First Sunday in Lent

 

(Stations of the Cross at Prince of Peace Abbey, Oceanside, CA)

The Collect from the Book of Common Prayer 2011 for the First Sunday in Lent: 

THE COLLECT:

LORD Jesus, for our sake you fasted forty days and forty nights; Give us grace that in our abstinence, our bodies may be subject to the Spirit, and that we might obey your guidance in righteousness and true holiness for your honor and glory; Who lives and rules with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. (Sources: Matthew 4.1-2; Ephesians 4.24)

THE READINGS: 2 Corinthians 6.1-10; Matthew 4.1-11; Psalm 91; Genesis 2.15-17; 3:1-7. 

Lent has begun! Forty days of reading and studying God's Word, praying for ourselves and others, searching our hearts, fasting, and repenting. We met at Blessed Trinity on Wednesday to usher in these holy days. Father Sunil imposed ashes on our foreheads (the ashes are from burning the palm leaves from the previous year's Palm Sunday service) and pronounced the solemn words: "Remember, you are dust, and to dust you shall return." 

This prayer follows: LORD, grant that we may begin this campaign of our Christian warfare with holy fasting, so that, as we battle with apiritual wickedness, we may be defended by the aid of self-denial; Through Christ our Lord. Amen. 

This Lent, I am fasting from YouTube with the exception of Church Without Walls and worship services. 

Blessed Trinity Anglican Church is doing a daily Lenten Bible Study using Create in Me a Clean Heart: A Lenten Study of Psalm 51 by David Roseberry (2026), which is available on Amazon. 

Lent is amazing, and Holy Week is my favorite week of the entire year. Forget Christmas and all other holy days; Holy Week is the BEST!! I hope that we can do a Passover Seder during Holy Week this year, plus Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday Vigil services, leading up to Easter. 

Wishing you all a blessed Lenten season!

Soli Deo Gloria,

PALM SUNDAY!

 

Hosanna in the Highest! It's Palm Sunday!!

Revised and updated from the Archives...

I always enjoy Palm Sunday greatly as the opening of my favorite time of the liturgical year: Holy Week. During this week, I try to focus on Jesus' final teachings to His disciples, on His humility in washing the disciples' feet, on His institution of the Lord's Supper during Passover, on His agony in Gethsemane, on His trial before the authorities, on His suffering as He was beaten and scourged almost to the point of death, on the brutal mockery He endured for our sakes, upon the sorrow and passion of His crucifixion, and finally on the joy of His miraculous and glorious Resurrection. 

The fulfillment of the Old Testament Scriptures always strikes me strongly during this week -- so many details foretold hundreds of years before this final week of Jesus' earthly life come true in the New Testament Gospel accounts of this holy week, this last week of Jesus' human life.

In the 21st chapter of the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, we read first a quotation from the Old Testament:

This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet [Zechariah], saying,

Say to the daughter of Zion, "Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden" [Zechariah 9:9].

The disciples ... brought the donkey and the colt and put on them their cloaks, and He sat on them. Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. And the crowds that went before Him and that followed Him were shouting, "Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!" (Matthew 21:4-9, ESV).

By the way, the Book of Zechariah was written between 520-518 BC, more than half a millennium before Jesus's Incarnation.  

The Collect for the Sixth Sunday in Lent: Palm Sunday from The Book of Common Prayer 2011 reads:

ALMIGHTY and eternal Father, who in your tender love for humanity, sent your Son Jesus Christ as a man to dwell among us and in mortal flesh to suffer death upon the cross, so that all people might learn true humility; In your mercy, grant that we may follow him in his sufferings and share in his resurrection; Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and rules with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. (References: Philippians 2.4-8; 3.9-10; Hebrews 12.3)

In liturgical churches, the palms distributed in Palm Sunday's services are often bent and folded into crosses and then saved by being put behind icons or framed pictures of Jesus until the Sunday before the next Ash Wednesday when they are burned. The palm ashes are then used to anoint the foreheads of those attending the Ash Wednesday services as a new Lenten season begins. I love how the palms come full circle: the Holy Week from one year coming into the beginning of the next year's Lent. As Benedict states in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, "There's a double meaning in that." 

At Blessed Trinity Anglican Church, which meets on Sundays at Pepperwood Park in El Cajon, we have a Blessing of the Palms as well as a Passion Theater in which various congregants take the parts of narrator, Jesus, and Pilate as we read the drama of the crucifixion straight from the Gospels. The rest of the congregation will be The People ... the People who demand, over and over: "Crucify Him! Crucify Him!" mere days after welcoming Jesus with enthusiastic cries of "Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!"  

