Holy Week 2026

Friends of Faith, The beginning of this month is our church’s Holy Week. Think on that with me. This is the week that is set apart, claimed, distinguished, and observed. This is the “great week” of our faith. This is what we lift up high (“lift high the cross”). And what is it? What are we lifting up? The complete, unreserved self-giving of God in Jesus Christ. Feet washed. Bread broken. A life poured out. That is what holiness looks like when God shows it to us in the flesh. And what we’ll participate in during “Holy Week” is this very good news that we are always proclaiming. I like the mysterious and powerful way that our eucharistic liturgy puts it, quoting Paul from his first letter to the Corinthians: “when we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” That’s Holy Week’s proclamation and announcement: our Lord’s way is service, even of all of life! Paul’s point — and John’s foot-washing makes it unavoidable — is that “proclaiming” is not merely liturgical. It is bodily. It is social. You proclaim the Lord’s death when you take the servant’s position with someone whose feet are dirty. When you show up for the person no one else wants to deal with. When you absorb cost instead of passing it on. When you give what you have rather than protecting what you’ve earned. This is the theology of the cross lived outward. And our communion with God, our participation in Holy Week, forms us into people whose lives take on this shape— broken, poured out, given for the life of the world. I know it is a daunting calling. It’s been daunting for the church all along, and along all these sixteen centuries in which the church has labeled this week “Holy Week.” But the church will keep proclaiming it, this week and beyond, because we keep on receiving from this life-giving God. We are washed. We are fed. And so we are caught up in the contagion of all the grace we receive. We proclaim the Lord’s death, which is his way of life. That’s what all this is about. And so it must be what we are about. It is what makes any of this, or any of us with God, “holy.” Blessed Holy Week church, +Pr Shaun