The Pathfinder: March 28th, 2024
The Holy Week Special
The Three Great Days
We invite you to All Souls Episcopal Parish in Berkeley this Holy Week, as we come together for the three sacred days that make up the Triduum. For centuries upon centuries, Christians have been gathering together to retrace these last steps of the Christ. And since we believe that these last three days cannot be separated one from another, we celebrate them all as one liturgy. You will notice that from Maundy Thursday through to the Great Vigil, there are no dismissals— only pauses until we gather again. From the intimate, humble service we offer each other on Maundy Thursday, to our time spent in contemplation at the foot of the Cross on Friday, to the new light piercing the darkness at the Feast of the Resurrection on Saturday, these days stand as one. It is our hope at All Souls that within these services, we will each be able to find that still space to enter in, be present, and find ourselves transformed.
– Phil+
Maundy Thursday
Since two years ago, when the Rev. Maggie Foote and I reinvigorated the Agape Meal here at All Souls, I have had a renewed sense of the day. I enter the meal with anticipation and expectation and the air is charged with delight as we sit down for a feast (and it truly is a feast). I find so much joy in eating this family meal together.
But as we move from the meal to the Nave for the Maundy Thursday service, the air changes. I find that I start to inhabit the story we’re in—as the altar is stripped bare, as we delicately wash each others’ feet, and as we process down to the Chapel where we cram in together to sing and pray. Something about the heat in the chapel and the bodies so close together––death now looms in the room––it’s here that I know I’m in.
And at that same moment a profound sadness is felt, which is finally relieved Saturday night, for me, with the pop of a champagne cork.
Join us this evening as we begin our Triduum journey with the Agape Meal at 6p in the Parish Hall, and our Maundy Thursday service at 7:30p in the Nave.
– Emily Hansen Curran, Associate for Ministry Development
Good Friday
On Good Friday, I always feel something that slightly surprises me: suspense. I know the outcome of the story we’re enacting. I know that in just another day, we’ll celebrate the Resurrection, as we do every year. And yet in spite of this knowledge, I find myself entertaining another possible ending. What if this time, life doesn’t emerge on the other side of death? What if the darkness remains, and the light is not strong enough to emerge anew?
Good Friday invites us into a liminal space of risk and uncertainty. We come face to face with our human capacity for destruction, the fact that we— acting from fear, selfishness, anger, scarcity, love of power— have crucified Christ. And we stay there, longer than it feels comfortable, long enough that we have time to really ponder a world without God.
Amid that wondering, we practice reverence, adorning the cross in gratitude that Jesus suffered for us. We practice temporary absence, a barren and stripped altar. And in a noon-3p contemplative service, we hear stories our fellow community about betrayal, loss, shame, hope, and transformation as they reflect on the themes of the Passion in their own lives.
We invite you to enter into this waiting time, and to live into the question of the Resurrection, until together we enter the next phase of our story on Saturday night.
Join us in the Nave on Friday, March 29th from noon-3 for a drop-in contemplative service, and again in the Nave at 7:30p for a solemn liturgy.
– Emily+
Holy Week for Families
From Maundy Thursday to Good Friday to Holy Saturday, we as a community at All Souls engage each year in profound and meaningful liturgies, many of which speak to children, but which are not always accessible to them either because of their timing or length.
Our Holy Week with Children service, on Friday from 4-5pm, draws upon the rituals and symbols of these services—inviting children and adults into the story, the action, the reflection, and the wondering about this Mystery we are coming close to.
Using the framework of Godly Play, this service offers a time to slow down and get ready as we encounter this holy story of the last time Jesus came to Jerusalem. We gather to listen and watch, to wash each other’s feet, to reflect through art and action as we wonder what it could all mean, and then close with prayers and an invitation to return—to come and experience the ending that was a new beginning—Easter.
Join us Friday, March 29th, from 4-5p in the Nave.
– Emily+
Holy Saturday
In the language of our Godly Play stories, Holy Saturday is the day when all of Creation holds its breath. Our day begins with a simple, spare service with readings and a short reflection in the Chapel of the Nativity at 9:30am. Then the day is spent in preparation, for what will unfold that night with the Easter Vigil and into the next day for Easter Sunday.
My first experience with an Easter Vigil happened almost nineteen years ago this month. I was in my first year as a priest, serving as an Associate Rector in a church that at the time did not practice the Easter Vigil. So I reached out to a friend and colleague who served at St. Gregory of Nyssa in San Francisco to see if I could be part of their Vigil.
