March 16, The Second Sunday of Lent
Wednesday, March 12, 2014 at 10:39AM Opportunities for Lent
From the poem from Anglican priest Robert Herrick last week, we can see that Lent is not just about giving up, but also taking on. There are a couple of things to consider for observing Lent this year.
Church of the Angels Choir
Our Choir Leader Jim Stanley is looking for people to come and sing in the Choir for Lent and Easter. The choir meets for rehearsal at 9:00 a.m. on Sunday mornings and there will some other rehearsals scheduled for the different services for Holy Week and Easter. The Choir of Church of the Angles is all volunteer. Jim is wonderful teacher and you can learn that you can sing better than you think, and you’ll grow in your ability as well. You’ll also experience some wonderful music appropriate for the season. You’ll also be helping out your fellow parishioners. Speak to Jim after Church.
Daily Scripture Readings and Daily Office West
Both the Large Print Bulletin and the insert in the Small Print Bulletin have the Daily Scripture readings for each day of the week as assigned by the Book of Common Prayer. If you’ve never done a daily practice of Scripture reading and reflection, this is a good time to try it out. It takes about 10 minutes all told.
You can also access Daily Morning and Evening Prayer on your Smart Phone or IPad or computer by going to dailyoffice.org Articles about doing this were in By Way of Reminder over the last couple of weeks. You might want to give this a try.
Episcopal Relief and Development, Episcopal Federal Credit Union
During Lent we bring before us the work of both Episcopal Relief and Development, which is an outreach of the national Episcopal Church, and the Episcopal Federal Credit Union which is an outreach of the Diocese of Los Angeles. There are opportunities to participate in both of these either by making donations to ERD and/or signing up for an account at the Credit Union. There is material on both things on the table outside Church. ERD also has a booklet of meditations for Lent. Please pick these up on Sunday.
Chitra Rao to Lead a New Class:
Sundays between Ash Wednesday and Holy Thursday at 9am in the Parish Hall
Everyone is welcome to attend
We have now left ordinary time and are on our journey through the season of Lent. The journey is an invitation to reflect on what it means to be in community with one another and with God. In asking the deeper question: "what is God asking of me at this time in my life?," we are responding to the invitation to step out of our daily patterns to take time to listen to the “still small voice” (I Kings 19:11-13) On the Sundays between Ash Wednesday and Holy Thursday at 9am in the Parish Hall you are invited as a community to a time of intentional reflection on sacred texts (Lectio Divina). We will listen to the text. We will respond and react through conversation and creative expression. Finally, in response to that which we have received we will practice sitting in silent meditation.
O Lord, our Lord, you have created us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.
The prayer of St. Augustine
Emmaus Road Monday Evenings 7:00 p.m. Parish Hall Living Room
Emmaus Road begins a new book: Iscariot by Tosca Lee. This is a novel portraying the life of Judas Iscariot. A novelist’s take on this mysterious figure in the Gospels should be interesting and give us a lot to think about. The book is available from Amazon. Everyone is welcome to participate. For Monday March 10 we will read to page 215. It is a quick read
Altar Guild Meeting
The Altar Guild will meet Saturday, March 22, 9:00 a.m. in the Parish Hall to finalize plans for Holy Week and Easter. We’d love to have the help of parishioners who are not on the Altar Guild to assist with these tasks. Please talk to Pam Irwin or Fr. Bob
Hands of the Angels March 22,
The Hands of the Angels Knitting group meets on the 2nd and 4th Saturdays 10:00 a.m. in the Parish Hall Living Room. Everyone is welcome to join and if you’d like, learn how to knit. The next meeting will be Saturday March 22, 10:00 a.m. Parish Hall Living Room
Music with the Angels March 30, 3 p.m. - Stravinsky’s A Soldier’s Tale: by the Metric Ensemble, led by George Ramirez. Stravinsky’s evocative music underlines this cautionary (and so appropriate for Lent) tale of temptation and greed. This un-staged production features actors in the roles of Narrator, the Devil and the Soldier.
Holy Week Heads Up
Our path through Lent will take us to center of our Christian faith which are the events of Holy Week. Holy Week falls between Palm Sunday on April 13 through Easter Sunday April 20. In Holy Week we move through The Paschal Mystery, which means the death and resurrection of Jesus.
Holy Week is bracketed with the Jesus’ Passion and Death which is recounted on Palm Sunday and this year the account will be from the Gospel of St. Matthew, and Jesus’ Resurrection on Easter Day. So in sense way a person can experience both events without changing their normal routine of Sunday Church attendance.
However, like everything else of value in our life, the more you participate the richer the experience, and the more you give yourself to something, the more you receive. To attend Palm Sunday and Easter Day is a very good thing, yet in doing only that, we observe the Paschal Mystery as though from the outside.
Participating in more of the events within Holy Week itself, we go from being passive spectators to active participants and our faith and life in Christ is deepened significantly. We grow in understanding of the mystery, what one of our hymns asks, “What wondrous love is this?”
So to be able to do this, what you might consider doing is put these things on your calendar now the same way we all schedule appointments and events. Then as Lent proceeds we can say about these dates the same thing we do about other things, if asked to give time, “I’ve got a previous commitment.”
So give this some thought. Write it on your calendar. Come and participate to the degree you’re able. It is well worth your time.
Here is the schedule in miniature:
April 13; Palm Sunday: Liturgy of Palms, Passion according to St. Matthew, Holy Eucharist 7:45 & 10:15 a.m.
April 14, 15, 16: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday in Holy Week,: Reflective Dinners:
6:00 p.m. Parish Hall
April 17 Maundy Thursday: 7:00 p.m. Foot washing, Holy Eucharist, Stripping of the Altar
April 18: Good Friday: 12:00-1:30 p.m. Good Friday Liturgy, Passion according to St. John, Mass of Pre-Sanctified
April 19: Holy Saturday: Preparation for Easter, Prepare Church and Parish Hall, Prepare for Easter Breakfast and Easter Egg Hunt
April 20: Easter Day; 5:15 a.m. Great Vigil of Easter, followed by Easter Egg Hunt and Parish Breakfast. 10:15 a.m. Holy Eucharist
Food For Thought
In Lent we both say and hear that: the remembrance of them is grievous unto us, the burden of them is intolerable.
Well what exactly are those grievous and intolerable things? This weekend two Food for Thought articles help us explore these.
1. From the current issue of The New York Review of Books, The Secret Life of W.H. Auden. No, it’s not his sexuality, but rather hidden acts of charity and his reflections on the common but often unacknowledged truth that the evil we so readily see in others is also present in ourselves.
2. From the current issue of The New Republic, We Regret to Inform You… That You’re Regretting Wrong. This article explores the difference between regret which we experience when we’ve done things that hurt ourselves and remorse which we experience when we’ve done things to hurt others. These get confused in our minds.