Thursday, April 21, 2011

A Maundy Thursday Vigil from the Gospel of John

At my parish tonight, there will be a vigil following Holy Communion and the Stripping of the Altar. If it follows the form of past years, it will consist of the rector reading John 14-17, passage by passage, with periods of quiet between the passages. The quiet is sometimes punctuated with subdued music.

I think this vigil appropriate as those chapters in John are words of Jesus to his disciples during the Last Supper and just before his arrest. And they reveal the heart of Jesus towards the disciples, and towards us, in the midst of his Passion.

These chapters have a prominent position in Holy Week lectionaries and rightly so. I highly commend reading John 14-17 this Holy Week if you have not done so already.

And I pray for all my readers a blessed Triduum.

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