Quinquagesima - Rector's Rambling for February 27, 2022

    
Today is our last Sunday of the pre-Lenten season, and on Wednesday we jump right into the thick of our Lenten Season.

             On Wednesday we will have three opportunities for you to start Lent off with an outward sign of your mortality and penitence.  At the Holy Communion Service at 12:15 and 6 PM, or at Evening Prayer at 5 PM, we will be praying the Penitential Office found on page 60 in the Book of Common Prayer, and you will have the opportunity to receive the imposition of Ashes.  The ashes are from burned palms from previous years.

As the ashes are placed on your forehead the priest says, “remember O man that thou art dust, and unto dust shalt thou return”.  It is a most solemn reminder that we will in fact die, and what we do here on earth has eternal consequences.  Left to our own devices we are fallen as a result of original sin and the actual sins we commit.  Unrepented of, we merit eternal separation from God.

But thanks be to God for His Mercy and forgiveness through the Blood of Jesus Christ.  Even though our mortal bodies will decay and return to dust, we will live eternally with God through the forgiveness and propitiation accomplished on the Cross!

Be sure to start Lent right!

———————————————

The picture above was published in the Detroit Free Press several years ago.  In it is a multi-chinned Fr. Kelly with then college student Dr. Leia Zorome.  Her son Rahim will be baptised today after the 10 AM Service, God willing!