Happy Church New Year - Rector's Rambling for November 28, 2021

     And now we start all over again!  Unlike the calendar year starting January 1st, the new church year is upon us starting today with the first Sunday in Advent.

As human beings here on earth we are confined to time and space.  With the earth’s rotation around the sun and around its own axis we have seasons and day.  Time keeps ticking forward, yet there is also a cyclical nature to time as well.  So too the Church acknowledges this by the keeping of a calendar that renews every year.

Advent is our beginning, where we look forward to the beginning of our Lord’s earthly life (preparing for Christmas) as well as the beginning of the end (Our Lord’s return at the end of time).  After this we will have Christmastide, Epiphanytide, pre-Lent (-gesima Sundays), Lent, Eastertide, Ascensiontide, and then back to the long green season of Trinity in time for summer. 

The church calendar pays homage to the northern hemisphere seasons, with birth of the Light of the World happening as the daylight just starts getting longer, acknowledges the hard anticipation and frustration of late winter with the –gesima and Lenten devotions, and the hope that comes with spring tied to the celebration of the Resurrection.  And the long green season of trinity occurs in summer and fall - a time of growth in the faith mirroring the time of growth for the crops in the field.

Although we usually keep New Year Resolutions for the secular calendar, why not have a few Church New Year Resolutions?  Making a re-commitment to regular prayer, reading of Scripture, and attending worship is always good idea!  And although the season of Advent does not have the heavy emphasis on sin and repentance, Advent is a penitential season.  This means it is a good time to make a thorough examination of your conscience and deeds, asking God for forgiveness and for the grace to amend our lives according to His most Holy Word.  The clergy are available to help you with this task through what is known as an auricular confession (private confession with a priest).

And of course, it is now 4 Sundays plus nearly a week until Christmas NOW is a good time to start inviting friends and neighbors to worship with us for the Holy Day.

 

 

How the polity 'works' - Rector's Rambling for November 14, 2021

        Today we have our official visit from our Diocesan, which occurs every three years.  Recently I was asked how the Episcopal Church ‘works’ when it comes to parish/diocese/national church.  This is what is known as church polity.

At the base level is the parish or mission congregation.  A parish, like St. John’s, is self -supporting member of a diocese.  As a parish we have a Vestry which is an elected parish board. The election takes place at the Annual Parish Meeting. In accordance with church canons and constitution (the rules governing the church polity) the vestry has financial responsibilities (like any corporate board) as well as leadership in setting mission and ministry priorities.  They elect the Rector of the parish, who once the election is confirmed by the bishop, has a form of tenure in the position, which provided stability and allows the rector to make hard decisions concerning the spiritual and temporal leadership for the parish. 

The Diocese is a grouping of parishes and missions in a geographic area.  Sometimes the congregations were missions started by the diocese, but other-times, like in the case of St. John’s in the 1850s, they are started by individuals interested in a new parish, and then are ‘admitted to convention’ at the yearly Diocesan legislative gathering.

At the Diocesan level there is a Standing Committee, which functions similarly to a parish vestry in that it is the legal authority of the diocese in the absence of a bishop.  Additionally here in the Diocese of Michigan we have a Diocesan Council which consists of those elected at Convention, members from each deanery (smaller geographic groupings of congregations), and others appointed by the bishop.  This is the dioceses’ Board of  Directors. One more board is the Trustees which administers the trusts and properties of the Diocese.

The yearly convention of the diocese elects a bishop when there is a vacancy, whose election must also be confirmed by a majority of bishops and standing committees around the denomination. 

The Episcopal Church, officially the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society (DFMS) is the grouping of dioceses that gather every three years for a General Convention to set budgets and mission priorities.  Although the ‘national church’ (which is actually international in membership dioceses) was originally configured as a lose confederacy of otherwise autonomous dioceses, the governance has become much more centralized in the last few decades, with the Presiding Bishop going from being the senior diocesan bishop acting as chair of the meetings of the House of Bishops to having a more archbishop type of full-time position. 

The Episcopal Church is the USA member of the world-wide Anglican Communion. Although the Archbishop of Canterbury has a leadership role, as does the Anglican Consultative Council,  there is no centralized authority system in place in the Anglican Communion to hold members accountable for actions affecting the Church at large.

 

Momento Mori - Rector's Rambling for October 31, 2021

     Although in the secular sense of ‘trick or treat’ and secular costumes, this is not a church holy day, it finds its roots and even it’s name, in a Holy Day of the Church.

The name Halloween is an anglicized version of All Hallows Eve.  The word Hallow is just another word for Holy, or for the word Saint.  They are all interchangeable. 

Today is All Hallows Eve because it is the Eve of (day before) All Saints Day.  This is a MAJOR feast day of the Church.  We will talk more about All Saints Day next week when we celebrate it on Sunday.  It is one of those Feast Days that is important enough that the Church assigns to it an Octave, which means we have eight days to remember the feast day at Mass AND that there will always be a Sunday (or two) that falls in those eight days!

So these major Feast Days also have what is known as a Evening Prayer 1 or Vespers 1 assigned to it, as well as special propers (readings and collect) for the Eve as well. 

This importance of the Feast spills over into the night before, and those in the Church over the centuries have struck up the fun in celebrating the night before, just as we often celebrate Christmas Day the night before!

One aspect of All Hallows Eve, All Saints Day, and the important day of All Souls Day on November 2nd, is that they are a great reminder that this life is meant to be lived for God, and that the only way we get to be with him is through the gate of death.

The logo above contains the phrase Momento Mori - Remember Death (particularly to remember YOUR death).  In this season we are admonished by the Church to remember that all the Saints, and All Souls, have died, and so too we will die.  And if we keep the uncertainty of life in front of us, and that we could die suddenly, then we should be reminded that we should be striving to live according to our Lord’s will and seeking to glorify him TODAY,  not putting it off until later.