Click here for the Lamentations of Jeremiah

This was sung last year at Tenebrae.  If you want to hear it live, Tenebrae is hld at Blackfriars Cambridge on Good Friday nd Holy Saturday.  For further information visit the Friary website

By Sr Tamsin Mary Geach o.p.

Youtube version here:  Some extra material.

On Monday of last week I was travelling to London and I was handed a free magazine.  Normally I don’t open these things but this time I did.  It was a very worthy magazine, mostly about how to improve - how to eat the best food, drink the best drink, exercise and so on.  I was struck by something that had been bothering me in various explorations of the non-theist aspects of the internet.  There are many pundits who give advice to the young, and it follows more or less this pattern:  If you organize your life and eat well and exercise a lot, if you establish what you really want, and pursue your goals single-mindedly, or even ruthlessly, you will be healthy and wealthy and wise.  Occasionally they mention love or relationships as well. 

by Sr.Jadwiga Swiatecka o.p.

I have always found this account of Christ’s last going to Jerusalem for the Passover somewhat odd.  Who is this un-named person who had a donkey conveniently tethered where it could just be taken? Is he the same so-and so (thus, one of the translations) who also got the supper room ready? And had Jesus made some previous arrangement with this man, that he might need to borrow his donkey? Why is he anonymous?  We know that Jesus had been going to the Passover festival since he was twelve, so this would be about the 20th time; and presumably he had been with his disciples at least twice before, if his public ministry lasted about 3 years.  If so, then on the previous occasions he had just walked in.  So why, this time, borrow an ass and ride in on it? 

by Sr Ann Catherine Swailes o.p.

The best laid plans, as they say. When I started thinking about this talk, I chose as a title - and it was me that did it, I can’t blame anyone else – “the Shape of Holy Week”. What I was planning to do was to provide a kind of sketch of what happens in Holy Week, what we do in Church which is different during these days that are about to begin, and, in that context, provide a few, inevitably very inadequate thoughts that might, if you find any of them at all helpful, be the starting point for reflection between now and Easter on the great mystery of the Lord’s death and resurrection at the heart of our faith. I’m still hoping to try to do that.