Side note: I looked up "Hosanna" to find its precise meaning. The best definition that I found came from John H. Stek on the site Bible Study Tools in which he defines "Hosanna" with the sentence: In Christ, "the age-old cry, 'Lord, save us,' has become the glad doxology, 'Hosanna,' which equals: 'Praise God and his Messiah, we are saved.'"

I wish a blessed Holy Week to you and yours, dear readers. May we all experience the sorrow of Christ's sacrificial death for us and the joy of His glorious Resurrection by which He saved all people, past, present, and future, from all of their sins, past, present, and future.

Following in His footsteps this Holy Week,

Passion Sunday and Passiontide

 

Updated from the Archives ...

Today is Passion Sunday, the Sunday before Palm Sunday. Most of us are familiar with Palm Sunday, but what is Passion Sunday? Well, it's the beginning of Passiontide.

But what is Passiontide? 

The season of Passiontide encompasses the last two weeks of Lent, from Passion Sunday, the fifth Sunday in Lent, to the end of Holy Saturday Vigil. The second week of Passiontide is better known as Holy Week, with which we are far more familiar than Passiontide. During this time, liturgical churches cover all crosses, crucifixes, and images of Christ and His Saints with an unornamented cloth of deep purple or black. 

In addition to the veiling of crosses and images, the Gloria Patri ("Glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever, now and always, Amen") is omitted from the liturgy, and fasting is intensified. The focus of prayer is on the sufferings of Christ: upon the humiliations He, the King of Kings, endured on our behalf. Passiontide reminds us of the humanity of Christ and the extreme physical as well as spiritual agony that He willingly endured as the consequences of every single sin committed by every single person who has ever lived in the past, is now living in the present, and will ever live in the future. This is the "cup" about which He prayed to the Lord, asking His Father if this suffering beyond measure could "pass by" Him, but Jesus concluded His prayer with these amazing words: "Not my will but Yours be done."

The Collect for Passion Sunday from the Book of Common Prayer 2011 reads:

ALMIGHTY God, your Son Jesus Christ appeared as a High Priest of the good things to come and entered once for all into the holy places, securing us an eternal redemption; Mercifully look upon your people, so that by your great goodness we may be governed and protected forever, in body and spirit, by the Blood of Christ; Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and rules with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen. (References: Hebrews 9.11-12; 1 Peter 2.9-10; 1 Thessalonians 5.23.)

May Christ's prayer as well as the Collect for this week resonate within all of us during Passiontide as we prepare our hearts for the sorrows and joys of Holy Week.

"Not my will but Yours be done."

In His grace,

Lent 2024

From multiple posts in the Archives....

Lent is a precious, precious time for me. In fact, I look forward to it with even more anticipation than Advent and Christmas.

Don't get me wrong: I adore Advent and Christmas: the family traditions, the Christmas carols (especially the carols!!), the snugness of the house as winter approaches, the scent of cinnamon and baking wafting from the kitchen, and the anticipation of unveiling the secrets wrapped under the tree.

But while Christmas is an amazing time of year, I admit that the excessive busyness and the hype get to me, robbing me of the joy I should be feeling in celebrating Christ's Incarnation ... which is why I look forward with such anticipation to Ash Wednesday, Lent, Holy Week, and Easter Sunday.

In Lent, little hype and full concentration allow us to focus on God at work in our lives during the Spiritual Spring Cleaning of Lent.

Several years ago I read an incredible post written by the wonderful Ann Voskamp at A Holy Experience (my favorite blog). She shared about the process of making Easter as meaningful in our lives as Christmas.

That's a convicting thought, isn't it?

If we invest all this effort, time, and money into celebrating the Incarnation at Christmas, how can we not invest at least the same time and effort, if not more, in celebrating the Resurrection?

Ann writes:

And Advent completes at Lent.

When Christ completes what He came to do.

She continues:

We call it the “spirit of Christmas,” the spirit of giving, and we try to contain it to holly and poinsettias, when it is holy and it is more. The spirit of Christmas is the spirit of Easter, the Love that so loved the world, that He gave.

And the words that sting my heart and motivate my soul:

The Incarnation of Christ was meant for the Crucifixion of Christ and we never incarnate Christ until we abdicate self.

