The following is a liturgy based on the traditional “Seven Last Words” of Christ on the Cross. The Church should be draped in black; lighting should be low. The liturgy calls for seven candles to be extinguished during the service.
Entrance Song: “Were You There”
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Oh! Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?
Oh! Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Leader: The Lord be with you.
People: And also with you.
We gather here to worship God. We gather to remember how Jesus suffered and died for us and to thank God for his love and his mercy. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Let us pray. Merciful God, as we remember how your Son, Jesus bore our sins in His body on the cross, how seven times He spoke, seven words of love, we ask You to bless our hearing. Father, as we recall how all three hours His silence cried for mercy on the souls of all, we ask you to help us to understand the mystery of your love, and make us into a people who are ever more worthy of it. Amen.