Holy Week

Worship with Us – Holy Week and Easter 2019 Schedule

March 8, 2019 by St. George's Leave a Comment

During Easter we celebrate and worship together in a spirit of joyful fellowship.

There’s a place for you here and we invite you to join us at any or all of our Holy Week and Easter services.

Palm Sunday: April 14

Services at 7:45 am, 9 am, 11:15 am, 5:30 pm,
8 pm Compline, (Nave)

Taize Service: April 16

Service at 7 pm, (Nave)
This service gently opens our hearts for Holy Week through the repetition of Taize hymns along with readings from scripture and prayers.

Wednesday: April 17

At 6:30 pm, we offer Stations of the Cross in the Nave, a series of 8 meditations on the last day of Jesus’ life as we move around the nave. The service takes about 20 minutes.

Maundy Thursday: April 18

Service at 7 pm, (Nave)
We enter into the experience of the disciples stunned by Jesus’ insistence that he would take on the role of a servant and wash the feet of the others. Anyone who wishes will be able to have their feet washed – and wash the feet of others. The service will continue with Eucharist followed by the stripping of the altar. Stripping the church of every bit of decoration, we go to dark Gethsemane with the disciples, where they struggled to stay awake as Jesus prayed.

Good Friday: April 19

Services at Noon and 7 pm
On Good Friday, we meet in a church that is so bare it even sounds different. We read the account of the Crucifixion according to the Gospel of John, following the traditional Prayer Book Good Friday service.

Walk the Labyrinth
1 – 7 pm, Sydnor Hall
The labyrinth is an ancient spiritual tool. Its winding path becomes a mirror of the way we live our lives. It touches our sorrows and releases our joys. Please join us to walk, search, and follow with an open mind and an open heart.

Downtown Stations of the Cross
1:45 pm, Meet at Micah Ecumenical Ministries, 1013 Princess Anne St.
For hundreds of years, the Stations have been a way to make a virtual pilgrimage in the spirit of pilgrims to Jerusalem walking the Via Dolorosa. We will walk in procession, stopping fourteen times at different sites in downtown Fredericksburg to pray and mark moments in Jesus’ journey to the cross and tomb.

Holy Saturday: April 20

Morning Prayer, 8:30 am

Liturgy of the Light, 5 pm
For children age 3 and above
The Liturgy of the Light is one of the beautiful experiences Catechesis of the Good Shepherd gives us. It is a children’s Easter Vigil service, and adults are welcome as well. Each child receives their own “light of Christ,” and we conclude with a simple Eucharist prepared by the children. We will celebrate the Liturgy of the Light in Sydnor Hall. Nursery provided for toddlers and babies.

Great Vigil of Easter, 8 pm
Followed by the Paschal Party in Sydnor Hall
At the Easter Vigil, we gather in a darkened church. We light the Paschal (Easter) candle, and we are warmed by the candlelight retelling of stories from the Hebrew Scriptures. We sing our Alleluias for the first time in forty days! And we proceed with a celebration of the first Eucharist of Easter. Afterward, the celebration continues with festive food and drink at the Paschal Party in Sydnor Hall. In all, it is a powerful and dramatic celebration of Easter.

Easter Sunday: April 21

Sunrise Easter Service at 6:30 am
Outside The Presbyterian Church
Our ministry partners from Micah Ecumenical Ministries gather for a joint service. Together, we greet the sunrise, share joy with each other, and begin our Easter celebrations in community.

Easter Eucharist at 7:45 am, 9 am, 11:15 am

Easter Egg Hunt: 10:15 am

Celtic Evensong + Communion at 5:30 pm

Compline at 8 pm

Holy Week 2018: Thank You!

April 4, 2018 by St. George's Leave a Comment

We had a beautiful Holy Week this year!

A big thank you to all of our volunteers. Your dedication and spirit of service lightened the load for our staff and ministered to everyone who came to our Holy Week services.

Thanks especially to our musicians, Altar Guild, and Flower Guild. You went above and beyond to ensure our church was beautifully decorated and filled with joyful music.

We hope you enjoy the highlights below in pictures and also a video of our Easter Egg Hunt!

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What are we holding back from God?