And "abdicat[ing] self" is the whole meaning behind the practice of Lent.

And I think it's perhaps why Lent feels so precious to me. For in the abdication of self, we may gain the merest glimpse of His glory: the swirl of His cloak, His whisper in the wind, His hand on our shoulder as He nudges us onward toward His holiness.

And thus Lent is one way to join Christ on His journey to Calvary. It's a gift, really, to become one of the weeping women of His beloved city, the city He wept over while clad in bloody garments on His Way to the Cross, the women of Jerusalem whom He took the time to greet and to warn despite searing pain and the weight of the world on His shoulders, beaten raw, seeping blood.

"Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming...." (Luke 23:28-29, ESV)

Lent allows us to join Jesus on the Road to Calvary, sharing a minuscule bit of His pain as we follow in His footsteps, only imagining what He willingly bore for us: the agony, the betrayals, the sins of past, present, and future generations ... of all humanity. Even the mere visualization stabs my heart, much less the real experience of Christ's obedient suffering.


The following was composed years ago by myself and Pastor Stephen Sammons of Lake Murray Community Church regarding Ash Wednesday and Lent:

Irenaeus (125AD–195 AD), mentions the idea of spending some time fasting in preparation for Easter. This developed into the observance of Lent (Council of Nicea, 325 AD). Lent is the forty days (not including Sundays as they are always days of celebrating the Resurrection) preceding Easter. The forty days of Lent are used to parallel the forty days that Jesus spent in the wilderness, fasting and praying, before starting His earthly ministry. “Ash Wednesday” has been historically recognized as the day to initiate the period of fasting and repentance known as Lent. It's called "Ash Wednesday" because ashes were traditionally used to mark the foreheads or hands of those who attended church on that day.

In the Old Testament, ashes are a sign of humility and repentance of sin. Jesus mentions repenting in sackcloth and ashes in Matthew 11:21. A mark is a sign of ownership; in Ezekiel 9:4-6, a mark on the foreheads of the people provided protection to those who served God. Therefore, a mark of ashes was used to show repentance of our sins and complete ownership by God.

God calls us to do spiritual housecleaning every day. Our spiritual life is a day-by-day (in fact, moment-by-moment) walk with our Heavenly Father. However, this day can serve as a reminder of the need for us to take a spiritual inventory. We can take this occasion to come quietly and reverently before the Lord, offering our lives to Him to examine: Ask Him where He wants to work. Ask Him what He wants to change. Maybe there are some patterns of thinking and habits that we have fallen into that need reevaluated; maybe God is calling us to some new habits and a new manner of investing our precious time so it can reap eternal benefits.

If you would like to read more about Lent, click on the "On Lent" option under this blog's header. 

The life and writings of Saint John of the Cross have inspired me over the years, and here is one of my favorite quotations from his writings:

"The Lord measures our perfection neither by the multitude nor by the magnitude of our deeds, but by the manner in which we perform them."

~Saint John of the Cross

During this Lent, may we walk with Him as He stumbles forward, humanly weak but divinely strong, as "he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross" (Philippians 2:8, ESV).

And may we be so obedient in our Lenten disciplines, empowered by Christ and not ourselves as He molds us into His image, cutting away the sinful dross that accumulates all too easily in our lives.

Wishing you a holy Lent,

Halfway through Lent

This week marks the halfway point through this Lenten season, the 40 days (not counting Sundays which are always celebrations of the Resurrection) in which we focus on the life of Christ, culminating in the events of Holy Week: Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. 

In our Anglican tradition, we hold a Messianic Seder during Holy Week, usually on the Tuesday after Palm Sunday. We observe a non-kosher Passover with lessons on how Jesus celebrated the Last Supper with the disciples, including the Messianic significance of many of Christ's words and actions as read in the Gospels. 

This Lent I am reading Show Me the Way by Henri Nouwen, a collection of his readings designed for the 46 days of Lent (Sundays included), each of which begin with a Scripture verse, one or two short selections of Nouwen's writings that relate to that verse, and then concludes with a prayer written by Nouwen. I am filling up page after page in my commonplace book with quotations from this book; it's simply amazing!! It's also out-of-print, so I am using a library copy, but I will definitely invest in my own copy when I can; this one's definitely a keeper! 

From the "On Lent" page of this blog...

