Date: March 30, 2026
As we begin Holy Week, we do so in the midst of the ordinary rhythms of classes and daily responsibilities. Yet even as we navigate the work before us, I invite us to enter deeply into the significance of this week. It calls for attentiveness, for it is not simply another week, but the week that most clearly defines who we are as Christians.
We are a people who believe that God Incarnate journeyed from the joy of Palm Sunday to the cry of “crucify him.” In this movement, we witness the full drama of human hope, betrayal, fear, and violence. Holy Week holds before us the truth that the Christian story is not abstract, but grounded in the lived and costly reality of God’s presence in the world.
Here, too, we encounter the Christian response to the perennial question of suffering and evil. The answer is not a theoretical answer that satisfies the mind, but a response of the heart. It is a crucified, disfigured human being—crushed under the weight of Empire—through whom we see God present in every moment of agony and power in creation. Have a blessed Holy Week everyone.
The Very Rev. Ian S. Markham, Ph.D.
Dean and President of Virginia Theological Seminary and the President of The General Theological Seminary.