Holy Week - Rector's Rambling for March 29, 2026

     This is the most important week of the year!  Holy Week begins today, and between now and next Sunday you will have 14 opportunities to be at St. John’s for the public worship of the Church.

Three of those worship opportunities actually happen most weeks of the year here at St. John’s: Holy Communion on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday at 12:15 PM and Evening Prayer will be prayed in the Ministry Center Monday through Thursday.

For Holy Week we add several important opportunities for worship and devotion.  On Wednesday evening we have a service of psalms and lessons at 7:00 PM called Tenebræ.  On Maundy Thursday the one celebration of the Holy Communion will be at 7:00 PM (no 10:30 AM Mass this day), which is followed by the stripping of the altar and an opportunity to spend time at the Garden Watch in the chapel.

Good Friday starts with the opportunity to spend time at the Garden Watch (beginning at 9:00 AM) before the Good Friday Liturgy, which takes place from Noon to 3:00 PM.

On Holy Saturday [Easter Eve] the great Vigil Service of Easter begins at 6:00 PM, which includes the first Communion service of the Easter Feast, and on Sunday we will have the grand celebration of the Resurrection at 8:00 AM and 10:00 AM (Brass Prelude at 9:30 AM).

Information about these various services can be found in the insert in today’s Order of Service called Holy Week Explained.

More importantly, I cannot stress more strongly that we need you to attend these services!  This is the most important week of the year, and I would love to see a larger percentage of parishioners avail themselves of one or more of these services that lead up to Easter Day.

I understand that we are a busy people, and that many of us live very far away from the church facility.  But it is important for your spiritual life to participate in this holiest of weeks, and your presence will also be an encouragement to those others who have taken time and distance to be here, especially our visitors.

God willing, see you in Church!

 

Veiling for Passiontide - Rector's Rambling for March 22, 2026

       As you may have noticed, the crosses on the altars and around the church are now veiled.  Although most Episcopal churches follow the modern Roman Catholic form for veiling the crosses on all the Sundays of Lent, we keep to the old tradition of doing so from Passion Sunday onwards.  Dr. Taylor Marshall, a former Episcopal priest writes on his blog Canterbury Tales,

“In the old days, Passion Sunday (5th Sunday) ‘ramped up’ the Lenten season.  Passion Sunday (also called Judica Sunday from the opening Introit) is the traditional day for veiling the crucifixes and statues in the churches.  The practice allegedly derives from Bavaria (though I’d love for someone more knowledgeable to shed light on the origin of this custom).  The crosses and images remain veiled and add to the dramatic effect of the Paschal Vigil when they are unveiled for the glory and wonder of our Lord’s resurrection.  The famous medieval triptychs that opened and closed were constructed for the purpose of closing them for this season.”

Additionally, starting today we no longer use the “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and Holy Ghost, as it was in the beginning, is now and every shall be, world without end.” to the end of psalms and canticles, as well as the opening of Morning and Evening Prayer.    Removing this Doxology is another liturgical reminder that we are another step closer to Good Friday, and then Easter Day!

Wednesday, March 25, is the Feast of the Annunciation.  That day marks nine months until the celebration of the birth of Jesus, so that day the Church remembers the day that the Archangel Gabriel announced to Mary that she would conceive and bear a son by the Holy Ghost.  This can be found in St. Luke’s Gospel, Chapter 1, verses 26 to 38.

We will celebrate this Feast within our Lenten Fast on Wednesday, March 25, at the 12:15 Holy Communion Service.

 

Laetare! And Covid shutdown anniversary - Rector's Rambling for March 15, 2026

     Today we take the opportunity to ‘lighten up’ a bit with the celebration of Laetare Sunday, also known as Rose Sunday because of the rose colored vestments used at today’s Masses. After six weeks of the heavy purple of the three pre-Lenten gesimas and first three Sundays in Lent, we get to lighten up just a bit before going headlong into the much deeper next two weeks of Passiontide and Holy Week!

To help with lightening things up, we will be having a Corned Beef luncheon downstairs following the 10 AM Service.  I hope you can join us!

Recently a friend noted on social media that he was having the “Lentiest of Lents" he could possibly be having.  I immediately thought back to the last time I heard someone say that!  It was this week, six years ago, that the Covid Shutdowns began!  As I wrote in the Chronicle for that Sunday in 2020 (which was only published online for people to see since we couldn’t actually be here in Church)

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“On Tuesday, March 17, (2020) the bishops of the four Episcopal Church dioceses in Michigan issued a Pastoral Directive, stating,

In addition to continuing to forgo all public, in-person worship services, we direct you to cease all other Sunday, Saturday and weekday in-person gatherings, including weddings, funerals, memorial services, bible studies, prayer meetings, and non-emergency baptisms, and place all of the groups that gather at your congregation on hiatus for the CDC’s recommended eight weeks, or until May 10th, including both Holy Week and Easter.”

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Those eight weeks of mandated shutdown were extended into over fifteen weeks as we went from trying to slow the spread to trying to stop the spread.  Reopening happened July 1 with all sorts of restrictions over the next year.  St. John’s was the only parish of the diocese in the city of Detroit to open for an entire year, and did so without a single outbreak in the parish.

In some ways is seems like ages ago, and other times the pain of it quite fresh.  Some parishioners never returned from the shut down, and the addition of regular livestreaming and the morning meditations allowed for others to join us electronically.  Just last week I got an email from another person in England thanking us for our YouTube channel.

I am so grateful for the faithfulness of this parish, for the many people who wanted to get back to worship, to being with each other, and to receive The Blessed Sacrament.  May we never find ourselves in this situation again!.