'By thine Agony and bloody Sweat': praying the Litany in Holy Week

Praying the Litany on Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, week by week, is a practical, enriching discipline which can gather up all of life in prayer before the Triune God. It has a blessed prosaic quality, week by week ensuring that we pray for those whom we might forget or, in some cases, prefer not to pray for. 

In Holy Week, while the text (thankfully) does not change, particular petitions of the Litany take on an added emphasis, compelling our attention, drawing us more deeply into the mysteries of this week and unfolding their meaning.

O God the Father of heaven ... O God the Son, Redeemer of the world ... O God the Holy Spirit, proceeding from the Father and the Son: have mercy upon us miserable sinners.

We begin, as we do each time the Litany is prayed, by invoking the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity. From the outset, then, the Litany brings us to recognise the truth that the savings events of Holy Week are the work of the Holy Trinity, for us and for our salvation. Here, in Passion, Death, Tomb, and Resurrection, the Most Holy Trinity is redeeming the world.

And, if we might bristle slightly about the thrice weekly reminder that we are "miserable sinners", Holy Week starkly, soberly brings us to confront the reality of this phrase, as we gaze on Peter and Judas, Pilate and high priest, mob and soldiers, and see our own characters looking back at us.

Remember not, Lord, our offences, nor the offences of our forefathers; neither take thou vengeance of our sins: spare us, good Lord, spare thy people, whom thou hast redeemed with thy most precious blood, and be not angry with us for ever.

Our redemption is no bloodless abstraction: we are "redeemed with thy most precious blood". The blood of the Crucified - set before us in the signs of water in Baptism and the cup in the Supper - is our redemption, our Passover, the fount which cleanses and renews us. As Hooker reminds us, this precious blood touches us in the Holy Mysteries, for they "do, as Nails, fasten us to his very Cross, that by them we draw out, as touching Efficacy, Force, and Virtue, even the Blood of his goared side: In the Wounds of our Redeemer, we there dip our Tongues, we are dyed red, both within and without".

By thine Agony and bloody Sweat; by thy Cross and Passion; by thy precious Death and Burial ... Good Lord, deliver us.

The whole of the Passion, from Garden to Tomb, is for our salvation. As Our Lord descends into the pit and the darkness for us, we behold His redeeming love at each turn, 'in the garden secretly, and on the cross on high'.

That it may please thee to illuminate all Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, with true knowledge and understanding of thy Word; and that both by their preaching and living they may set it forth and shew it accordingly ...

Jeremy Taylor advised his clergy, "Let every Preacher in his Parish take care to explicate to the people the Mysteries of the great Festivals ... because these Feasts containing in them the great Fundamentals of our Faith, will with most advantage convey the mysteries to the people". To preach in Holy Week is stand before "the bush burnt with fire, and the bush was not consumed". It is to handle "the mystery which hath been hid from ages and generations". And so we must pray for all bishops, presbyters, and deacons in this great week, that the fiery glory and glorious mystery, alive in their hearts and minds, would be set forth in their teaching.

That it may please thee to give to all thy people increase of grace, to hear meekly thy Word, and to receive it with pure affection, and to bring forth the fruits of the Spirit ...

After praying for bishops and clergy in their calling to teach the mysteries of the Faith over Holy Week, we pray for all Christians (and note how wonderfully ecumenical this is) commemorating the Lord's Passion, that we may all be sanctified by the proclamation of His death and resurrection. 

To "hear meekly" the Word of the Cross might, to some, sound uncomfortably submissive. However, we can consider "hear meekly" against the cultural background of constant, loud, assertive distractions; a context in which stilling ourselves and listening is an exceedingly rare practice. Holy Week is particularly a time for such attentive, quiet listening; the attentive, quiet listening to which the wisdom of the Scriptures consistently calls us. And it is a week in which, in the accounts of the Lord's Passion, we see again and again how lives are disordered and shadowed when there is a not a quiet, attentive listening to the Word of grace and love. 

That it may please thee to bring into the way of truth all such as have erred, and are deceived ...

It is petition to be offered for those within the Church's life who, by their teaching (whether from ecclesial Left or ecclesial Right), obscure the mystery of the Cross and Resurrection. Our prayer is that they will behold the glory and grace of the Cross and Resurrection; that erroneous theologies might be overturned by the proclamation of the Crucified and Risen One in the liturgies of Holy Week. That in pulpit and pew, Christ Crucified and Risen might be confessed in communion with the Church catholic.

That it may please thee to have mercy upon all men ...

The simplicity of this petition is its beauty and its truth. "And not for that nation only, but that also he should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad." It is a petition which brings us to know what it is meant in the Good Friday collect when we pray "behold this thy family": all of us, the entire human family, held before the Cross in Holy Week, that all may know the mercy of God in Christ.

That it may please thee to forgive our enemies, persecutors, and slanderers, and to turn their hearts ...

So we pray in union with the Crucified, "Father, forgive them". It is the single most demanding petition of the Litany. Week by week, it recalls us to that which we pray daily in the Lord's Prayer. In Holy Week, it grounds this daily practice in the example of the Crucified, to whom we are called to be conformed, signed with the Cross in Baptism. So in the week of the Cross, we pray for "our enemies, persecutors, and slanderers", in the bloody realities of global politics, and in the gritty realities of daily living.

That it may please thee to give us true repentance ...

We have offered the Litany before the Cross of Christ. We have prayed for Church and world, friend and foe, stranger and neighbour. Now our last prayer must be for ourselves, that we might heed the word of the Cross and repent; truly taking up the Cross and following the Crucified, dying to ourselves that we might live, "lest that by any means", after having prayed for others, "I myself should be a castaway".

O Lamb of God: that takest away the sins of the world; Grant us thy peace.

O Lamb of God: that takest away the sins of the world; Have mercy upon us.

We draw the Litany to a close by beseeching the Passover Lamb slain for us, "having made peace through the blood of his cross ... to reconcile all things unto himself"; that we, that all may know the peace and mercy of the Crucified, who made the "full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world".