Passion Week
Holy Week Reading Services will be virtual for 2021. Please check the LIVE WEBCAST button on our website or visit our Facebook group.
Holy Week, most often referred to a “Passion Week” by Moravians (from Latin Passus, to suffer) is a week of profound reverence and prayer.
Palm Sunday
The week begins with the observance of Palm Sunday, much like Palm Sunday observances in most churches. One particular feature of our Palm Sunday liturgy is the singing of Hosannah by Christian Gregor, a chorale with call-and-response that is sung antiphonally between the congregation and the choir. Small emerald palms are distributed to all worshipers.
Trinity also observes a Lovefeast Palm Sunday night.
Reading Services
Moravians have long had the practice of gathering each night of Passion Week to read the events of that day in Jesus’ life from the Scriptures. These readings are interspersed with the singing of hymn verses that relate to the events described. There is no sermon, the message being contained in the readings and the hymns. These services are held in the Rights Chapel.
Trinity has come to have the LOGOS children read during the Wednesday night service; the Maundy Thursday service includes a solemn service of Holy Communion; and for the last several years, we have held a Tenebrae service on Good Friday, a crucifixion service that ends in darkness.
Trinity also sponsors a Good Friday Cross Walk in downtown Winston-Salem on Good Friday morning.
Great Sabbath
No reading service is held on Saturday, known as Great Sabbath, the day that Jesus rested in the grave. However, during the day families gather in God’s Acre to clean and decorate the graves in preparation for Easter morning. This is a truly intergenerational event, when grandparents, parents, children, and grandchildren share in the work and the decoration and share stories of the saints who are buried in God’s Acre.
In the evening, Salem Congregation sponsors a Great Sabbath service at Home Moravian Church, a service of music in which gathered choirs and musicians from all congregations create a musical meditation on death, suffering, and resurrection.
