Resource Update: Pins of Light Holy Week Retreat

Last week, we posted about online resources for Holy Week, and one of those resources was the blog Pins Of Light and their annual online retreat for Holy Week. Details about this year’s retreat were a little sketchy last week, but this week, they’ve put out more information, and it looks so interesting that we thought we’d draw particular attention to it.

This year’s retreat is called Chosen: Stories, Silences, and Songs from Scripture. It pursues the theme of reading between the lines in scripture by imagining situations from various characters’ viewpoints. It consists of three 45-minute online videos that will be released on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. People can participate at their own pace and on their own timetable with the videos. Jesuit spiritual directors are available for questions.

This online resource looks like a fantastic and creative option geared specifically for Holy Week. We hope that you find it helpful this week as we follow the story of Christ’s Passion and await the day of his resurrection.

Here’s Pins of Light’s video preview.

 

 

 

 

Resource: Holy Week Online Classes and Retreats

Last week, we updated you on online stations of the cross devotions that you might find useful during Holy Week. Today, we’re offering some suggestions for ChurchNext courses and online retreats that you might use during Holy Week. We hope you find these helpful.

ChurchNext Courses: We offer several courses that you can use to enrich your Holy Week.

  • Any of David Lose’s three classes on Making Sense of the Cross would be a good Painting 1focus for contemplation. Try Making Sense of the Cross Part 1 (which focuses on understanding the cross through experience), Making Sense of the Cross Part 2 (which focuses on understanding the cross through the gospels), and Making Sense of the Cross Part 3 (which focuses on Christian theories about the cross).
  • You also might enjoy Kathrin Burleson’s Praying the Stations of the Cross, in which artist Kathrin Burleson discusses and reflects on her series of fourteen paintings representing the Stations of the Cross.
  • And of the classes in our free Lenten curriculum Luke the Liberator would be a useful addition to Holy Week. These were developed as a resource for the Good Book Club as well as for anyone who is interested in learning more about Luke’s gospel. They are free until the end of Lent.

Online Holy Week Retreats: Here are two Holy Week retreats available online:

  • A blog called Pins of Light has offered popular online Holy Week retreats for the past ten years. This year’s retreat is connected with a musical called Chosen, but they aren’t being forthcoming with details about it. We’ll update if/when we learn more about it.
  • Creighton University offers a Holy Week retreat as part of its Lenten Retreat series. The retreat includes suggested readings, reflections, suggestions for prayers, the Stations of the Cross, and an opportunity to reflect and share thoughts with others.
  • IgnatianSpirituality.com offers a series of online retreats throughout Lent. They offer this one  for Holy Week.

 

Just Launched: Healing Spiritual Wounds with Carol Howard Merritt

We just launched Healing Spiritual Wounds with Carol Howard Merritt For Individuals and For Groups.

St. Paul is famous for having  written, “We see through a glass, darkly” — or, as the NRSV translation puts it, “in a mirror, dimly.” We cannot understand God’s nature without human language and human concepts limiting us because God is larger and greater than our understanding of reality can accommodate. The nature of our interactions with God requires us to use metaphors to describe God. The Bible uses the images of a father, a king, a war leader, a bridegroom, the master of an estate, a potter, a farmer, and many other metaphors that highlight elements of our relationship with God.

This necessity is part of our journey toward God; of what it means to be a human who worships God. Conceiving of God in erroneous ways, however, can cause great spiritual damage. When we grow up with images of God that are violent, full of hatred, cold,  wrathful, arbitrary, etc. we learn to fear God, but not to love God; to pray to God, but not necessarily to ask God for guidance. This kind of damage is a spiritual injury. It damages how we conceive of and interact on a spiritual level with God and with our neighbors.

In this class, Carol Howard Merritt talks about spiritual injuries: what they are, how to avoid inflicting them, particularly on an institutional level, and how to heal them — again, as churches, not just as individuals.

This class is ideal for people who want to learn how to deal with the spiritual injuries that people and institutions inflict — and how to keep our institutions from inflicting spiritual harm in the first place. For a preview of the course, please click here.

Resource: Online Stations of the Cross

Many Christians use the Stations of the Cross liturgy during Lent and Holy Week. We want to draw your attention to some of the many online opportunities to pray using this ancient liturgy.

Online Stations of the Cross for Adults

  • Catholic Online has created a version of the Stations of the Cross that is available as a devotion on their website and as a video on YouTube.  This version is highly produced, with professional voice-over, music, and editing. It uses both video footage of religious sites in the Holy Land and actors who silently play the roles in the passion story as the voice-over narrates the events for each station and meditates on these events It starts with a short introduction to the Stations of the Cross; the stations themselves begin a little over two minutes into the video.

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  • Busted Halo’s Virtual Stations of the Cross offers videos with music and images. Participants read the reflections at each station to themselves.
  • Creighton University’s Online Stations of the Cross offers images of each station and prayers that users may read themselves.
  • You might also try a virtual pilgrimage through sites in Jerusalem that traditionally have been associated with each of the fourteen Stations of the Cross. The site brings visitors to a numbered map through Jerusalem. At each numbered station on the map, the site offers an introduction to what viewers will find there and a slide slow of the buildings and the markers that designate the site as one of the traditional locations for each station. (Be patient with the slide show; it moves slowly.) After the slide show, viewers are shown an image of the altar associated with each station and invited to pray. Each virtual prayer station includes background music and textual prayers.
  • Another video version of the Stations of the Cross utilizes paintings by Pietro Rudolfi of St. Ignatius Church in San Francisco. This version uses sacred chant and voice-over prayers, reading, and meditation.
  • You might also enjoy ChurchNext’s course on Praying the Stations of the Cross, in which artist Kathrin Burleson discusses and reflects on her series of fourteen paintings representing the Stations of the Cross. This is not a service so much as an introduction to the devotion and the artist’s reflections on the paintings for each station.
  • YouTube offers many other Stations of the Cross resources — too many to list here — some highly produced and some very simple. If you are interested in finding more online Stations of the Cross resources, YouTube is a good place to explore.

Online Stations of the Cross for Children

  • Loyola Press offers a multimedia Stations of the Cross for children. Using music, images, and simple meditative text, it offers a child-friendly service that older children who can read can use alone and that younger children can use with their parents’ help.

stations of cross children

  • The Catholic Online version of the Stations of the Cross described in the section above very clearly addresses the first part of each mediation to children and the second part to adults.
  • This is another child-friendly version of the Stations of the Cross. It uses meditations and images appropriate for children.

We hope that these online Stations of the Cross resources help you during Lent and Holy Week this year.