I had never been part of an Easter Vigil––sunrise services and Easter Sundays with brass and flowers, yes, but not a Vigil. Many of those Easter morning services were beautiful and moving. But I think that I understood the resurrection of the Christ in an embodied, fundamentally different way that first Vigil 19 years ago. There is something about telling story after story after story from the arc of salvation, hearing poems and midrash in response, singing to the saints to “Come, rejoice with us!”, entering into the Easter proclamation, and the Resurrection Gospel and Communion anew that is profound and often brings me to tears.
If you have yet to experience an Easter Vigil be sure to dress warmly, as the first part of the service is outside in the courtyard. Come rejoice with us, starting at 8p this Saturday, March 30th!
Join us on Saturday in the Chapel at 9:30a, and the courtyard at 8p.
– Phil+
Easter Sunday
For me, the rigors of planning, rehearsing, and producing Holy Week liturgies reaches its high point in the Easter Vigil. We’ve worthily lamented our sins and examined our lives during Lent, and then dramatically followed the footsteps of Jesus through the last week of his life. I live for that moment when, at the Easter Vigil, new Christians are made at the font in baptism, the lights come on, the organ thunders, bells ring, and the first Alleluias rend the air, bringing the Christian Liturgical Year to its high point. To do it all over again the next morning seems almost anti-climactic.
One year, at about 1am, sitting in the after-glow of the experience, enjoying a worthy chocolate morsel and sipping a quality glass of champagne, a few colleagues and I decided it would be an excellent idea to lock the doors, and put a sign in the windows, reading, “He is not here, he is risen!”
What a way to greet the vast hordes that would join us for worship on Easter Day. Sure, they may have missed all of the deep drama that led to this special Sunday. But like St. John Chrysostom’s Easter Sermon says, the joyful call to share the Paschal Feast is made to all: those who came to work early, and those who’ve arrived at the last minute.
And to that end, we have planned to celebrate the Feast on Easter Sunday (March 31st, 9:00 & 11:15) with all the trimmings. The church will be decked out with flowers; brass and timpani will accompany favorite Easter hymns, the Resurrection will be preached, and joy will abound as we renew our baptism at the 11:15 service. There will be festive receptions after each service, and an Easter Egg Hunt for kids in between. Come kick off the Great Fifty Days with us!
– Dent Davidson, Associate for Music
Ale Souls 2024 Easter Brew Release!
This Easter, at the reception, following the Easter vigil, Ale Souls will open up their latest brew. This Easter, it’s a Saison—a French farmhouse ale, typically brewed during the winter months.
And its name? “Ale-leluia the Younger” (its elder, Ale-leluia was brewed a few years ago for this same occasion). Please come by the table in the Parish Hall following the Vigil on Saturday night for a glass to celebrate the risen Christ.
– The Ale Souls Brewing Team
Holy Week 2024 Schedule
Here is the full schedule for the week. Live-streamed services are indicated with *.
Maundy Thursday
6p Agape Meal, featuring feasting, prayer and song.
7:30p Eucharist, with the Washing of Feet, Stripping of the Altar, and Procession to the Altar of Repose*
Good Friday
10-11:30a Drop-In Rite of Reconciliation with the Rev. Emily B, in the old Rector’s Office (downstairs, across from the Common Room. Enter through the glass doors next to the Chapel of the Nativity)
12-3 Contemplative Service (with poetry, silence, song, and prayers)
3:30-5p Drop-In Rite of Reconciliation with the Rev. Phil, in the old Rector’s Office (downstairs, across from the Common Room. Enter through the glass doors next to the Chapel of the Nativity)
4-5p Holy Week for Kids (interactive service with prayer stations)
7:30p Good Friday Liturgy with reading of the Passion Gospel, and Veneration of the Cross*
Holy Saturday
9:30a Holy Saturday liturgy
8p The Great Vigil of Easter, with lighting of the New Fire, and the First Eucharist of Easter* (don’t forget to bring your bells!)
Easter Sunday
9:00a Sung Eucharist
10:15a Easter egg hunt for children 5th grade and younger
11:15a Sung Eucharist
Note: There will be no 8a Chapel service on Easter Sunday. Reading Between the Lines Bible Study is also cancelled, and will return next week, April 7th.
– The All Souls Staff
Watch this video for a preview of the sounds and sights of Holy Week. We hope to see you here!
