There are two temporal co-incidences this Holy Week which perhaps can help us in our spiritual life… First of all, the clocks go forward from 1:00am GMT to 2:00am BST on Easter Sunday Morning. This means that, unusually, the whole of the Easter Triduum takes place before summer time starts; as a result we are able to start the Easter Vigil a little earlier than usual, at 7:30pm on Saturday 26 March. Especially if you haven’t been accustomed to the Easter Vigil, why not take advantage of the earlier start and experience this highlight of the Church’s whole year? We take the liturgical passage from the darkness of sin to the light of the resurrection through procession, song, scriptures and sacrament. Truly the death and resurrection of Christ mean that we have moved from one time to another, from one era to another.

The second co-incidence is that Good Friday falls on 25 March; which in other years is the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord – that is, the day that the angel Gabriel appeared to the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Son of God took flesh in her womb. The fact that Christ’s incarnation and his death fall on one and the same day shows us what it was Christ come among us to do: to bear our sins on the cross, and to give us hope by rising from the dead. We won’t miss out the Annunciation entirely this year: it will be celebrated on Monday 4 April, once the Octave of Easter is over.