Shrove Tuesday
February 21, 2012
6.30 PM Gathering of the Cooks
7.00 PM Evening Prayer
7.30 PM The Mardi Gras Festivities Commence: The Crowning of the Queen, the Pancake Fanfare and Procession; the Eating; the Jokes; the Last Bite before Lent; the Forgiveness
Ash Wednesday Services
February 22, 2012
7.00 AM—The Penitential Office, Imposition of Ashes and Holy Communion from the Reserved Sacrament
10.00 AM—Morning Prayer and the Imposition of Ashes
12.00 PM—The Penitential Office, Sermon and Imposition of Ashes
7.00 PM—Evening Prayer, the Penitential Office and Mass
Fr Wilcox will be available to hear Confessions from 7.30 AM until 12.00 PM and from 5.00 PM until 6.45,
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Anemic Fasts and Tasteless Feasts
I’m in a parish of cooks. Like Katherine Keenan and Sylvia Muff and Deacon McKenzie and Judith Vallejo: people who know how to create rich sauces and sizzle savory meats, who know what it means to dice an onion to bring out its possibilities and use real butter in their pans. I’m in a parish of people who know what it means to be hospitable: not merely to entertain, but how to open their homes and make you feel an honored and special guest, who host a lavish feast like the Mackies or an intimate evening like the Boyers. I count myself makarios—most happy and blessed—in these things.
Real cooking and real hospitality, alas! like good conversation and music, are vanishing arts. We’re being trained to settle for much less: haute cuisine from a steam bag, diners without candlelight, talk about television (or worse—computer advice), synthetic music from a boom box. We’re being re-trained how to live—all with the best intentions, I’m sure, but at what cost?
God made us to rejoice in His Creation, to drink deeply of its delights: to watch a sunrise from the first hints of rose in the night’s darkest blackness to its blinding glory as it floods the horizon with gold; to nurture the year’s first daffodil to blossom; to admire the arch of the deer’s perfect leap over the fenceline.
Hilaire Belloc, the poet, sometime theologian and occasional politician, wrote:
“Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine
There’s always laughter and good red wine
At least I have always found it so
Benedicamus Domino!”
We rush through busy lives, but somehow a lot of us have misplaced the meaning of what we're doing.
Popular Protestantism wants to tell us life isn’t about anything so narrow as “religion,” but our Catholic Faith teaches us that “religion” is what life IS about! It’s just that our Protestant friends have too constipated an idea of what “religion” is. It is about laughter and sunshine and good red wine. It’s about how to live and die squeezing every drop of joy from the whole affair.
We’re losing our grip on the rich texture of life, settling for banalities: we’re reducing poetry to text messages. We’ve forgotten how to Feast and how to Fast, and we’re less for these losses.
Lent is coming. The Great Fast which a whole lot of Christians will observe by giving up chocolate for 40 days (it’s okay—the Chocolate Companies will already have banked their Valentine’s Day profits). This is fasting for children.
How about giving up enough food (if your doctor allows—mine would be shocked into amazed acquiescence) so your stomach growls at you for the first 20 days of the Fast? How about turning off the TV for all but the news and weather? How about reading one of the Gospels for 40 days (I have a little pamphlet to help you do just that)? How about fasting from criticizing behind their back your favorite verbal target? Make this a Fast to remember.
And then, when it’s over, when the Alleluia is resurrected along with the Son of God, make Easter a Feast you’ll never forget.
If we’ve forgotten how to Fast, Feasting is even more of a lost art. Our fasts have become anemic and our feasts tasteless. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Our Fast should be rugged and our Feast robust. When they’re over, we should have fasted and feasted so we’ll remember.
Lent is coming. Get ready.—Fr Gregory Wilcox
Real cooking and real hospitality, alas! like good conversation and music, are vanishing arts. We’re being trained to settle for much less: haute cuisine from a steam bag, diners without candlelight, talk about television (or worse—computer advice), synthetic music from a boom box. We’re being re-trained how to live—all with the best intentions, I’m sure, but at what cost?
God made us to rejoice in His Creation, to drink deeply of its delights: to watch a sunrise from the first hints of rose in the night’s darkest blackness to its blinding glory as it floods the horizon with gold; to nurture the year’s first daffodil to blossom; to admire the arch of the deer’s perfect leap over the fenceline.
Hilaire Belloc, the poet, sometime theologian and occasional politician, wrote:
“Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine
There’s always laughter and good red wine
At least I have always found it so
Benedicamus Domino!”
We rush through busy lives, but somehow a lot of us have misplaced the meaning of what we're doing.