Lent, which comes from the Germanic word for “springtime,” can be viewed as a spiritual spring cleaning: a time for taking a spiritual inventory then cleaning out those things which hinder our relationship with Jesus Christ and our love and service with Him. Lent is really a time of revival in liturgical churches as God's people prepare to celebrate the Resurrection with depth and significance. Our Lenten disciplines are to ultimately transform our entire person: body, soul, and spirit and help us become more like Christ, not in our own power, but in His. Eastern Christians call this process theosis which Saint Athanasius describes as “becoming by grace what God is by nature.” 

For the first 300 years of the Church, the Resurrection was the only feast Christians celebrated. So spiritual preparation for this special Feast was and is very important, especially as the Resurrection Celebration was (and remains to this day in liturgical churches) a time to prepare Christians for baptism. During these first centuries of the Church, just a day or two of prayerful preparation for the Church as a whole was set aside; the full 40 days of Lent was not practiced until the early fourth century. The focus of Lent is spiritual renewal through the disciplines of fasting and prayer, study and giving. 

Fasting – Fasting can be not only from certain foods but also from activities that may distract us from our relationship with Christ, including television, computers, video games, etc. The time spent on these activities should be turned into time with God: in prayer, in His Word, in reading spiritual books, in fellowship, prayer, and study with other believers. Lent represents a time of spiritual training that can aid us, with Christ's help, “to overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21). In Lent, we are able to learn, examine, and get under control our material excesses that can lead us away from God. Remember, Lent is not a diet; Lent is about spiritual results, not material ones. While losing a few pounds may be a nice side benefit, all fasting should be done for the glory of God and spiritual growth. 

Prayer – Lent is an excellent time to develop or strengthen a discipline of daily prayer. Focus not only on intercession but on the ACTS model of Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. I like praying through the Book of Psalms during Lent, praying two in the morning and two at night (and using Psalm 119 as a whole day's worth). I also like praying through the Gospel of John during Lent – not just reading it but truly, truly praying it and about it. 

Scripture Reading – When facing temptation in the desert (the basis for the 40 days of Lent), Jesus relied on Scripture to counter the wiles of the devil. As we well know, God's Word is also a formidable weapon for us as well – it's the “sword of the Spirit,” the only offensive weapon mentioned in Ephesians 6. If you aren't in the habit of daily Scripture reading and meditation, or if your children are not yet, Lent is an excellent time to develop the discipline and joy of reading God's Word daily. It is said that it takes 21 days to develop a good habit, and Lent provides us with almost twice that amount of time to develop godly habits of daily prayer, daily Scripture reading, memorizing His Word, and listening to God in His Word and in prayer. If you have already established this discipline, perhaps use Lent to deeply study a certain book of the Bible would be an excellent idea.

Giving – Lent is not just about “giving something up”; it's about putting something positive in its place. The best way to remove a vice is to cultivate a virtue. Lent has been a traditional time of helping the poor and doing acts of love and mercy. While as Christians, we have this calling to giving all year long, Lent is a good time to examine ways to get involved and to make resolutions to actually do them. Perhaps Lent is time to get involved with God's Extended Hand if you aren't already. Or do something as a family to raise funds for a missionary or a Christian charity helping in Haiti like Samaritan's Purse. 

Obviously, Lent is NOT the only time we can practice these spiritual disciplines; we should indeed be practicing them all year long. But Lent presents us the opportunity to do a “deep cleaning,” to focus more fully and completely on weak areas of our spiritual walk. Prayer before Lent begins is very important, asking God to reveal to us where He wants to work on our hearts during this year's Lent. 

Lent is a season that reminds us to repent and ask God to re-center our lives around Him, with our priorities straight and our hearts forgiven and cleansed. Yes, we should do so each day of the year. But sin is an insidious thing, slipping in here, taking a little ground there, and, wrapped up in our busy lives, we often do not notice the darkness creeping further and further into our souls. Ash Wednesday and Lent provide us with a time set apart to present ourselves before God, asking His help and guidance in doing a “spiritual spring cleaning,” a fresh chance to say “Yes” to the Lover of our Souls who created us, who made us in His own image. Lent is the time for a restoration project that will reveal the beauty of God's design for us, demonstrating yet again for us, a forgetful and leaky people, the scale, proportion, and priorities intended for us by our Maker. 

Wishing you all a Holy Lent,

The Sunday Before Lent

From the Archives...

