Shrove Tuesday, Ash Weds and Lent - Rector's Rambling for February 19, 2023

         This week we dive right into our season of penance, fasting, and almsgiving beginning with Ash Wednesday.  We will offer three opportunities to worship together and receive ashes as an outward sing of our mortality and need for penitence - 12:15 Holy Communion, 4:00 Evening Prayer and 6:0 Holy Communion.

             In 1995 Ann Marie Shuster, the rector’s secretary at the parish where I served as curate (newly ordained assistant) put together the wonderful brochure   The Observance of an Holy Lent.  There is a copy of this enclosed in the Order of Service today.  Please take it and ‘read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest it’ as a guide for the next 7 weeks.  Let us make an extraordinary effort this year to not only ‘give something up for Lent’ (the most commonly known of the Lenten disciplines) but also to be regular about prayer, receiving Holy Communion, fasting, and the rest.  This will not only be beneficial to your spiritual growth, but also to help us corporately as a church to grow in grace and membership.

        But  before we start the fasting, we have a day of feasting together with our Shrove Tuesday Pancake Dinner and Trivia Night. Dinner starts at 6:00 and will be served until about 7, with the trivia game starting about 6:45.  This is a fun time for all ages.

        We continue to pray for our society and especially this past week for the students at Michigan State University, their families, and all of us as concerned citizens in the wake of the shooting on campus.  Once again evil has reared his ugly head and someone hellbent on disobeying the moral and civil law injured and killed people who were going on with their daily lives. Pure evil.

        Every other week in Lent we pray in the litany to be protected “from all evil and mischief; from sin,  from the crafts and assaults of the devil” as well as to be protected “from the deceits of the world, the flesh, and the devil”.  May God help us in this time of grief and sorrow, and help us to recognize and name evil and sin so we can battle against it.