Popular Protestantism wants to tell us life isn’t about anything so narrow as “religion,” but our Catholic Faith teaches us that “religion” is what life IS about! It’s just that our Protestant friends have too constipated an idea of what “religion” is. It is about laughter and sunshine and good red wine. It’s about how to live and die squeezing every drop of joy from the whole affair.
We’re losing our grip on the rich texture of life, settling for banalities: we’re reducing poetry to text messages. We’ve forgotten how to Feast and how to Fast, and we’re less for these losses.
Lent is coming. The Great Fast which a whole lot of Christians will observe by giving up chocolate for 40 days (it’s okay—the Chocolate Companies will already have banked their Valentine’s Day profits). This is fasting for children.
How about giving up enough food (if your doctor allows—mine would be shocked into amazed acquiescence) so your stomach growls at you for the first 20 days of the Fast? How about turning off the TV for all but the news and weather? How about reading one of the Gospels for 40 days (I have a little pamphlet to help you do just that)? How about fasting from criticizing behind their back your favorite verbal target? Make this a Fast to remember.
And then, when it’s over, when the Alleluia is resurrected along with the Son of God, make Easter a Feast you’ll never forget.
If we’ve forgotten how to Fast, Feasting is even more of a lost art. Our fasts have become anemic and our feasts tasteless. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Our Fast should be rugged and our Feast robust. When they’re over, we should have fasted and feasted so we’ll remember.
Lent is coming. Get ready.—Fr Gregory Wilcox
Saturday, February 4, 2012
The Seeds of Lent
The Church sets aside a period of weeks, commonly called Pre-Lent, the “gesima” Sundays, which we begin tomorrow with Septuagesima. Two-and-a-half weeks for us to prepare for the Great Forty-Day Fast of Lent. She gives us this time to plan our Lenten exercises so we can keep a holy and vigorous Lent. Her intention is simple—she calls us to be a little less sinful, a little more holy after Lent than we were before. She asks us to plan the ensuing Forty Days and Forty Nights, so we don’t jut endure Lent but profit by it and grow through it.
She provides us with three tools to help us do that: Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving. There are many ways to “keep” Lent, but any profitable observance of the season requires us to use these three inestimable tools of spiritual growth.
Prayer—Morning and Evening Prayer, Compline, the recitation of Psalms, the Litany, and the Church’s greatest Prayer, the Mass—these “public” prayers of the Church must form a part of our Lenten observance. But public prayer is only half of the Christian’s prayer. Personal prayers, drawn from a manual such as St Augustine’s Prayer Book or The Practice of Religion, to name two American Anglican classics, “conversational” prayer, meditation, sacred reading, these too, are essential to a healthy and lively spiritual life. St John of Damascus, writing 1300 years ago, defined prayer as “the lifting of the heart and mind to God.” Our Lenten plan must include regular times personal prayer. The Book of Common Prayer has a collect recited every day of Lent during the Church’s public worship. It’s found on page 124 of the Prayer Book. You might consider adding it to your daily prayers during Lent.
Fasting and abstinence are integral to our Lenten devotions. We are composite creatures, having souls and bodies. That makes us sacramental beings. Our outward, visible self acts in conjunction with our inward, spiritual nature. What we do with our bodies impacts our souls; the inner life of our souls affects the bodies God has given us. To discipline our bodies with fasting is to train our souls for eternity.
The Church Year has times of feasting and fasting. Both are necessary. We need parties and fun and laughter, times to rejoice in God’s many gifts and wonders. But equally do we need times of quiet reflection and focused discipline. A plan of fasting and abstinence through Lent enables us to truly enter into the joys of Easter.
Almsgiving, the giving away of our money to benefit others, is a powerful ally during Lent (and any other time, for that matter). St Augustine calls almsgiving “the second wing, together with prayer, that allows our souls to fly to God.” Money is a gauge of what we think is important: the Lord Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Money tells of power, prestige and position. St Thomas says there’s nothing wrong with any of those things, but he warns there’s nothing right about them either. Our characters are shown by how we use our money and power and prestige.
Almsgiving isn’t the same as giving money to upkeep the church or to support her work. Those are tithes and offerings. Almsgiving is giving to those in need, giving away something of our treasure to benefit another. Almsgiving is good, anonymous almsgiving is better. The Lord said, “Let not your right hand know what your left is doing.” Almsgiving allows us to participate in the charity of God. He gives freely and continuously, out of love, to benefit us—who are often unaware of His gifts and sometimes ungrateful for them. To give alms is to do something which benefits another without considering any benefit to ourselves. That kind of love is reflective of God’s love.