Today is the Sunday preceding Lent, and it's the time I set aside to ponder and pray for God's direction for me this Lent.

Although I've attended evangelical churches for the past twenty-five years, I've practiced Lent in one form or another since college. Even though they had both been raised Nazarene, my former roommates had taught me quite a bit about Lent in college, and for my first Lent I gave up my prime addiction: soda. Diet Coke was my coffee; I was drinking my first can at seven in the morning and downed them throughout the day to keep myself alert during classes and the long drive home as a commuter student at the Nazarene university I attended. The wonderful thing was that after Lent, soda upset my stomach, so I've pretty much been on a soda fast since college--drinking water and tea is far healthier!

Lent is a time for spiritual housecleaning for me. I pray over what has a hold on my life in a possibly unhealthy way, and I ask God to loosen this thing's hold on me so that I can live a more balanced life, one devoted to loving and serving Him. In past years I've fasted from television, desserts, gluten, Facebook, fan fiction stories, reading novels, and other often non-traditional items. During each Lent, I don't share here what I am fasting from, but the idea is to not only practice self-denial and to free up time for spending with God that would be spent on less God-centered pursuits, but to offer up something I really enjoy to God as a sacrifice, allowing me to focus on Him and on how He desires to mold me into the image of His Son.

Renovare is a wonderful group that focuses on growing and maturing our relationship with God, and they sent out an article entitled "Why Lent?" which I have copied in part below:

"Why Lent" by Kai Nilsen - More than a decade ago, I gathered with a group of local pastors, representing many denominations, to discuss a worship service we would offer to galvanize our community around a specific outreach initiative. As we were agreeing on a date for the worship service, one of my pastoral colleagues reminded us that the date we had selected was on a Wednesday night in the season of Lent. He wondered if that would be an issue for some of the liturgical churches. 

The Senior Pastor of the local independent Baptist church was quick to respond. “Lent? What’s that? Are you talking about the fuzzy stuff I often find in my belly button?” (Lint!)

We had quite a laugh. Yet, his comment exposed the gulf that lies between the current streams of the Christian tradition when thinking about and practicing the rhythms of the church year. Ironically, ten years later, this same Baptist church created a daily Advent devotional for their congregation in preparation for the celebration of Christ’s birth. Liturgical Renewal? Possibly. I would suggest that many parts of the modern church movement, having sold out to the heresy of “new is always better,” are awakening to the beauty of ritual and the recurring rhythms of the church that embed the life of God deeply within our souls. The season of Lent is one of those recurring rhythms that ritualizes the beauty of God’s life-giving, redemptive work in Jesus’ death and resurrection. 

Though the concept of Lent, a season of preparation for the celebration of Christ’s resurrection, was being articulated as early as the second century, the liturgical season of Lent seems to have taken form in the 4th century. The Council of Nicea (325) called for two gatherings of the synods, one of which was to be held before the forty days of preparation for Easter. By the end of the 4th century, the forty days of Lent had become integrated into the yearly rhythm of the Christian community as they prepared, primarily through the spiritual disciplines of fasting and prayer, for the celebration of Christ’s resurrection. 

The number forty has both biblical and spiritual significance. We recall the forty years of wandering in the wilderness for the people of Israel. Moses communed with God on the top of Mount Sinai for forty days and forty nights, eating no bread nor drinking water, as he inscribed the words of the Ten Commandments on tablets of stone (Exodus 34:28). Elijah journeyed to Mount Horeb for forty days and forty nights without food nor drink (I Kings 19:8). We also remember Jesus being led by the Spirit, following his baptism, into the wilderness where he fasted for forty days and forty nights (Matthew 4:1-2). In each case, whether forty years or forty days, the number forty spoke not only to a span of time but also a span of God’s ongoing presence experienced in trial and temptation, through accumulated wisdom and insight, and by God’s sustaining grace and love. 

This is the forty day journey of Lent. It is marked in days but lived in grace. 

For much of the Christian community, the forty days begins with Ash Wednesday (though the Eastern Orthodox church counts forty days back from Palm Sunday) and continues through the Holy Week stories of Jesus’ arrest, trial, and crucifixion. Sundays are not included in the forty days since they are always, even in the season of Lent, a celebration of Jesus’ resurrection. 

