HOLY WEEK SERVICES

The Fithian Chapel is located in Tower Presbyterian Church in downtown Grove City. 

We will be live streaming the following services: Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter vigil, and Easter Day services.

Click on a bulletin to view the pdf

The following services will be live streamed: Palm Sunday, Good Friday (6:30 pm), Great Vigil (8 pm), and Easter Sunday (10:45 am).  Online bulletins are available.

PALM SUNDAY
10:45am & 5pm – Fithian Chapel

Palm Sunday commemorates Jesus’s uncanny entrance into Jerusalem during Passover. Our liturgy begins in Williamson Hall – near the entrance to Fithian. We distribute palms as an ambivalent reminder of our tendency to rightly hail Jesus as king while misunderstanding what that means. We’ll employ brass for worship as we sing to our Sovereign. (*Nursery Provided*). 

This service will be Live streamed, bulletin for Palm Sunday

MONDAY, TUESDAY, WEDNESDAY
12:10pm – Fithian Chapel

The Gospel-accounts provide us many details regarding the last week of Jesus’s earthly life, and we’ll journey with our Suffering Servant toward his public demise. Join us as we gather near the lunch-hour for Communion (worship won’t last more than 35 minutes).

MAUNDY THURSDAY
6:30pm – Fithian Chapel

The word ‘Maundy’ comes from the Latin word ‘Mandatum’ (meaning, ‘mandate’). On Thursday night during Holy Week, Jesus gave several gifts to his students: a new mandate to love one another as he loved them, a foot-scrubbing, and the institution of the Lord’s Supper. That evening, Jesus morphed the meaning of the Jewish Passover (which recalled the Hebrew’s Exodus from Egypt) to be about his personal sacrifice and a new and everlasting Exodus from sin. This service employs Passion hymns, silence, a homily, Communion, and the stripping of the chancel (symbolic of the humiliation of Jesus). It concludes in darkness. (*Nursery Provided*) 

This service will be Live streamed.

FRIDAY WALK OF THE CROSS
10am – Tower’s parking lot

We’ll walk along Broad St, stopping at various points to recall from scripture various ‘stations’ of the cross, and during those stops we’ll pray for our community. (*Weather permitting*)

GOOD FRIDAY
6:30pm – Fithian Chapel

Jesus died on a Friday afternoon. We’ll gather to remember the death of Christ and consider its present-and-eternal ramifications. We’ll sing Passion hymns, hear readings about the cross, listen to a homily, and say the ‘solemn collects’ (that is, ancient prayers which explore the deep meaning of Jesus’s death). This service concludes starkly, in silence and darkness. (*Nursery Provided*). 

This service will be Live streamed.

HOLY SATURDAY MORNING
10am – Fithian Chapel

In this brief, quiet, and solemn service we’ll remember the entombment of Christ and the stillness between death and resurrection.

THE GREAT VIGIL OF EASTER (Saturday) 8pm – Fithian Chapel

The service begins (weather-permitting) outdoors, in the dark. The first half of the service takes place in the dark, lit only by candles, and in that near-darkness we’ll hear various readings from Sacred Scripture – tracing our history from Creation to Jesus’s Resurrection. We’ll have a choir, led by Sarah Mitchell, glorious music, Communion, and a homily. This service begins rather late on purpose (so that the resurrection is announced late on Saturday!), and it lasts about 2 hours. The Easter Vigil is meaningful and unforgettable, so please join us. 

This service will be Live streamed.

EASTER SUNDAY
10:45am (no evening service)
Fithian Chapel

We’ll celebrate with jubilant hymns and brass, read resurrection texts from the Bible, and hear a sermon about Jesus’s physical resurrection. We commemorate and experience the risen Jesus via Word and Sacrament. He is risen, just as he said. (*Nursery Provided*).

This service will be Live streamed.