Lent is a time for spiritual growth, for deepening our relationship with God. For most of us, spiritual growth means struggling with sin. It means uncovering the temptations I’m most susceptible to. Each of us has what writers on the spiritual life call “besetting sins”—our favorite sins, the ones we commit most often. During these days of preparation for Lent, we need to plan our Lent to address our sins. Think of a farmer planning his year. He wants to grow certain crops in certain fields in certain seasons. He knows the harvest he hopes for, and to get it he prepares the field beforehand, aware of the dangers to his crop from insects and pests, drought and flood, cold weather and hot. He makes sure all his tools and equipment are in working order, that he has the right seed, the proper plan for irrigation, the workers on hand to do the job. All this before a seed is sown.
What do you hope for from Lent? Lose a few pounds? See whether you can go without chocolate or brussel sprouts for forty days? Give up the evening news? Nothing wrong with any of those things, but, as St Thomas says, nothing right about them, either. Lent is a time for sowing the seeds of your eternal life. What sort of harvest are you expecting? You will reap what you sow.—Fr Gregory Wilcox
She provides us with three tools to help us do that: Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving. There are many ways to “keep” Lent, but any profitable observance of the season requires us to use these three inestimable tools of spiritual growth.
Prayer—Morning and Evening Prayer, Compline, the recitation of Psalms, the Litany, and the Church’s greatest Prayer, the Mass—these “public” prayers of the Church must form a part of our Lenten observance. But public prayer is only half of the Christian’s prayer. Personal prayers, drawn from a manual such as St Augustine’s Prayer Book or The Practice of Religion, to name two American Anglican classics, “conversational” prayer, meditation, sacred reading, these too, are essential to a healthy and lively spiritual life. St John of Damascus, writing 1300 years ago, defined prayer as “the lifting of the heart and mind to God.” Our Lenten plan must include regular times personal prayer. The Book of Common Prayer has a collect recited every day of Lent during the Church’s public worship. It’s found on page 124 of the Prayer Book. You might consider adding it to your daily prayers during Lent.
Fasting and abstinence are integral to our Lenten devotions. We are composite creatures, having souls and bodies. That makes us sacramental beings. Our outward, visible self acts in conjunction with our inward, spiritual nature. What we do with our bodies impacts our souls; the inner life of our souls affects the bodies God has given us. To discipline our bodies with fasting is to train our souls for eternity.
The Church Year has times of feasting and fasting. Both are necessary. We need parties and fun and laughter, times to rejoice in God’s many gifts and wonders. But equally do we need times of quiet reflection and focused discipline. A plan of fasting and abstinence through Lent enables us to truly enter into the joys of Easter.
Almsgiving, the giving away of our money to benefit others, is a powerful ally during Lent (and any other time, for that matter). St Augustine calls almsgiving “the second wing, together with prayer, that allows our souls to fly to God.” Money is a gauge of what we think is important: the Lord Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Money tells of power, prestige and position. St Thomas says there’s nothing wrong with any of those things, but he warns there’s nothing right about them either. Our characters are shown by how we use our money and power and prestige.
Almsgiving isn’t the same as giving money to upkeep the church or to support her work. Those are tithes and offerings. Almsgiving is giving to those in need, giving away something of our treasure to benefit another. Almsgiving is good, anonymous almsgiving is better. The Lord said, “Let not your right hand know what your left is doing.” Almsgiving allows us to participate in the charity of God. He gives freely and continuously, out of love, to benefit us—who are often unaware of His gifts and sometimes ungrateful for them. To give alms is to do something which benefits another without considering any benefit to ourselves. That kind of love is reflective of God’s love.
Lent is a time for spiritual growth, for deepening our relationship with God. For most of us, spiritual growth means struggling with sin. It means uncovering the temptations I’m most susceptible to. Each of us has what writers on the spiritual life call “besetting sins”—our favorite sins, the ones we commit most often. During these days of preparation for Lent, we need to plan our Lent to address our sins. Think of a farmer planning his year. He wants to grow certain crops in certain fields in certain seasons. He knows the harvest he hopes for, and to get it he prepares the field beforehand, aware of the dangers to his crop from insects and pests, drought and flood, cold weather and hot. He makes sure all his tools and equipment are in working order, that he has the right seed, the proper plan for irrigation, the workers on hand to do the job. All this before a seed is sown.
What do you hope for from Lent? Lose a few pounds? See whether you can go without chocolate or brussel sprouts for forty days? Give up the evening news? Nothing wrong with any of those things, but, as St Thomas says, nothing right about them, either. Lent is a time for sowing the seeds of your eternal life. What sort of harvest are you expecting? You will reap what you sow.—Fr Gregory Wilcox
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