The image of Ash Wednesday, ashes marked in the sign of the cross on our foreheads, invites us into the season with the proper attitude: humility. The ashes recall God’s words to Adam following his transgression of the boundary around the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:19) 

For all our railing against it, our mortality is uncovered once again. We cannot deny. We are dependent on the God who breathed life into the dust of the earth and created humanity. We are not the masters of our universe. We have and will continue to fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). In humility we are marked with the cross — the symbol of violent death and the gateway to victorious life, and humbly say to God, “In life and death, we are yours.” 

So what about today? Culturally, we are distracted by many things. If we do not pay attention to our souls, our capacity to be open to God’s creative work in our lives is diminished. The season of Lent presents an opportunity to reflect on the state of our souls before God, the contour of our lives with others, and, above all, the prevailing promise of Jesus’ resurrected life as it breathes new life, new courage, new hope in us and through us, for the sake of the world. 

It is no coincidence that the Anglo-Saxon root word for Lent means “spring.” Pressing in to the season of Lent is a creative exercise in God’s possibility of re-birth for you, for the neighbor, for the whole of creation.... 

I have written many posts on Lent; check out these links to some of my posts if you'd like to read more about this practice--and how I personally have practiced it. I also gave a talk on Lent for a ladies' Bible Study at Lake Murray Community Church several years ago; it's also linked under the header as well as right here: On Lent

Shrove Tuesday 2018
Ash Wednesday and Lent 2018
Keeping a Holy Lent 2016
Lent Begins Wednesday! 2014
Quotations for the Week and Lent 2012
On the Road to Calvary: Lent 2011
Ash Wednesday Retreat: Lent 2011
Lenten Reflection: Part 1 (2010)
Ash Wednesday: 2009
Evangelicals Seeking Ancient Paths (including Lent!)
Why Lent? Act 3 Ministries Article: Lent 2008
Ash Wednesday: 2008 (co-written with Pastor Stephen Sammons)
Lenten Reflections: 2007

The Collect from the Book of Common Prayer 2011 for this Sunday before Lent:

O LORD, you have taught us that all loveless actions are worth nothing; Send your Holy Spirit to pour into our hearts the most excellent gift of love, which is the true bond of peace and all virtue, for without this love we are dead before you; Grant this for the sake of your only Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.

I find this quotation on repentance rather thought-provoking, and I thought I'd share it with you as our Quotation of the Week:

"Repentance is not some negative, life-denying gesture. In fact, repentance doesn't mean turning to a past way of thinking or doing at all. Repentance means turning to a new way. Repentance does not mean to change from what we are to what we were. It means to change from what we are to what we are going to be."  

~Mark Trotter, "A Lenten Reflection"

So as we prepare to enjoy our pancake dinner on Shrove Tuesday (otherwise known as Mardi Gras), we also pray for God's leading in this Lent. These forty days each year are difficult but precious as I do battle against myself with the Sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, clenched firmly in my hand. But the Good News is this: we never have to battle alone once we are His. Christ our Brother fights with us and for us...thanks be to God!

Wishing you a blessed and holy Lenten season,

He Is Risen!! Alleluia!!

The Resurrection of Christ and the Women in the Tomb (c. 1440-1442) by Fra Angelico

He Is Risen, Indeed! Alleluia!! 

The liturgical greeting for Eastertide is one that goes back centuries. But my favorite Resurrection Day hymn goes back only to the eighteenth century. Written by Charles Wesley, brother of John Wesley the English church reformer, I miss singing this hymn today with great gusto and joy as it is being sung at churches around the world. These words and the soaring music truly expressed my Easter joy in a Risen Saviour!

1. Christ the Lord is risen today, Alleluia! 
Earth and heaven in chorus say, Alleluia! 
Raise your joys and triumphs high, Alleluia! 
Sing, ye heavens, and earth reply, Alleluia! 

2. Love's redeeming work is done, Alleluia! 
Fought the fight, the battle won, Alleluia! 
Death in vain forbids him rise, Alleluia! 
Christ has opened paradise, Alleluia! 

3. Lives again our glorious King, Alleluia! 
Where, O death, is now thy sting? Alleluia! 
Once he died our souls to save, Alleluia! 
Where's thy victory, boasting grave? Alleluia! 

4. Soar we now where Christ has led, Alleluia! 
Following our exalted Head, Alleluia! 
Made like him, like him we rise, Alleluia! 
Ours the cross, the grave, the skies, Alleluia! 

