Journey with us through Lent and Holy Week as we prepare to celebrate the risen Christ on Easter Day.
The season of Lent lasts for forty days. It recalls the time Jesus spent in the wilderness before his death and resurrection and is a time when Christians reflect and prepare for the celebrations of Easter.
During Holy Week and Easter we remember the events that lead up to the death and resurrection of Jesus. Holy Week culminates on Easter Sunday, which celebrates Jesus' resurrection from the dead.
We invite you to join us at the Cathedral to explore and experience the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus through prayer, reflection and music.
The Holy Week preacher is the Revd Professor Ben Quash. His theme ‘The Fabric of our Salvation’ will follow the story of the Passion through the theme of clothing and cloths within that story, using visual art as a prompt for his reflections.
The Church of England’s Lent Resources focus on a ‘rhythm of life’ - daily habits to help us grow as disciples, as we prepare for Easter.
This course is offered not only in our Cathedral but also as a resource in the Diocese for the 100 Days of Prayer, part of of the wider discernment within the Sustaining Ministry work which is also a Cathedral concern as the mother church of the Diocese. Its presiding scripture is the Emmaus journey (Luke 24.13-35), a road that is both a road of uncertainty and loss (those travelling it are mourning Jesus’s death) and a resurrection road (he is walking alongside them all the time). So it is both a wilderness road and a resurrection journey.
7.45am Morning Prayer
8.00am Said Holy Communion (BCP) with Palms
9.30am Sung Eucharist with Palms, Dramatic Passion reading and Sermon
10.45am Procession with Palms and Donkey and the Reading of the Palm Gospel
11.15am Choral Eucharist with Palms, Dramatised Passion reading and Sermon
3.30pm Passiontide - Sequence of Music and Readings for Passiontide, including music by Purcell, Leighton and Bairstow.
7.00pm - Choral Holy Week Service with address by the Dean.
7.00pm - Choral Holy Week Service with address by the Dean.
7.00pm - Service of Tenebrae
Tenebrae means ‘shadows’. The candlelight service of Tenebrae traces the sombre journey to the cross through readings and music; on the altar stands a series of candles which are extinguished during the course of the service to symbolise the gathering darkness as the events unfold that lead Jesus to his death by human hands. Music will include new settings of Tenebrae Texts by Samuel Bristow.
At the point of his death, the last candle is extinguished and the congregation sit for a little while in darkness. Then a loud noise is heard, symbolising the opening of the tomb, and a single candle relit to stand for the coming resurrection of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.
7.45am Morning Prayer - There is no early eucharist on this day
11.00am Chrism Eucharist with Renewal of Vows and Distribution of Oils.
In this service all, but especially ordained and licensed ministers across the diocese, renew their vows of vocation.
5.15pm Evening Prayer
7.00pm Solemn Eucharist with Washing of the Feet and Stripping of the Altar
President: The Dean
Preacher: The Revd Professor Ben Quash
The service recollects the last meal Jesus shared with his disciples, the meal in which he instituted the Sacrament of Holy Communion and knelt to wash his disciples’ feet, teaching them that to serve others is greater than to be served. At the end of the service, recalling his arrest and the scattering of his community by armed intervention, the lights go down, all the beauties of the altar are stripped back to bare wood and stone, and the choir sing Psalm 22, the psalm that begins with Jesus’s words of abandonment on the cross: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’
The Sacrament is taken to St Cedd’s Chapel, the ‘Altar of Repose’, foreshadowing the bodily death of Jesus as a person in the world through the cross.
Watch of the Passion (to midnight)
You are invited to pray at the Altar of Repose until midnight, recalling the disciples as they tried to accompany Jesus in his time of mental agony in the Garden of Gethsemane.
7.45am Morning Prayer - There is no early eucharist on this day
12 noon - 3.00pm Three Hours Devotions
12.00 - 1.30pm Preaching of the Passion
Preacher: The Revd Professor Ben Quash
1.45pm - 3.00pm Good Friday Liturgy and Veneration of the Cross:
In this service we keep vigil during the time that Jesus suffered on the cross on this holy day (12-3). During the ‘preaching of the Passion’ we are supported and accompanied by reflections, silence and devotional singing.
In the Good Friday Liturgy we retrace the events of the Passion and crucifixion of Jesus, ask for forgiveness, may receive from the reserved Sacrament if that is in accordance with our devotional practice, and have an opportunity to venerate the Cross that is set up in the nave to focus our reflections.
Worshippers are very welcome to move freely in and out of this service: there is no expectation that all will stay for the full 3 hours. There will be a short natural break between 1.30pm and 1.45pm.
5.15pm Evening Prayer
7.45am Morning Prayer - There is no early eucharist on this day of desolation and emptiness.
5.15pm Evening Prayer
7.00pm Easter Vigil with Diocesan Baptism and Confirmation.
President and Preacher: the Diocesan Bishop
In this service, the first of Easter, we begin in darkness, telling the story of redemption as it unfolds from the
Old Testament to the New.
We then go outside the West Door (close to the font, the beginning of our Resurrection journey) where the New Fire for Easter is kindled in a brazier and the Paschal Candle lit from it, pierced by the five nails that pierced Jesus’s own body.
The light is taken up the nave and acclaimed as Jesus’s resurrection light; all the congregation’s candles are lit from it.
As the Paschal candle is put in its stand, Jesus’s resurrection is affirmed in the singing of the Exultet, the hymn of praise to God’s new life; the lights come up, a joyful noise is made, and the Gloria sung for the first time since Lent began.
Baptisms and confirmations then take place in the context of a joyful Easter Eucharist, presided over by the Bishop.
7.45am Morning Prayer
8.00am Said Holy Communion (BCP)
9.30am All-Age Easter Eucharist
11.15am Choral Eucharist for Easter
Vierne Messe Solennelle Preacher: The Rt Revd Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani Bishop of Chelmsford
3.30pm Festal Evensong Evening Service in E and “Blessed be the God and Father” by S.S. Wesley
End your week in peace with our Compline Services every Friday during Lent at 7pm. The ancient monastic office of Compline derives its name from a Latin word meaning ‘completion’.
It offers a period of reflective quiet before rest at the end of the day but meditates also upon the end of life. This candlelit service is sung by the choir.
Matthew 28:6
