Thoughts on Holy Week

Hans Memling's Scenes From The Passion of Christ

find a list of the scenes here

We began our Holy Week watching The Ten Commandments and talking about Passover.  Passover started on Monday and as Jesus was a Jew he celebrated Passover.  During Christ's Passover meal he proclaimed that the meal symbolized himself and he died at the hour that the Passover Lamb was sacrificed in Jerusalem as you can see in Matthew 27:46, 50, Mark 15:34-37, and Luke 23:44-46.  The New testament calls Christ our sacrificial lamb and John the Baptist called him, "the Lamb of God."  So for me the Passover is linked with the celebration of the Resurrection this Sunday.

There are some really nice Old Time Radio Shows being offered by the Erskines of homeschoolradioshows.com.  Check their page this week for some nice Easter themed freebies and while you are there check out the cds they offer of Old Time Radio specifically for educational purposes.  If you sign up for their newsletter you will receive frequent free program links from them as well.

Another tradition we have this week has to do with food of course.  Good Friday we make Hot Cross Buns which are an old tradition going back centuries in England.  My dear British friend, Rachel, of The Jacobite Rose makes the BEST but I'm too much of an American to do flour paste crosses and I do a nice big fat cross of icing across each bun.  I've written more about them here.

This week we will also read the accounts of Jesus' life this week in the Gospel begining in Matthew 21: 1 and continuing through to the end of Matthew.  I've been thinking of doing the Stations of the Cross with my children this year as well.  There are some excellent resources for that here  and here .

Also this week we will be cleaning up our Easter Garden.  Another idea I received from my ever resourceful friend Rachel.  You can read more about that here.

No matter what I do it's not the activities that are important.  It's knowing that Christ freely gave his life as a substitution for my own so that our relationship with God could be reconnected.  All that Christ asked is that I remember and believe.  The activities are just to help me focus on that fact and teach it to my children.  I pray that you will also meditate on this during this week.