Proclaiming the Passion

It’s Lent, and many clergy are already looking ahead and planning services for Holy Week. One question that’s often asked on the VL forum is ‘Where can I find the dramatized versions of the Passion narratives in all four Gospels?’

Those of you with long liturgical memories will recall that Lent, Holy Week, Easter contained the dramatized Passion narratives, from the RSV, and that they were included in early versions of Visual Liturgy. But with the publication of Common Worship, the dramatized Passion narratives disappeared for a while. In 2007, Church House Publishing published Proclaiming the Passion, a booklet containing all four Passion narratives in dramatized form, from the NRSV. Immediately the cry went up from VL users, ‘Where can I find this in VL?’ For some time, it wasn’t available, but last year the VL versions were finally released.

So – assuming that you have a current VL Live subscription and have downloaded all the available updates – where can you find the dramatized Passion narratives within VL?

1. On the Home screen, click on the Create service tab.
2. As you scroll down the list of folders, you will come to one headed Proclaiming the Passion. Click on this and you will see a service template also headed Proclaiming the Passion.  
3. Double click on this template and the new service options dialogue box will appear. You will see that the service is defined as an undated service, so all you need to do is click on OK and the service template will open.
4. Within the template you will find everything that is contained in the printed booklet, including the introduction and notes on using the dramatized narratives.
5. You can then extract a passion narrative into a separate service, or cut and paste the text into a WP document.

We hope this helps you to use this resource. If you have questions or comments about these dramatized narratives, please feel free to use the Visual Liturgy Live forum.