Holy Week and Easter in St Anne's Cathedral | The Church of Ireland Diocese of Connor

Holy Week and Easter in St Anne’s Cathedral

Friday March 27th 2015

Lighting the Paschal Candle outside St Anne’s Cathedral on Easter Eve 2014.

Visitors are warmly welcome to join the Dean and community of St Anne’s Cathedral, Belfast, for a series of beautiful and evocative services during Holy Week and Easter.

Choral Services will be held every day, with special services on Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Eve and Easter Sunday.

Palm Crosses will be given out at services on Palm Sunday, March 28, and at 11am the choir and clergy will process with waving palm branches. The Maundy Thursday service at 7.30pm on April 2 will include the symbolic washing of feet and the altars will be stripped of linen and colour as the congregation leaves in darkness.

The Good Friday liturgy is bare, with a concentration on Christ’s Words from the Cross for three hours from noon until 3pm.

On Easter Eve at 8.30pm, as darkness begins to fall, a new fire is kindled outside the Cathedral. A lighted candle is carried into the darkened interior and individual candles are lit from a common source. Gradually in word and music the saving history of God’s people is recalled, ending with the proclamation that Christ is risen.

At 11am on Easter Day the service is full of joy, song and music, and the preacher is the Bishop of Connor, the Rt Rev Alan Abernethy.

All of these services are an hour and a quarter to an hour and a half long, except the Three Hours on Good Friday which has breaks every 20 minutes for people to come and go.

Choral services will be held on Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday at 11am and 3.30pm; on Monday March 30 to Friday April 3 at 7.30pm; and on Easter Eve (April 4) at 8.30pm.

A full schedule of services for Holy Week is listed on the Cathedral website at www.belfastcathedral.org.