Meditations for Holy Week

Prayers, Music, Poetry, and Quotes

Here are some ideas to help you meditate on the our Lord’s passion (suffering) and his victory over the grave:

1. Pray the “collects” for Holy Week and learn about the history of each prayer.

2. Listen to (or watch) a recording of J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion.

   1. Netherlands Bach Society (has English subtitles)

   2. The Bach Choir/ Sir David Willcocks (English version)

3. Read a Puritan sermon–Puritan sermons are soaked in Scripture, and full of the Gospel, so it’s hard to go wrong here! (Stephen Charnock’s “The Acceptableness of Christ’s Death” is wonderful–just read a few pages every day this Holy Week and next week and savor it.)

4. Read John Chrysostom’s (347-407 AD) “Paschal Homily.”

5. Listen to John Tavener’s Lamentations and Praises (Spotify) [Here’s a YouTube link.] Tavener is a contemporary composer in the Orthodox tradition, so his music incorporates many of the older, Eastern Christian, musical elements. (Make sure you listen all the way through–the ending “XIX.Resurrection in Hades” is glorious!)

6. Read the second and third parts of Luci Shaw’s book of poems, Accompanied by Angels: Poems of the Incarnation (“Dying” and “Risen”) - Google Books has many of the poems, but not all.

May the peace of Christ dwell with you richly!

From Charnock’s Sermon “The Acceptableness of Christ’s Death”

“All other hiding-places, but the smoke of this sacrifice, are too weak to preserve us from the overflowing waters of divine vengeance” (581).

“If when Christ walked upon the waters, and was labouring in the floods of affliction in the days of his humiliation, he bid his disciples not to fear, how much more may we expel fear from our believing hearts, since he is sat down upon his throne, and the whole merit of his sacrifice graciously accepted!” (582).

“God by this one act hath stopped the course of his vengeance, and laid aside the thunders of Sinai. The flames we have deserved are quenched by the blood flowing from the wounds of this victim; the smoke of our sacrifice shadows us, and in God’s acceptance of him every believer finds his infallible absolution” (585).

“His blood was a purchasing blood; he purchased a people for heaven, and purchased heaven for his people; he did not only silence justice with its wrath, but merited heaven with its riches, and shed his blood as a price for the pleasures of paradise” (585).