Reflections from Turvey Abbey
Scroll back through the posts and revisit one of the Women of Holy Week.
What stays with you?
How have these women’s stories deepened your engagement with the drama of Holy Week?
Images © Ally Barrett (http://reverendally.org) and used by permission.
Listen to Salome’s story.
Read Mark 15:1-41 and John 19:17-37
Salome speaks about the teaching of Jesus ‘making sense of the world’ and making ‘sense of me’. What are the parts of Jesus’ teaching that help you to make sense of the world and sense of yourself?
Salome and her companions draw together when they hear that Jesus has been arrested. They follow close by. Do you have a friend, or a group of friends who have been there in difficult times? Have you stayed close by someone as difficult situations have unfolded?
Image © Ally Barrett (www.reverendally.org) and used by permission.
Listen to Joanna’s Story
Read Mark 14:12-25
Joanna pays a fisherman to take her to the place where Jesus was preaching.
What lengths have you gone to in your own life to find Jesus?
How does Joanna’s telling of the meal in the Upper Room speak to you?
Joanna speaks of Jesus allowing you to ‘grow into the truth that he brought in your own time.’ How have you grown into the truth this Lent?
Image © Ally Barrett (www.reverendally.org) and used by permission.
Listen to Susannah’s Story
Read Matthew 26:6-13
Mark 14:3-9
Luke 7:36-50
John 12:1-8
When Susannah’s father gives her an alabaster jar he says: ‘Something precious for the most precious person I know. Open it on a special occasion, dear one.’
Have you ever been given something precious? Have you ever kept something for a special occasion?
When you picture the scene of a woman anointing Jesus, where is your attention drawn? What do you notice and feel?
Image © Ally Barrett (www.reverendally.org) and used by permission.
Listen to Anna’s Story
Read Luke 2:22-38 and Mark 12:38-44
Anna talks of visiting her great aunt and listening to old stories of her faith.
Who are the storytellers in your own life?
Her great aunt tells her ‘It’s your story, too- never let them paint you out.’
Which Biblical women have inspired you?
Image © Ally Barrett (www.reverendally.org) and used by permission.
Listen to Sarah’s Story
Read Mark 11:27-12:34
What do you hear in Sarah’s description of being in Jerusalem for Passover?
Have you ever made a pilgrimage? What did you learn about yourself.?
When Sarah listens to Jacob’s experience in the Temple she shares his love of the Law and the debates that are had. What the questions that you would like to raise about your own faith? Do you have places where you can do this?
Image © Ally Barrett (www.reverendally.org) and used by permission.
Listen to Miriam’s Story
Read Ps 118 and Mark 11:1-11
Imagine that you are part of the crowd.
What do you see? What do you hear?
Miriam sings Ps 118, longing for the Messiah to come.
What do you long for as Holy Week begins?
Image © Ally Barrett (www.reverendally.org) and used with permission.
VIRTUE
For I tell you, if your VIRTUE goes no deeper than that of the Pharisees, you will never get into the kingdom of heaven.
When I learnt the Catechism at aged seven I really enjoyed the pages where the Theological and Cardinal Virtues were listed. It all looked very neat and tidy and I would happily reel off the lists. Though I must admit I couldn’t make any great distinction between the Virtues and the Gifts and Fruits of the Spirit that were to be found on the same pages. When you are seven it all seems to come down to being good and trying your best.
When Jesus speaks of virtue I still hear those Catechism answers, but now I know that there is a whole world of meaning in what our text has rendered as ‘virtue’. What is at issue here is in fact a whole way of life. Jesus is asking us to live in such a way that our intentions, words and deeds are all in harmony. This is a picture of integration in its fullest sense. Outer performance or observance is to be in harmony with our hearts.
You may have got to this stage in Lent and feel that you have gone adrift. Lent offers us the opportunity to be intentional about living in an integrated way. Often it is the smallest shoots which bear fruit, so it is always worth paying attention to the tinniest shifts in our inner and outer worlds. We can keep tilling the soil and watering. One day we will notice a little shoot of grow.
How do you hear this text? Have you noticed any new growth in yourself this Lent?
(Matthew 5:20-26, Friday, First Week of Lent)
UNLEAVENED BREAD
The Israelites pitched camp at Gilgal and kept the Passover there on the fourteenth day of the month, at the evening in the plain of Jericho. On the morrow of the Passover they tasted the produce of that country, UNLEAVENED BREAD and roasted ears of corn, that same day.
One of the opportunities which Lent offers us is the chance to remember and retell the many ways in which God has been active in our lives. Remembering is writ through the pages of the Biblical narrative. These verses from the Book of Joshua remind us of the preparation in haste of bread without yeast, the Exodus from Egypt, and the keeping of Passover. These are primal memories for the Israelites and their retelling binds them in deeper communion.
The yearly eating of unleavened bread reawakened the memories of God’s decisive action in leading the Israelites from slavery to freedom. Some scholars see unleavened bread as pure, simple and humble. It’s a bread that is entirely new, using nothing of the old. I find this helpful.
In the New Testament we find more layers of meaning added to our understanding of unleavened bread:
Throw out the old yeast so that you can be the fresh dough, unleavened as you are. For our Passover has been sacrificed, that is, Christ;
let us keep the feast, then, with none of the old yeast and no leavening of evil and wickedness, but only the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. ( I Corinthians 5:7-8)
For St Paul we now are called to be unleavened bread. We are called to leave behind the old and, in Christ, become something entirely new.
How has Christ called you this Lent to leave behind the old and embrace the new?
(Joshua 5:9-12, Fourth Sunday in Lent, C)
THIRTY PIECES OF SILVER
They paid him THIRTY silver pieces, and from that moment he looked for an opportunity to betray him.
The figure of Judas looms large in Holy Week. Those thirty pieces of silver are lodged in our collective imagination through art, poetry and hymnody.
Stories of betrayal are always uncomfortable. Betrayal can happen in a matter of seconds. We can say or do something that we can never take back. Perhaps Judas stands for all of our moments of betrayal? Perhaps he stands for all the times we have ‘headed out into the night’? Perhaps he stands for all those times we have watched our hope die and made a wrong choice?
In the Orthodox tradition Judas features often in the hymnody of Holy Week:
Servant and deceiver, disciple and betrayer, friend and devil, Judas has been revealed by his deeds.
These pairings are so poignant. Judas and his thirty pieces of silver can function as a mirror for our own hearts. But we can have courage in the God of all mercy whose hands can hold every betrayal and who counts back each piece of silver.
How does the story of Judas speak to you this Lent?
(Matthew 26:14-25, Wednesday, Holy Week)