THE EVANGELIST

April 2025

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Hello Parish Family and Friends,

 

When I grew up in the Methodist Church, it seemed like we did not really do Lent.
Sometimes there was an Ash Wednesday service, although my family never went to it. Lent was
mentioned on the last Sunday before it began, but it did not seem to affect the liturgical life of
the congregation until Palm Sunday and then the one extra service of Maundy Thursday during
Holy Week. When I became an Anglican in my late teens, I learned of a whole liturgical season
that I had been missing, but Passiontide always puzzled me: why when it seemed like we should
be most focused on Christ and His Cross, do we cover Him up in our church buildings so that He
can no longer be seen?

There are really two questions that need to be answered here, as both Passiontide and
the veiling of statuary did not survive the liturgical changes of the 1960s. First, why we do we
need Passiontide, given that we have 40 days of Lent to think about Our Lord’s sacrifice? The
second question: why cover the statuary? Humans have a short attention span. The idea of
concentrating for 40 days on anything is beyond our easy comprehension. (If you don’t believe
me, watch the yawns in church if the sermon goes over 15 minutes!) Yet at the same time,
Easter comes so quickly on the heels of Good Friday that there is precious little time to
meditate on the passion (the suffering) of Our Lord before the glories of Easter. In the average
home and parish church, Holy Saturday is spent making sure the church is clean, and the eggs
are boiled, so there is almost no time to think on such things. Holy Mother Church, in Her
wisdom, gave us a whole week before the marathon of Holy Week to think, pray, and meditate
on Our Lord’s suffering and death, without which there would be no Resurrection Sunday.

 

As to the veiling of the Cross and other holy images, the Church takes Her cue from that
portion of the Gospel according to St. John which is read on Passion Sunday, the beginning of
Passiontide two weeks before Easter: “Then took [the Jews] up stones to cast at him: but Jesus
hid himself, and went out of the temple.” To have Jesus hide from us for two weeks gives us a
better idea of the absolute desolation the disciples must have felt for those [not quite] three
days their Master spent in the tomb. Of course, we cannot really fathom it because we know
that Easter Sunday is coming; they did not have that knowledge. For us, it makes the unveiling
of the Cross during the rites of the Good Friday liturgy all the more poignant. We should ache at
the separation we experience – when He is covered, when He is in the tomb, and when we
wedge our sins between ourselves and Him.

It is so easy to get bogged down with our “real lives”: those secular, albeit necessary,
activities occurring outside of the Church, that we often find ourselves frustrated about midway
through Lent because our Lenten season has not been more fulfilling. Passiontide gives us an
opportunity to start anew, to try and travel the road of Lent we wanted to travel all 40 days, for
the last two weeks.

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Yours in Christ,

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Fr. Chad Hart, Assisting Priest

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