Holy (Temple) Tuesday by Fr Jack
Holy Week 2026 sermon series
Holy Week and our day to day life now:
The events of salvation,
the font of Grace,
the sacramental life of the Church today.
Readings:
St John 12.20-36
Confirmation: Children of light. Walk in the light
Some pulpits have those words of the Greeks to S. Philip today carved into the top of them, or in brass on the reading desk, so that the preacher cannot but see them, when delivering a sermon: ‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus’. A good reminder to the preacher of what s/he is actually supposed to be doing, should s/he forget, and start only showing them someone else….
When we are confirmed, it is our own personal Pentecost. We are sealed with the Holy Spirit (as the Apostles were) and sent out to live for Jesus in the world (an apostolic commission). To proclaim, love, serve, worship; to shine with the life of God in us.
In our exploration of Holy Week through the lens of the sacraments, that very path of living out our Confirmation is here in today’s Gospel.
Let’s go through it. ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to b glorified’. When St John has the Lord speak of his glorification, it is His death to which he refers. St John does this lots throughout his Gospel. It’s troubling, this death = glorification.
So already we are alive to the fact that living like Jesus is not going to be straightforward. The ambitions and standards of value, success and the rest that we might inherit or naturally incline to in our culture will not suffice for us. What St John’s Jesus calls the judgements ‘of this world’ in the Gospel today.
After all, we also heard, ‘Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies… but if it dies, it bears much fruit’. What does it mean for you and me to live in the life-giving footsteps of Jesus the crucified? As ones who follow and serve Him, as today’s Gospel says.
And this isn’t some masochistic cult where we all try to become the most self-hating doormats we can. Not at all. This is the patterns and purposes of the Lord. This is the invitation to ‘walk’ in His ‘light’, to become more and more ‘children of light’, like Him and (even better) with Him and in Him. At baptism we are instructed to ‘shine as a light in the world to the glory of God the Father’.
At Confirmation, the Bishop, in the line of the Apostles, wearing her mitre, a sign of the flame of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost landing on her apostolic head, prays for the candidates to be Confirmed, thus:
Almighty and ever-living God,
you have given these your servants new birth
in baptism by water and the Spirit,
and have forgiven them all their sins.
Let your Holy Spirit rest upon them:
the Spirit of wisdom and understanding;
the Spirit of counsel and inward strength;
the Spirit of knowledge and true godliness;
and let their delight be in the fear of the Lord.
The bishop addresses each candidate by name
Your name, God has called you by name and made you his own.
The bishop then lays hands on the head of each, saying
Confirm, O Lord, your servant with your Holy Spirit.
This death, of Christ’s on the cross, and of ourselves in Him, is not masochistic self-destruction. It is the most wonderful gift of finding our true selves alive in Him, who is our true humanity.
We are Christ’s. We are members, parts of Christ.
We are Christ’s because we are Christ, one with Him ‘our life, hid with Christ in God’, as St Paul writes (Colossians 3.3).
So when we walk out of church today, every day we walk out of our front door, we are Christ carried out into the world, to meet and honour Christ in everyone we meet, to show Christ, such that those we meet don’t have to ask (like the Greeks to S. Philip) ‘Sir, we would see Jesus’, and to find Christ in us and in them. Christ is all in all.
The whole world, through us who have been baptized and confirmed (that is to say the Church of Christ which is His Body), we are sent and empowered to do just as He says today: ‘to draw all people to Himself’.
Your name, God has called you by name and made you his own. ‘Children of light’.