012 Paschal (Easter) candle from the flames of a fire.
The candle then leads the congregation into the church, lit by hundreds of candles. This is a stunning visual representation of the light of Easter after the darkness of Good Friday, and the history of St Mary’s from it’s monastic days come flooding in with the candles, incense and choral music makes even more of the moment.
We stop for our first ‘station’ at the back of church, representing the birth of Christ, and everybody lights a candle. We then move further into the church for the second station, an empty cross with nails. hammer and crown of thorns in front of it. Again, more candles are lit.
Then finally to the altar, with the burning incense, and Easter garden in the altar itself depicting the empty tomb. After lighting another candle here, the congregation light their own candle from the Paschal candle and continue with the service.
After the readings, Gospel and a couple of hymns, the congregation move to the font at the church door to renew their Baptism vows. Each person makes the sign of the cross, the sign of Christ, with the Holy water on another person.
During the last hymn, the light outside the East window is lit, which gradually concludes the service of light. An indescribable feeling of new life, surrounds the church and the congregation.
He is Risen!! Alleluia!!
At our At the Foot of the Cross service for Good Friday this afternoon, Amanda had picked selections of readings from a book unknown to me: Charles Dickens The Life of our Lord. It was very apt being the bi-centennial of Dickens’ birth.
Dickens’ novels and short stories are well-known but I had no idea that he had written a book, about the life of Jesus, obviously based on the Gospels. He originally wrote it for his children, with the introduction stating,
“My Dear Children, I am very anxious that you should know something about the History of Jesus Christ. For everybody ought to know about Him. No one ever lived who was so good, so kind, so gentle, and so sorry for all people who did wrong, or were in any way ill or miserable, as He was.”
The book was written between 1846 and 1849, about the time he was writing David Copperfield. Every Christmas, Dickens would read the book to his children, and he never intended it to be published, and was adamant that it would not be so during his lifetime. The book passed down the Dickens family until Sir Henry Fielding Dickens in his will in 1933 gave permission for the book to be published if a majority of the family agreed. The majority vote did agree and the book was published the following year.
The book is interesting in that Dickens’ own style is clear throughout, as well as some ‘interesting’ Victorian views.
The Life of our Lord, like all other Dickens books, is now in the public domain and so free to download. You can view it here.
Neal Pinder-Packard