A video message for Holy Week

The Revd Dr Peter Doll, Canon Librarian and Vice Dean, shares a message for Holy Week.

Watch the video message above and read the full text below.

"In a cathedral with many significant and emotionally charged spaces, I am standing in one of the most powerful. It is the space underneath what is now the Cathedral Treasury but in the Middle Ages was the relic chapel. And during the great Holy Week and Easter celebrations at that time, it was used as the Easter Sepulchre, the place that stood in for the tomb in which Jesus was buried on the first Good Friday. After the many ceremonies and services remembering the death of Jesus on the Cross, this is where the monks would come to bury him symbolically. The space would be sealed off; you can still see the grooves in the stonework where a temporary wall was built. The cross would be left here, wrapped in a linen shroud, and the monks would take turns keeping watch through the small window to the side of the space.

Then, very early on Easter morning, a further small drama would be enacted. One monk dressed in white would be seated here in the tomb, playing the part of the angel. Three others, as the women who came to the tomb, would come with incense representing the spices with which the women planned to wrap Jesus’ dead body. When he saw them, the first monk would sing softly and sweetly, ‘Whom do you seek?’ The three answered, ‘Jesus of Nazareth’. The angel said, ‘He is not here. He is risen.’ The three proclaimed to the rest of the community, ‘The Lord is risen.’ The angel then called them back, ‘Come and see the place’, showing the tomb empty of the cross, with only the linen veil remaining, and which they showed to the others. The whole community then sang a great hymn of praise and rejoicing.

Although in the Cathedral we do not enact this little play now, Holy Week and Easter remain full of drama and incident as in real time we remember the last week of Jesus’ mortal life. The whole community play various parts. We are those who rejoice and proclaim Jesus king on Palm Sunday, only to turn on him and become the angry mob demanding his death. On Thursday, we are his disciples sharing with him in his Last Supper and having our feet washed by him and then going with him to the Garden of Gethsemane, the garden of his agony. On Good Friday, we share in the liturgy of his Passion, going to reverence the Cross on which hung the Saviour of the World. We experience the emptiness of Holy Saturday but then gather at nightfall to celebrate the Easter Vigil, the crown of the Christian year, in an explosion of light and rejoicing as we exchange the Easter greeting : Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

The Cathedral community invites you, whoever you may be, to come and share this week with us. Through it we walk in the footsteps of Jesus to his death in order that we might be raised with him to new and unending life. Holy Week and Easter are God’s great gift to us of his Love that we might realise the fullness of our human potential and come to live with him for ever."