The beginning of Holy Week, the Great Week of the Year. Strange to think that this English village, its quiet cobbles shining with rain, its poplars soughing in the wind, is liturgically one with a hot and dusty road leading into Jerusalem almost two thousand years ago. The palms we hold are whitened by the sun, the bleak words of the Passion hammer like nails against the walls of our indifference. It is as well we know the end of the story and can pray with the poet:
Some fruit from the tree of thy Passion
Fall on us this night.