Passiontide - Rector's Rambling for March 26, 2023

     Today we go yet another step deeper in our preparations for the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Back during the -gesima Sundays we switched to purple vestments and hangings and lost the “alleluia” in the liturgy.  When Lent arrived, the flowers disappeared (except for Lætáre Sunday last week) as did the white surplices on the servers and choir.

Now we go deeper with the beginning of Passiontide, as we veil the crosses in the church, and see the “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost” suppressed in our increasing Lenten fast.  And when we get to the Triduum (Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday) the liturgy gets even more stark on those days.

Why?  “Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi” is a statement that what we pray is what we believe (literally “the Law of Prayer is the Law of Belief).  Our corporate worship, particularly the Daily Offices of Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer, as well as the Holy Communion, helps us to express what we believe.  And yet in Lent we strip things back as a tangible reminder that soon we will be looking at the sublime reminder of the painful price Jesus Christ paid on the cross for our salvation.

During these two weeks I hope that we all will take the time to begin to meditate on what Jesus Christ did for us on the Cross.  Just as we do Stations of the Cross on Friday at noon, you can also read the various passion narratives in the four gospels and think deeply upon the offering Jesus made of himself.

Also, now is the time to make sure you have marked on your calendars the important worship on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Day, and to make sure nothing prevents you from joining us for worship on those days.

And you should also be inviting your friends and family to join us for Palm Sunday, Good Friday and Easter Services.  You may be the vehicle God will use to draw others closer to Him, and in an active relationship, just by your invitation to others to join us for worship!

 

Laetare and St. Patrick - Rector's Rambling for March 19, 2023

     Today is a day in which we ‘lighten up’ on the Liturgical calendar.  Yes, it is still Lent, but as you notice from the vestments and hangings, it is Rose Sunday, also known as  Lætáre Sunday, which is the latin for the opening words of the Introit at the beginning of the 10 AM Service.  Although it is still Lent, we lighten it up a bit by being reminded that in fact we Rejoice with Jerusalem for the gift of forgiveness.

And of course, we are also celebrating St. Patrick’s Day with a luncheon after the 10 AM Service in the Undercroft.  Be sure to come down and join us.

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The history of St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland who was born in the second half of the 4th century, is inevitably sketchy.  Even his year of birth is uncertain, with some scholars hitting on 373 while others calculate 390.  Similarly, the place where St. Patrick was born cannot be confirmed.  It may have been lowland Scotland, but is equally likely to have been Wales, which was under Roman control at the time.

His father, Calpornius, was a Roman-British army officer and a deacon.  Despite this family involvement in the church, the young Patrick was not a believer.  His life was ordinary, and completely unexceptional, until the age of 16.  The young lad was kidnapped, along with many others, by Irish pirates and sold into slavery in Ireland.  According to his autobiographical Confessio, which survives, the next six years were spent imprisoned in the north of the island and he worked as a herdsmen of sheep and pigs on Mount Slemish in Co. Antrim.

During this period, he became increasingly religious.  He considered his kidnapping and imprisonment as a punishment for his lack of faith and spent a lot of time in prayer.  After a vision led him to stow away on a boat bound for Britain, Patrick escaped back to his family.  There he had a dream that the Irish were calling him back to Ireland to tell them about God.  This inspired him to return to Ireland as a priest.  It was some 12 years before he returned to Irish shores as a bishop sent with the Pope’s blessing.

The next chapter of the history of St. Patrick is better known than his earlier life.  He landed at Strangford Loch, Co. Down.  Although he is often credited with having brought Christianity to Ireland, he was not the first to have done so.  An earlier mission had seen Palladius preach to the Irish.

The history of St. Patrick is littered with periods of imprisonment when his teachings had upset local chieftains or Celtic Druids, but he always escaped or gained freedom by presenting his captors with gifts.  For twenty years he travelled the length and breadth of the island, baptizing people, and establishing monasteries, schools, and churches as he went.

By the time he died, on 17 March 461 (or 493, depending on which date you started your calculation), he left behind an organised church, the see of Armagh, and an island of Christians.  This date – 17 March – has been commemorated as St. Patrick’s Day ever since. ~ Edited from www.Irish-Genealogy-Toolkit.com/history-of-st-patrick.html

 

Have a miserable Lent? - Rector's Rambling for March 12, 2023

     The sweatshirt pictured here makes me smile when it comes up each year on my Facebook memories.  It is funny to me because I think quite the opposite.  I want people to have a “happy” Lent, and in fact I have wished people just that.

It sounds like an oxymoron – “happy” and “Lent”, but if we remember that the word for happy comes from the same root word as “blessed”, then it certainly is the right greeting!

Lent is a great blessing, even if it is hard and time consuming.  It is supposed to be.  But even more so, it is an opportunity for us to be honest with ourselves about the state of our souls so that we can make inroads toward true blessedness.  True blessedness leads to holiness.  Lent is only miserable because sin doesn’t want us to let go of our habits, and also doesn’t like to be disciplined.  But knowing that it is good for us, and is making us better, can help us go into it and through it with a good attitude.

Today we have a guest preacher, Deacon Zachary Baker.  A graduate of Royal Oak Shrine High School and Oakland University, Zach attended the Virginia Theological Seminary and was ordained a deacon in January by Bishop Provenzano of the Diocese of Long Island.  God Willing Zach will be working within the Diocese of Long Island next month, and ordained a priest this summer.

In 2015 Zach did a short internship at St. John’s before his entering the ordination process, and I am most grateful that he persevered through it into seminary and now ordination.  Zach is our second intern to be ordained: Fr. Alex Quick did a sum
mer internship here in 2009 and now serves as a priest in the Diocese of Western Michigan.  And of course our own Cam Walker is currently half-way finished with his Masters in Divinity, and on ordination track in the Diocese of Long Island as well.                              (sweatshirt from © 2019 Teespring, Inc)

We are created to worship - Rector's rambling for March 5, 2023

“O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the LORD our maker” Psalm 95:6

 One of the things we are called to do, above all things, is to worship the Lord.  We are created to worship, and if we do not worship the Living God then we will worship something else, willingly or not. 

For many people, that worship is of the self, one’s own desires and urges.  In the Garden the great temptation by the evil one was that if they ate the fruit they would ‘be like God’.  Being like God on His terms is admirable, and cannot be achieved in disobedience to God’s commandments.  And one way our fallen nature acts out on this innate desire to worship is to misdirect that worship towards self. 

Other objects of worship include another human being, money, possessions, and power.  And sometimes the worship of excitement and thrill, or a desire to flee from pain, becomes a loss of freedom through addiction.

This Lenten season we are looking at sin because we need to realize the depth of our distortion from God’s created image in us, and our God-given desires twisted by that sin.  Once we have acknowledged that sin and whole-heartedly asked God for forgiveness, purposing to amend our lives and not sin again, then we can make a start toward the holiness that Our Lord desires for us.

One way we enter into the great mystery of God’s awesome power is to worship him in the beauty of holiness.  We must worship, and worship Him alone.  And when we give that focus and effort toward the worship of God, then we will find ourselves become loosed from the chains of sinful desires that bind us.  We begin to soar, spiritually, as we find ourselves elevated in heart and mind and we focus that time using the bodies his has given us to worship Him.

Beauty in building, vestment and sound (music), the use of other senses through things like incense, and the use of our body’s posture (stand, sit, kneel) all contributes to the glory of worship that is pointed toward God alone, as we “bow down, and kneel before the Lord our maker”