Holy Week: Why did we just do that?
11 April 2023
One ought never to try to introduce ideas that are too challenging or demanding during Easter Week; we committed Anglicans are all in a state of “the morning after the night before.” So, returning briefly to the theme of Common Prayer, let me simply ask, what did you do last week, and why?
It has been instructive through the power of YouTube and various parish websites to see what sundry folk did during Holy Week, both in Oz and abroad. One thing which is very clear is that in Australia there is huge variation in Catholic-leaning Anglican parishes, and almost everywhere does pretty much whatever they want. Often it is some contemporary adaptation of whatever has been done since the 70s or earlier. Because you see, “it’s what we’ve always done.” Some of those of a liturgical mind go to the Roman Missal, or Common Worship, or the Holy Week services from The Episcopal Church, or other more exotic places. Some seem simply to make it up based on their own “Holy Week Greatest Hits.”
It’s a bit late for 2023, but barring the Parousia or human-induced Armageddon there will be a 2024, so to those of you who control the liturgy in your parish, here’s the news: there are authorised forms of service for Holy Week from the Anglican Church of Australia Liturgical Commission. They’re pretty good. In fact, they’re very good. Over the years I’ve used them in three parishes to uniformly positive effect. They offer all sorts of options for you to customise music, ceremonial etc for local use. I know - they’re not in the Prayer Book (thanks Sydney) but they ARE authorised, unlike much of what happens during Holy Week in many Australian Anglican parishes. So here’s my radical suggestion for next year: if you’ve never tried them (or even if you have) maybe use the authorised forms. Give them a proper go. Make them work in your context, but don’t try to reinvent the wheel from scratch, or recycle the services from last year or from 1972 just because it’s easy. You might be surprised to discover that the Australian Anglican Liturgical Commission material, put together after much thought and consultation and trial, actually works in the Australian context. You might even find that you want to use it again in 2025.
Oh, and there’s an excellent form of service for Ash Wednesday on the web page as well.
As a postscript one might ask why hardly anyone seems to know that these resources exist, but that would be a whole other blog post and there might be a danger of me getting political…
Off you go:
https://anglican.org.au/our-work/liturgy-worship/lent-holy-week-and-easter/
