Holy Week Prayers

From today until next Sunday, we hold to church tradition, marking this holiest of weeks with our reflection, worship, rituals, and song. Week of Compassion joins you in prayer, each day, that we might find renewed meaning and a truly Holy Week.

April 10 - Palm Sunday
    Humble One, you arrive today, amid cries of hosanna, with nothing fancier than donkeys, cloaks, and branches to mark your way. We join you on the path, praying for the meaning in this week, and for your strong, steady pace to rule our hearts.

April 11 - 
    Lasting God, we want to move from celebration to celebration, but you call us to deeper faithfulness - to sit among the discomfort and concern, to withstand the aching passion of this week, to wait with hope for the promise to come. 

April 12 - 
    Holy One, embrace us in this moment. Reveal to us, and through us, your divine intent: wide welcome, generous compassion, deep relationship. Life renewed, mercy overflowing, promise revealed. May we be what you see in us.

April 13 - 
    Gracious Creator, we near the day of promise, that moment of newness and hope. It is slow going to get there, it is close-but-not-yet. We’ve come this far by faith, and so we remain dedicated to the work at hand - remembering, confessing, grieving, waiting.

April 14 - Maundy Thursday
    Host, at your table, Lord, all who come and go. We come to remember, alongside everyone as lost as we are, everyone as arrogant as we can sometimes be. We go back into a challenging world, somehow different than when we came. Here, at your table, Lord, all enter in. 

April 15 - Good Friday
    Crucified Christ, your family, your friends, are too acquainted with grief. We know it well, too - global pandemic, unholy wars, racial injustice, climate change, unhealthy attachments. We pray forgiveness. We sit, we flail, we pray, we wail - at the foot of the cross, we lay every burden down, that you might know how desperate we are to draw near to you.

April 16 - Holy Saturday
      Sacred Stillness, speak into our hearts - something only we will hear, something that is just for us to hold and know as our own. As we sit in this in-between - no longer at the cross, not yet to the empty tomb - we wait in this shadowed moment for your light to break forth.

April 17 - Easter Sunday
    Risen Lord, revive us again! Our community’s pains cry out, and our compassion calls in response: Arise, shine, for Light has come! Our world needs to know, to see, to feel, to believe: Alleluia! Christ is risen! Christ is risen, in deed!