Events of Holy Week unfold 2013

Dear William,

Thank you for the mail that came on Saturday an the eve of Palm Sunday.

 for Holy Week is gloriously enfolding the whole Paschal Mystery.

As the postman, alias sacristan, I was happy to bring your greeting card to each of monks.

We share 'as the events of the Holy Week unfold.

And in the love of the Risen Lord.

fr. Donald

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: William W ...
To:  . . .
Sent: Friday, 22 March 2013, 16:40
Subject: Palm Sunday and Holy Week

Dear Fathers,

I have posted my greeting cards to arrive in time to unite with you on Palm Sunday. Not a traditional Easter celebration card, it is in fact a Holy Week greeting, that I may unite with you in the journey of Our Lord across those last days.

In case the post goes awry, I attach to this email images of the card with my seasonal reflection printed on the back.

I created this card using a photograph of a particular pastel drawing of Our Lord (my printer failing to reproduce it satisfactorily), which I have carried in my pocket file-book for thirty years! There are similar pastel drawings on the internet by the same artist, but I have never been able to find exactly the same haunting image. I came across an identical print in a little copy of the ‘Imitation of Christ’ just before Christmas when browsing in the second hand book shop, and I bought the book in order to have a new (more respectable!) copy of the pastel so that I could photograph it to share it with you for Easter! As to my reflection, 'Newness of Life', it tells of a fascination that has arisen in my mind and heart, of a deepening awareness that everything in our life connects with the life of Jesus - as uniquely in so many 'parallel' occurrences in his life, his very experience of creation. Thus have my thoughts wandered.

  

Very few Easter daffodils flowering here in the surrounding parkland! I watch on the weather forecast as the snow clouds settle over East Lothian, and imagine the snow all around you, blanketing you with its stillness. I pray that you haven't been cut off, isolated from supplies and support, but that you are feeling the benefit of the new windows, and ? new boiler. I felt such prayerful concern for you all when that awful bout of flu laid so many low, and pray that all may be well for you all to be together for the start of Holy Week.

An early summer retreat whispers its way into conversations . . . 

With my greetings

and my love in Our Lord,

William

ECCE HOMO !

From the pastel hung in the Corsini Palace, Rome

By GUIDO RENI (1575-1642)

Guido Reni produced such sermons in art as have profoundly moved the generations of men throughout the world ever since his time. Here is one of the most poignant pictures ever conceived and produced showing the "Man of Sorrows" in one of the acutest phases of His suffering:

Then Pilate took Jesus, and scourged him. The soldiers platted a crown of thorns, and put it on his head, and put on him a purple robe. Jesus then came out, wearing the crown of thorns and purple robe, and Pilate said to them,

'Behold the man”. (John19:1-6)

Guido painted innumerable pictures which are to be seen in all principal European galleries. He studied under Calvaert and Ludovico Caracci, and went to Rome in 1599 and again in 1605. Here he worked for the Church, and one can imagine that the prelates welcomed him as a painter who could move souls and stir the imaginations of their congregations. He left the Eternal City and migrated to Bologna, where he died in 1642.

   My kingdom is not from this world. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.

(John 18:36ff)

Easter Greetings

                (Colossians 1:15ff Amplified Bible – extracts)

“He is the exact likeness and the visible representation of the unseen God, the Firstborn of all creation, for all things were created and exist through him: and he is the Firstborn from among the dead, so that he alone in every respect might be preeminent: for it has pleased the Father that all the divine fullness, the total of the divine perfection, should permanently dwell in him, and God purposed that through his Son’s intervention, all things should be completely reconciled back to Himself, whether on earth or in heaven, as through him the Father made peace by means of the blood of his cross.”                                               

Uniting with you as we approach

the Joy of the Easter Celebration

in the love of Our Lord

Newness of Life

Parallels to the life of Jesus in the life of one who believes in His divinity have significance far beyond that of shared human experience: His incarnation gives true meaning to our earthly existence; His baptism and temptation, His ministry, His death and resurrection, all offer vocational interpretation for our faith. As each event in His life links one with another, the Spirit presents different aspects that draw us to Him in newness of life.

It  was essential that He be made like His brethren in every respect, in order that He might become a merciful sympathetic and faithful High Priest in the things related to God, to make atonement and propitiation for the people’s sins.[Heb 2:17 - AMP]

 I love to stand in the shadows of the garden and watch with Our Lady

As lovingly she sheds her soulful tears over Your lifeless body,

And listen as the grinding stone is rolled across the entrance to the tomb

Concealing the meaning of Your life shrouded in the mystery of death

Wrapped in grave clothes and placed in a lonely rock-hewn tomb

Where no one has ever been lain, life-giving Saviour rejected as before

When You were wrapped in swaddling clothes and lain in a manger

Where no room was to be found in man’s heart, God most abject of all

First born of all creation, You came to reveal the human side of God

Exposed to the experience of the whole of man’s earthly existence,

Curator of the eternal promises to bring healing and redemption

By Your death and glorious resurrection, first born from the dead

And so I ran to the upper room to bury my face in my chrisom-cloth*

But it was gone – I saw it wrapped around Your head in the tomb

There to be rolled up in a place by itself as You arose from the dead,

By baptism bound to You in death, unbound to live in newness of life

* chrisom-cloth - a white robe put on a child at baptism, used as its shroud if it died

We were buried with Him by the baptism into death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, so we too might habitually live in newness of life  [Rom 6:4 – AMP].

Henceforth I live to and for God. I have been crucified with Christ - in Him I have shared His crucifixion; it is no longer I who live, but Christ the Messiah who lives in me; and the life I now live in the body I live by faith and complete trust in the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself up for me. [Gal 2:19b-20 – AMP]