Anglicans online writes in its editorial this week:
For most active Christians, Holy Week is a Busy Week.
For bishops, priests and deacons, there are all of the usual duties of pastoral life in addition to planning for some of the most intricate services of the church year, writing extra sermons, acolyte practice, finding the crotalus, hearing confessions, preparing leaflets and rehearsing the Exultet one more time. For servers, ushers, vergers, greeters, webmasters, flower arrangers, secretaries, organists, singers, sextons, caterers and worshipers of all kinds, the key word this week is More.
It is safe to say that most people reading this essay will be exhausted by the end of Good Friday, if they aren’t already today after a full round of Palm Sunday observances. If our experience is any guide, it is grace and not just human energy that carries us each year through to Holy Saturday, the Great Vigil and on to the resurrection joy of Easter morning.
Until then, in place of the More that so many of us will be encountering this week, for our part we would like to urge some effort at Less over the next seven days. Less time at keyboard-and-monitor, less television, fewer text messages, less noise and less internet discussion with all its politicks and knavish tricks. We are far from advocating a complete tuning-out from the web and mass media. (This would be impossible for starters given our day-jobs, but we learn and gain so much of religious value on the web in any case that a complete turn-off would surely constitute an interruption of our lives instead of an enrichment.)
Rather we hope that by engaging in a bit less of these things we will be able to turn down the barrage of information that generally meets our senses. Such a momentary cutting-back should not be difficult, but we suspect it will be. It will allow us to meet the scriptures, liturgies, hymns and ceremonies of Holy Week in sharper contrast against the usual sounds and meanings of our lives. We hope it will enable us to better enter with joy upon the contemplation of those mighty acts of God we will relive this week. Join us if you can in saying Less to some things while so much More is taking place, the more carefully to do all things well and in godliness.
Sound advice.