April 4, 2015 by Leave a Comment

The Good Friday Sermon from the Rev. Joe Hensley, rector, St. George’s Episcopal Church
Fredericksburg, VA | April 3, 2015

Passion V - Deposition from the Cross: stained glass detail by Kempe from Little St Mary's church in Cambridge, UK. By Flickr user paullew. — Passion V – Deposition from the Cross: stained glass detail by Kempe from Little St Mary’s church in Cambridge, UK. By Flickr user paullew.

The collect prayer for Good Friday, which we prayed earlier, included these words: “Almighty God, we pray you graciously to behold this your family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross.” Jesus was willing to be betrayed. Jesus gave himself into the hands of sinners. Jesus suffered death upon the cross. We call this a “good” Friday, because Jesus was willing to surrender, suffer, and die, and he reveals the awesome and mysterious generosity of God’s love. God’s love is so abundant and forgiving that it can absorb our worst behavior and still have more to give. On Good Friday, Jesus made a sacrifice. On this Good Friday, we are invited to make a sacrifice as well. We are invited to offer all that we are, our best and our worst, to the crucified Christ and hold nothing back.

What do I mean by this? Sometimes in our relationships with God and in our relationships with one another, we have a tendency to hold back. We do not say everything we are thinking or feeling. We do not express our whole selves. In our relationships with one another, this is very appropriate. If we said everything on our minds and hearts…if we held nothing back, it would likely hurt feelings and cause a lot of unnecessary trouble. TMI! Too much information. I don’t need or want to hear everything that you are thinking or feeling. But in our relationship with God, we get into trouble when we do not share everything. When we hold back from God, we suffer. We suffer, because we tend to hold back the things we’re not proud of, the things that most need healing: our shame, our fear, our anger. We somehow got it into our heads and hearts that God only wants to see shiny happy Christians. God expects us to dress up for church and look our best and pray with pure and strong hearts. No! God knows us. God knows that underneath our Sunday best, we carry around some heavy and messy stuff. We do not have to hide that from God, but we try to. We try to, because we think we can handle it. We think we can figure it out on our own. [Read more…]

It begins with feet

April 3, 2015 by Leave a Comment

The Maundy Thursday Homily from the Rev. Deacon Carey Chirico, St. George’s Episcopal Church
Fredericksburg, VA | April 2, 2015

feet-cclicense2015 — *“Seated, six feet off the ground” by Flickr User CDM. Licensed through Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)*

Psalm 116:8
For you, O LORD, have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling. Amen.

It begins with feet. Small, innocent feet which have never touched the ground.
Small feet which kick and wave in the air.
Feet that will grow and stretch and carry a grown man around the countryside, walking miles and miles each day – hot, brown, dusty and sweaty.

It begins with love.
The love of Mary’s words in the Magnificat. The love of teacher for his disciples.
The love of a shepherd for his lost sheep.

It begins with shame.
The shame of an unwed mother.
The shame of an unexpected pregnancy.
The shame of sheltering to be born -in a cave not a palace, among animals not friends.

And so we come to this day. The night when having journeyed with our Savior through the giddy days of Hosannas we arrive at the meal which will be our last.

On this night the disciples have gathered to eat together as they have on so many occasions yet surely they must have sensed, known that things were about to change. Jesus has given them the best he has, the best he can. In one final gesture he kneels down and again upending the Kingdom washes their feet.

Gently wiping, pouring, cupping their tired, dusty feet. Their protests are the final sign of their lack of understanding of this man they have followed.

Tonight we will walk in their steps. We will come forward, sit down and let someone take our foot and gently, lovingly rinse it with water. Then they will pat it dry, carefully returning it to the earth. Tonight we will have the opportunity to let ourselves be loved, be served, be cared for, be cherished. Is this not the greatest of His messages to us – care for each other, love one another as I have loved you?

And we will struggle just as they did.

We will resist showing someone else that which is imperfect, unmanicured, unlovable. We will protest. We will resist, we will want to stay in our seat. But when we relent.

When we let go…….. then we will get it. Then we will begin the work of understanding.

My friend Jane tells a story about an experience she had right here in this Church. Jane is a teacher, and one year she had – that child. That child that you struggle to love, struggle to reach but who defies your every attempt. And she was ashamed. Her inability to love this child made her feel ashamed.

At her wits end, dreading school the next day, Janie prayed here in this Nave. Then she stood up and walking up the aisle to the altar for communion she pretended that she carried in her arms this child. And at the rail she knelt beside him, offering up what was broken between them and her inability to fix it.