Last night's Holy Saturday Vigil was so powerful. Lighting the Pascal fire from flint and steel, then lighting the Pascal Candle which is embedded with five small nails representing the five wounds of Christ, then praying together before processing into the darkened chapel with "The Light of Christ! Thanks be to God!!" We stop and sing this three times, each time lighting more of the candles. Then we pray by candlelight and Father sings the ancient Holy Saturday liturgy in plainsong--it's soooooo beautiful!!

The Paschal Candle, with the Greek letters "Alpha" and "Omega", the year, and the nails representing the Five Wounds of Christ

Then we read several long Scripture passages which tell our salvation history as God's people. We then re-affirmed our baptismal vows and celebrated the First Evensong of Eastertide!! With what joy did we greet the end of this amazing vigil, definitely my favorite service in the Anglican tradition. The candles, the incense, the Scripture passages, the vows, the prayers, and the joy of the Resurrection after the sorrow of Good Friday.

The Good Friday liturgy was equally powerful, but it was filled with sorrow rather than the impending joy of the Vigil. To read the Passion of the Christ from the Gospel of Saint John aloud...to be crying out "Crucify Him!! Crucify Him!!" with the crowd, to stand at the foot of the huge Santos crucifix and venerating the wood, feeling the roughness beneath my fingers as I looked on the carved wooden image representing my dying--no, my dead Lord. Kris next to me was wiping tears as was I, and Chris' wife, Mary, was sobbing. My heart was so heavy as I imagined His suffering...for us! For me! For those whom I love! For every person ever created on this earth and every person who will be created in the future. His Love is that big!! Alleluia!! Thanks be to God!! 

The Crucifixion with Saints by Fra Angelico (141-1442), fresco  

 The Collect for Easter Sunday from The Book of Common Prayer 2011:

EASTER SUNDAY or THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST

This Collect is prayed daily through the octave (Easter Week).

THE COLLECT:

ALMIGHTY God, who through your only eternal Son Jesus Christ overcame death and opened to us the gate of everlasting life; Grant that, by your mighty power going before us, we may die daily to sin and live with him forever in the glory of his resurrection; Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and rules with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen. (References: Acts 2.24; John 9.25; 1 Peter 1.3; Hebrews 2.14-15; James 1.4)

Easter Sunrise Service at Pine Valley Bible Conference Center, 6:30 AM

I rose early to attend the first Easter Sunrise Service in Pine Valley in a loooooong time! It was 34 degrees, so everyone bundled up with blankets and travels mugs full of hot drinks while we were led in worship and Pastor Noble gave the message. After breakfast in the Dining Hall at PVBCC, we attended 9:00 AM services at Pine Valley Community Church. before heading an hour away to Ramona to have Easter dinner with Keith's family.

He is risen! He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!! 
Happy Easter!

Hosanna in the Highest! It's Palm Sunday!!

Revised and updated from the Archives...

I always enjoy Palm Sunday greatly as the opening of my favorite time of the liturgical year: Holy Week. During this week, I try to focus on Jesus' final teachings to His disciples, on His humility in washing the disciples' feet, on His institution of the Lord's Supper during Passover, on His agony in Gethsemane, on His trial before the authorities, on His suffering as He was beaten and scourged almost to the point of death, on the brutal mockery He endured for our sakes, upon the sorrow and passion of His crucifixion, and finally on the joy of His miraculous and glorious Resurrection. 

The fulfillment of the Old Testament Scriptures always strikes me strongly during this week--so many details foretold hundreds of years before this final week of Jesus' earthly life come true in the New Testament Gospel accounts of this holy week, this last week of Jesus' human life.

In the 21st chapter of the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, we read first a quotation from the Old Testament:

This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet [Zechariah], saying,

Say to the daughter of Zion, "Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden" [Zechariah 9:9].

The disciples ... brought the donkey and the colt and put on them their cloaks, and He sat on them. Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. And the crowds that went before Him and that followed Him were shouting, "Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!" (Matthew 21:4-9, ESV).

By the way, the Book of Zechariah was written between 520-518 BC, more than half a millennium before the time of Jesus' Incarnation.  

