In our services from Maundy Thursday to Easter Sunday, we will journey with our Lord and his disciples from the Upper Room via Calvary to the Empty Tomb. We will be by turn exhausted, despairing, excited and joyful.

Maundy Thursday, 7.30pm Sung Mass with Washing of Feet.

At the end of this service the High Altar is stripped. Then the Watch is kept hourly or longer through the night, recalling Christ and his disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane and then before Pontius Pilate.

Not in 2020 or 2021 – Good Friday 10.30am Good Friday Liturgy. Reproaches, by Upton. Veneration of the Cross. Crux Fidelis, attr. King John IV of Portugal.

Not in 2020 or 2021 – Good Friday, 8pm Tenebrae – an ancient service sung in Latin and English from the West Gallery to plainsong and polyphony by Lassus (1532-1594) and Palestrina (1525-1594), ending in darkness and silence to symbolise Jesus’ descent to the dead.

Further biblical and poetic extracts from the libretto of Stainer’s 1887 “Crucifixion” for the next 5 Stations (click to enlarge).

The Face of Jesus is wiped by Veronica

How sweet is the grace of his sacred face and lovely beyond compare; though weary and worn with the merciless scorn of a world he has come to spare.

The burden of wrong that earth bears along, past evil and evil to be. All sins of man since the world began, they are laid, dear Lord, on thee.

Jesus falls a second time

Hymn – Holy Jesu, by Thy passion

Holy Jesu, by thy Passion,
By the woes which none can share,
Borne in more than kingly fashion,
By thy love beyond compare.
Crucified, I turn to thee,
Son of Mary, plead for me.

By the path of sorrows dreary,
By the cross, thy dreadful load,
By the pain, when faint and weary,
Thou didst sink upon the road:
Crucified, I turn to thee,
Son of Mary, plead for me.

The Women of Jerusalem mourn for our Lord

God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.

Jesus falls the third time under the cross

Hymn – I adore Thee

I adore thee, I adore thee!
Glorious ere the world began;
Yet more wonderful thou shinest,
Though divine, yet still divinest
In thy dying love for man.

I adore thee, I adore thee!
Born of woman yet divine:
Stained with sins I kneel before thee,
Sweetest Jesu, I implore thee
Make me ever only thine.

Jesus is stripped of his garments

III “Father forgive them; for they know not what they do.”

And when they were come to the place called Calvary, there they crucified him, they crucified him, and the malefactors, one on the right, and the other on the left. Jesus said: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”

So thou liftest thy divine petition, pierc’d with cruel anguish through and through;
So thou grievest o’er our lost condition, pleading, “Ah, they know not what they do.”
Oh! ‘Twas love, in love’s divinest feature, passing o’er that dark and murd’rous blot,
finding, e’en for each low fallen creature, though they slay thee – one redeeming spot.
Yes! And still thy patient heart is yearning with a love that mortal scarce can bear;
thou in pity, deep, divine, and burning, liftest e’en for me thy mighty prayer.
So thou pleadest, e’en for my transgression, bidding me look up and trust and live;
so thou murmurest thine intercession, bidding me look up and trust and live;
so thou pleadest, Yea, he knew not – for my sake, forgive.

For the final 4 Stations, click here.