E

arly in Holy Week I had spotted a programme highlighted in the television previews, which claimed my interest. It had the title: 'The Day That Jesus Died'. It was to be shown on BBC1 at 9 a.m. on Good Friday.
Although I had a fairly busy day ahead I cleared that space for my TV breakfast, and sat down with my milk and honeyed porridge just as the programme started. 
A young woman called Bethany Hughes was embarking on a journey to uncover the meaning of Jesus's death on the cross and why it retains such relevance. This was done mainly through looking at artistic representations of the crucifixion in painting and sculpture. 
Many of those pictures and statues were gruesome in their realism, with brutality, blood and suffering highlighted to an almost shocking extent. They were meant to shock, to show the extent to which Jesus suffered and to carry the message that God literally loves us to death.

I

 HAD little time for April fooling this year, as Holy Thursday fell on April Fool's day, and I had three days of Easter ceremonies on my mind.
Still, the 'fool' theme is never far from my mind at Easter.
Saint Paul described himself as a 'fool for Christ' and God himself has been described as a 'fool for love' for even bothering with us humans and our complicated lives. 
We tend to use the term 'unbelievable' a lot nowadays and there are aspects of the Easter story that verge on the incredible, as Saint Thomas pointed out when he went looking for proof.

jesus_the_carpenter

J

ESUS the carpenter would have been at home with hammer, nails and timber.

For him a nail-bar would not be a place to have your nails shaped or your cuticles cutened. It was a rough tool to pull a nail that had bent or twisted while being driven by hammer blows.

The carpenter of Nazareth was a connoisseur of all things tool and timber. He would probably have known much more about hammer and nails than the man called on to nail him to Calvary's cross.