Three months later she asked the children to write an essay about something significant that had happened to them during the school year.

The unloving, unlovable child wrote about the day, that day, in the middle of the year when his teacher ……started loving him.

“Generally speaking,” says the great Fredrick Buechner,“if you want to know who you really are, keep an eye on where your feet take you.”

It begins and it ends with feet. Feet battered and pierced. Feet, which the Gospel of Matthew tells us, were grasped and worshipped by the women at the empty tomb. Feet, which carry us into the world, humble, misshapen, dusty and hot.

As it began, it ends in shame. The shame of a slave’s death on a cross, tried, beaten and defeated. Deserted and denied by disciples. Alone between two thieves.

And as it began, it ends in love, the greatest love mankind has ever known or will know. Love that takes all our cares, all our shame, all our brokenness and hands us back – hope, joy, growth and healing.

Tonight I invite you to take a chance and experience in a small way how hard it is to share that which is rough and unpolished even shameful about ourselves.

And I invite you into a small experience of the joy of being entrusted to care for someone else’s hard, embarrassing place.

Love one another as I have loved you and by this the world shall know that you are my disciples.

Amen.

Hosannah!

March 29, 2015 by Leave a Comment

palmcross-web Palm Sunday Homily from the Rev. Joe Hensley, Mar 29, 2015

Hosannah! Hosannah in the highest! Today, Palm Sunday, we hear these words with new ears. We sing or say them every week when we celebrate the Eucharist together. Today we remember that the crowds who welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem shouted those words from Psalm 118 as he rode on the donkey colt. They shouted Hosannah as they covered the road with leafy branches. That word, “hosanna,” literally means “please save.” Today, as we begin our Holy Week pilgrimage, we put into our hearts this same same word: “Hosannah! Save us, please.”

The origins of the Hosannahs and the leafy branches of willow or palm come from the Jewish festival of Sukkot, the festival of booths, which is a fall, harvest-time celebration. Bible scholars have long puzzled over why the crowds who are making their way to Jerusalem with Jesus for the springtime Passover festival would invoke the words and signs of Sukkot. One possibility is that the hosanna prayers were offered while praying for rain, for literal salvation from drought. “Please save,” becomes a plea for life-giving water. By reenacting the Sukkot liturgy as Jesus enters Jerusalem, perhaps the crowds are emphasizing their hope that he is a “rain maker.” These are a people who have long-suffered under the yoke of oppression by their own leaders as well as the Roman Empire. Hosannah becomes a political and spiritual cry: “Here comes the one who will rain down justice upon the heads of our oppressors.”

Jesus does not deliver the rain like the crowds expect. He does not ride into town on a war horse but upon a humble donkey. He does not occupy the temple but instead hides on the outskirts of town. He does not announce victory but instead teaches in parables. By the time Jesus is arrested, perhaps the crowds have become impatient. Maybe this teacher is not the savior they had hoped for. Their hopeful “hosannas” give way to frustrated cries of “crucify him!”

Holy Week is our journey from “hosanna” to “crucify him.” The pilgrimage will take us from the hope for salvation to the realization that the one who offers it to us has been slain. This raises some questions for us. Have we been among those who have denied knowing Jesus, like Peter? He we been among those who have stood by helpless or silent while other suffered, while the light of the world was cloaked in darkness? Have we been among those who played a role in the unfair suffering of others? The answer is ‘yes.’ We know our guilt. The purpose of this Holy Week pageant, though, is not to feel guilty. The reason why we dwell on this tragic story and come back to church this week night after night is not to wallow in our sin and shame. We take these steps together so that we can come face to face with the brokenness of the world, the brokenness of our own souls, and realize that we have a companion in Jesus. Jesus walks with us and will not turn away from our worst. Jesus accepts our hopes and our failures, our hosannas and our cries for blood. He accepts them and he redeems them. He is the true rain maker, the one who waters our dry and cracked souls with mercy and forgiveness. In Gethsemane garden, at Calvary’s cross, even from the stony tomb, he rains down grace in the face of violence. He rains down right in a world of wrong. He rains down love in the midst of hate. This Holy Week we are invited to walk with Jesus on the road of suffering and surrender so that we might better know the gifts he showers upon us. Hosannah, Jesus, Hosannah. Save us, please. Save us and help us, we humbly pray. Amen.