All about Easter at St. Cross

Hello everyone! :)

Today's post, a little later than anticipated, is a review of our Eastertime at St. Cross. 

We began our Easter celebrations two weeks before Easter Sunday with our Easter Craft Market event, which had a variety of stalls run by church members and friends from the community. There were craft stalls offering jewellery, cards, candles and crocheted and sewn items, among other things, as well as a wonderful cake stall with Easter-themed goodies made by church members, a gift stall, and a chocolate stall with Easter Baskets and fabulous crocheted Ninja Turtle Creme Egg Cosies!! :) There was also a raffle and our Cafe was open for drinks and a bit of lunch, which always goes down well!! :) One of our church members was also kind enough to bring his camera along and took many of the lovely photos of the event that you see here throughout the afternoon. There are more pictures on the Easter 2016 page of our Past Events Gallery on the website soon if you'd like to see them- thank you very much to David for capturing the fun atmosphere of the day so well!! :)

​It was a lovely few hours of fun, laughter and chat with quite a number of visitors, some faces we know well and some we were happy to see for the first time. Thank you very much to all those who came along and supported the event and an especial thanks to the wonderful people who put in so much time and energy preparing it all beforehand and manning the stalls on the day!! :) 

The next stop in our tour of Easter activities is our annual Palm Sunday Egg Tombola. Unfortunately, we don't have any photos of what was a very impressive display of Easter Eggs, including a wonderful big one for the main prize, but, as usual, the Tombola went down extremely well and everybody went home with something yummy!! :) Much needed funds were also raised from the ticket sales, of course- so a big thank you to everyone who donated eggs and bought tickets!!​

Palm Sunday begins Holy Week- the week leading up to and including Easter Sunday- a very busy and important time in the Christian calendar with many services, each marking a particular part of the Easter story. The first was the Stations of the Cross on Wednesday evening; this is not a service as such but an opportunity to view the Stations paintings (which depict the Easter Story) on the walls of the church- we walked around the church looking at each of the paintings in turn while our Reader, Mark, led us in contemplation of Jesus' suffering for us. 

On Thursday evening we came together for the Maundy Thursday service, which marks Jesus' Last Supper with his disciples and then his betrayal by one of them. The service began in church then moved to the Garden of Repose in the Lady Chapel for short Vigil. Our Vigil remembers the disciples' all-night vigil in the Garden of Gethsemane before Jesus was taken away to be tried the next day. The Lady Chapel was decorated with vases of flowers to represent the garden.

On Friday afternoon there was another chance to view the Stations of the Cross before the Good Friday service (called the Good Friday Liturgy), which marks Jesus' crucifixion and death.

Easter Sunday's celebration service began with the blessing and lighting of the new Paschal Candle (part of the Easter Vigil and traditionally taking place during the hours of darkness between the Saturday and Sunday), which is then used throughout the year for baptisms and funerals. After the Eucharist we met for refreshments and chat in the Church Centre. ​

Church was decorated, thanks to our flower team, with beautiful flowers and our Easter Garden in front of the altar.

If you'd like to see more pictures then please click through to the Past Events Page. :)

Easter is such an important time for Christians and we want to thank all those who came along to our services and events and made our celebrations even more special. We hope you had a lovely Eastertime and are now enjoying Springtime and the new life and new beginnings all around us!! 

The St. Cross Web Team