Preparing for Easter: Services, cantatas among Holy Week events

FREMONT - Locals of varied faiths can find events throughout the region to help them celebrate Easter this season.

Cantatas, community services, and a blessing of fire are among the events to be held next week.

Harvest Baptist Temple in Clyde will host an Easter cantata titled, “Tell Me the Story of Jesus.” The cantata will feature a retelling of the gospel story through drama and song. About 40 members of the church will participate in the service.

“It’s set in Jesus’ time, but in the program, we have flashbacks. We flash back to the miracles Jesus performed,” said Su Thompson, the church’s choir director and music teacher for Harvest Temple Christian Academy.

There will be two performances of “Tell Me the Story of Jesus” at Harvest Baptist Temple: Good Friday, March 30, at 7 p.m. and Easter Sunday, April 1, at 6 p.m. The public is welcome to attend. Harvest is at 1022 South Main St. in Clyde. For more information, call 419-547-8251.

A longtime Good Friday community tradition hosted by the Fremont Ministerial Association has changed this year in the hopes of bringing more churches together. The ministerial association’s annual Good Friday service, which typically lasts three hours, has been shortened to one hour.

In past years, the Good Friday service worked in come-and-go fashion where local parishioners could stop in to the three-hour service as time allowed. But ministerial association leaders found that many people came to the service just long enough to hear their own pastors speak.

In an effort to make the service more inclusive and encourage congregation participation, the Good Friday service, titled “The Way of the Cross” will last only one hour and will include meditations on the 14 Stages of the Cross by 14 different local pastors.

“We’re excited about it. A lot of people don’t have the afternoon off. They just have their lunch hour,” said Nancy Cullen, associate pastor of New Hope Vineyard Church. “It’s been quite a tradition in the community, but we just are hoping more people will come and will be able to stay for the whole thing.”

“The Way of the Cross” Good Friday service will be held at Grace Lutheran Church at 705 W. State Street in Fremont. The service will begin at noon and last about an hour. For more information, call Nancy Cullen at 419-334-4673 or Pastor Jodi Rice at 419-332-1558.

Local Catholics can celebrate Easter all week during Holy Week, starting with a Palm Sunday service at St. Joseph Catholic Church on March 25. Then on Wednesday, a Tenebrae Service will be held at St. Ann Catholic Church at 7 p.m.

“It is an evening prayer service. Our choir director does the hard work for this,” said Deacon Mel Shell, director of faith information for St. Ann and St. Joseph parishes. “Much of the worship is sung, and it’s done by candlelight.”

On Thursday, an evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper will be held at St. Joseph at 7 p.m. During the service, priests will wash the feet of several parishioners representing different ages and different ministries within the church.

“We do this to show the diversity of the church and the servanthood of the priesthood,” Shell said. “Pope Francis makes a big deal of foot washing. He has gone into prisons and washed the feet of prisoners.”

At noon on Friday, a Good Friday Liturgy will include Holy Communion and Veneration of the Cross.

“It’s a staged reading of the Passion narrative,” Shell said.

A Holy Saturday Easter Vigil Mass will begin at 8:30 p.m. with a blessing of fire in front of St. Joseph Church. All of the church’s lights will be off, and the Paschal Easter candle will be lit in the fire. Parishioners, holding unlit candles, will make a procession into the church. The candles will be lit first from the Paschal candle and then from parishioner to parishioner.

“The church goes from pitch black to candlelit,” Shell said. “The Mass will include baptisms, confessions of faith, and confirmations. The Mass is centered around people preparing to enter the Catholic Church, and that service is the culmination of that.”

On Sunday, both parishes will hold Easter Masses, and St. Joseph will offer a Spanish Mass at 1 p.m.

Contact correspondent Sheri Trusty at sheritrusty4@gmail.com.