7:00pm | Ash Wednesday Service
Eucharist & Imposition of Ashes
12 Noon | Friendship Circle
10:00am | Bible Study
9:00am | Choir Rehearsal
12:30pm | AGM
The annual meeting of the parishioners of the Parish of St. John’s Cathedral will be held in the John West Hall. All members are entitled to attend and to vote.
This is the month we collect baby items for the Thelma Wynne Project which operates out of St. Matthews Church. Volunteers create bundles from all the donated items the project receives and distribute’s these to needy moms. A basket will be set up in the Nave for the next three weeks. Your contributions will be greatly appreciated. Many thanks from the Friendship Circle.
“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” Matthew 17.5
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Journey together with Christ to the cross where our sin is put to death, and to the empty tomb,
where we are given new life in the risen Christ.
Lent is from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning “springtime” and so is to be understood as the holy springtime of the soul, a time for preparation, planting, and growth. Like the father of the prodigal son (this story is one of the Lenten gospel readings, next year), God the Father invites us to return home. Lent is a time for self-examination and repentance, but repentance always understood in its most graceful sense: a turning away from death, and death-dealing habits and lifestyles, and a turning toward life, the abundant life given in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Lent is the holy springtime of the soul, a time for preparation, planting, and growth.
From a very early time in the history of the church of Christ, Lent was a time set aside for those people preparing for baptism (and originally they were almost all adults) to undergo instruction in the mysteries of the faith. They were then baptized at the Great Vigil of Easter, the first service of Easter, after sunset on Holy Saturday – in the Jewish worldview the new day begins at sunset, and so for the earliest Christians, all of them Jewish, Easter actually began on Saturday night.
The season of Lent is a period of time set aside to help all Christians prepare to remember and celebrate the death and resurrection of our Lord. Lent prepares us for the great events of Easter, the centre of our faith. Lent is not so much a chunk of the calendar as it is an opportunity for pilgrimage, for all of us who are baptized into Christ to remember that baptism and examine closely its relationship to our lives, to journey together with Christ to the cross where our sin is put to death, and to the empty tomb, where we are given new life in the risen Christ.
Signposts on the journey include the disappearance of the Alleluia and the Gloria, to remind us of the solemnity of the season. Traditionally, flowers are not included in worship spaces for the same reason. The colour of the season is violet or purple, for repentance. The season is 40 days long (excluding Sundays), even as Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness preparing for his ministry, and the people of Israel wandered 40 years in the wilderness, preparing to enter the Promised Land.
Lent is a time for self-examination and repentance, but repentance always understood in its most graceful sense: a turning away from death and a turning toward the abundant life given in Jesus Christ our Lord.
In the Hebrew Scriptures, what we call the Old Testament, ashes are used over and over again as a sign of humility and repentance. People know that they have sinned before God and so they mark themselves with ashes. Ashes, in a Jewish and Christian context, suggest judgement and God’s condemnation of sin.
When we hear the words from Genesis 3, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” we are reminded forcefully of our mortality and the words of the committal in the burial service, “…earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” One day those words will be said over us; that doesn’t need to be morbid, but it is a powerful reminder that we are not God, and so Lent is time to give up our idolatry, even, maybe especially, of ourselves.
Clear away the clutter of the past and in doing so, enrich the ground for a new future.
Ashes were once used as a cleansing agent in the absence of soap, and so they remind us that we need to be cleansed of our sin, as indeed we are in baptism. A further example of death and renewal is the custom of burning fields so as to destroy the old and prepare the new, to clear away the clutter of the past and in doing so to enrich the ground for a new future.
The cross of ashes reminds us vividly that in baptism we were signed with the cross of Christ, forever. We belong to Christ.
Baptism is a primary emphasis of Lent and ashes have sometimes been understood as penitential substitute for water as a sign of baptism; as water both stifles and refreshes, drowns and makes alive, so the ashes also tell of both death and renewal. Perhaps more importantly, the cross of ashes reminds us vividly that in baptism we were signed with the cross of Christ, forever, and that we always bear that sign on our brows. We belong to Christ, and so there is joy for the journey, not just of Lent, but of life.
Connecting with and supporting those in our churches who have someone on the ‘inside’ and encouraging those who visit people in remand or one of the correctional institutions.
St. Mark’s Lutheran Church
600 Cambridge Street (Cambridge & Corydon)
Winnipeg, MB
If you or a loved one is, or has been in prison, if you do prison ministry, or have an interest in visiting those inside Bishops Elaine Sauer and Don Phillips welcome you to participate in this free event.
Please RSVP by March 13th to:
Tom Collings 204-772-2892 or tomjulie at mts dot net
or Ken Kuhn 204-885-2821 or kenkuhn at mts dot net
On Sunday, February 12, 2012 both Anglicans and Lutherans alike took part in the Celebration of a New Ministry of The Very Reverend Paul N. Johnson as Incumbent of St. John’s Cathedral and the Dean of the Diocese of Rupert’s Land. Leaders of both communities, including Bishop Don Phillips, Bishop Elaine Sauer, ELCIC, and Archbishop and Metropolitan David Ashdown, were there for this special day in our churches’ history.
Today, the day that we celebrate love, it is important for us to remember what Christian Love not only looks like, but to remember that love should drive all that we do.
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast,* but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogantor rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly,*but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
No plans for Valentine’s Day?
Mary, from the North Point Douglas Womens’ Centre has invited the people of St. John’s to join them for their Perogy Dinner and Cake Auction Fundraiser on February 14, 2012.
6:30pm | Ministry of Property Management Meeting
7:00pm | Vestry Meeting
12 Noon | Friendship Circle
9:00am | Sewing of Choir Gowns
10:00am | Bible Study
9:00am | Choir Rehearsal
“A great prophet has arisen among us! God has visited his people!” Luke 7.16
for today’s readings, next Sunday’s readings and this week’s prayers,
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