That love is celebrated in the lighting of the Easter Fire, the Easter (Paschal) Candle that will burn all year; for the seven weeks of Easter, for Baptisms and for funerals. We Christians need time to go from ashes to fire. Lent gives us that time.

·         From the Gospel of Ash Wednesday (Matthew 6:1‐6, 16‐18) we take the three challenges for growth during Lent. We are called to

·         PRAY – to devote more time to our relationship to God;

·         FAST – to try to concentrate less on the luxuries of life, those things we do not really

need, and to concentrate more on God and on the needs of others;

·         GIVE ALMS – to give of what we have to those who are in need.

HOLY WEEK

Holy Week, which begins on the 6th Sunday of Lent, Passion (Palm) Sunday has as its purpose the remembrance of Christ’s passion, beginning with his Messianic entrance into Jerusalem.

PALM SUNDAY

On this day we hear two Gospels, the first telling of Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem, the second the Passion and Death of Jesus, preparing us for the week ahead. The procession with palms at the beginning of Mass recalls entry into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey.

THE MASS OF CHRISM, which in this Diocese takes place in the Cathedral on the Tuesday of Holy Week, is the liturgy at which oils are blessed for the coming year and sent out to each of the parishes.
The three oils (of the sick, of catechumens, and chrism) are publicly received at the Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper, witnessed by the whole assembly. Oils remaining from the previous year will not be used again.

 at the Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper, witnessed by the whole assembly. Oils remaining from the previous year will not be used again.

THE EASTER TRIDUUM
Meaning simply ‘the three days’, begins with the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on the evening of Holy Thursday and ends with evening prayer on Easter Sunday and is the culmination – and the highest point ‐ of the Church’s year.

HOLY THURSDAY ‐ Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper

This is the only Mass celebrated in the parish on this day. The documents of the Church tell us this – for its importance is such that the whole parish community should be together at the one celebration, as they are at the Vigil on Holy Saturday night.
This first gathering is dominated by a feeling for our identity as Church, how our ‘passing over’ from death to life in Jesus is known in our service to each other and to the world.

This Mass is a memorial of the institution of the Eucharist, and a memorial of the institution of the The link between Christ’s Passover from death to resurrection, and our Passover in which we die to sin priesthood. in order to rise to new life in Jesus – is highlighted in the Mass of Holy Thursday by the reading from the Book of Exodus of the Passover of the Israelites – the night the Angel of Death passed over the houses of the Israelites so that they could escape from Egypt into the freedom of the Promised Land.

The Gospel gives John’s description of the moment at the Last Supper when Jesus washes the feet of his disciples to show them how they are to behave with others. He gives them what we call the ‘Mandatum’ the command to ‘love one another as I have loved you.’