The Collect for the Sixth Sunday in Lent: Palm Sunday from The Book of Common Prayer 2011 reads:

ALMIGHTY and eternal Father, who in your tender love for humanity, sent your Son Jesus Christ as a man to dwell among us and in mortal flesh to suffer death upon the cross, so that all people might learn true humility; In your mercy, grant that we may follow him in his sufferings and share in his resurrection; Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and rules with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. (References: Philippians 2.4-8; 3.9-10; Hebrews 12.3)

In liturgical churches, the palms distributed in Palm Sunday's services are often bent and folded into crosses and then saved by being put behind icons or framed pictures of Jesus until the Sunday before the next Ash Wednesday when they are burned. The palm ashesare then used to anoint the foreheads of those attending the Ash Wednesday services as a new Lenten season begins. I love how the palms come full circle: the Holy Week from one year coming into the beginning of the next year's Lent. As Benedict states in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, "There's a double meaning in that." 

Usually I miss the liturgy of the Palm Sunday service at Pine Valley Community Church; often no one even mentions that it's Palm Sunday. But this year was different in such a great way!! The worship leader, Keith, opened the service by reading the Triumphal Entry from the Gospel of John, and we sang a praise song with the chorus: "Hosanna, Hosanna/ You are the God who saves us/ Worthy of all our praises." So we got to sing our Hosannas!! Pastor Noble extended the Palm Sunday theme by opening the sermon with Palm Sunday and the expectations the Jews had for the Messiah which he then tied into his sermon on Mark 2:1-12. I would have loved to have seen at least one palm somewhere, but today's service was a huge leap forward in celebrating Palm Sunday!! We also sang two hymns (often we're only singing praise songs): "Come Thou Font" and "All Creatures of our God and King." I texted Father Acker of Blessed Trinity to save me some palms that I keep on the shelf above my desk until the Sunday before the next Lent. 

In past years at Lake Murray Community Church in La Mesa, our church home for twenty years, we often entered the sanctuary on Palm Sunday to see huge palm fronds strewn along the front of the auditorium (and sometimes down the center aisle), and we always sang several praise songs that include the all-important word for this day: "Hosanna!!" And frequently one of the pastors or elders read of Jesus' Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem from one of the Gospels.

At Blessed Trinity Anglican Church, which meets on Sundays at the SCAIR Center in downtown El Cajon, they had a Blessing of the Palms as well as a Passion Theater in which various congregants take the parts of narrator, Jesus, and Pilate, and the rest of the congregation will be The People...the People who demanded over and over, "Crucify Him! Crucify Him!" mere days after welcoming Jesus with enthusiastic cries of "Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!"  

Side note: I looked up "Hosanna" to find its precise meaning. The best definition that I found came from John H. Stek on the site Bible Study Tools in which he defines "Hosanna" with the sentence: In Christ, "the age-old cry, 'Lord, save us,' has become the glad doxology, 'Hosanna,' which equals: 'Praise God and his Messiah, we are saved.'" 

I have to of course include perhaps the most common Palm Sunday hymn, "All Glory, Laud, and Honor," the lyrics of which were originally written by Theodulf of Orleans who lived c. 750-821: 

All glory, laud, and honor
To Thee, Redeemer, King,
To whom the lips of children
Made sweet hosannas ring:
Thou art the King of Israel,
Thou David's royal Son,
Who in the Lord's name comest, 
The King and blessed One!

The company of angels
Are praising Thee on high,
And mortal men and all things
Created made reply:
The people of the Hebrews
With palms before Thee went;
Our praise and prayer and anthems
Before Thee we present.

To Thee, before Thy passion,
They sang their hymns of praise;
To Thee, now high exalted,
Our melody we raise:
Thou didst accept their praises--
Accept the praise we bring.
Who in all good delightest,
Thou good and gracious King!

My week will be very busy with Holy Week services: a Messianic Seder with Blessed Trinity Anglican Church at Pepperwood Park in El Cajon on Tuesday evening at 6:15, Maundy Thursday evening services including footwashing also at the SCAIR Center at 6:30, the Good Friday liturgy again with the Blessed Trinity Anglican at the Larkspur Drive rectory in Alpine at 5:30 in the evening, and the Holy Saturday Vigil, my favorite liturgy of the entire Christian Year, also on Larkspur Drive in Alpine a little later in the evening (7:30 PM) so that the rectory is darkened as we bring in the Paschal Light, lighting our candles from the huge beeswax candle with the red "Alpha" and "Omega" Greek letters on the side and with five small nails pressed into the beeswax to represent the five wounds of Christ. 

Then we'll celebrate Resurrection Sunday with our first sunrise service since we've attended Pine Valley Community Church (four years this Easter!) then a community Easter breakfast, both held at the Pine Valley Bible Conference Center. Then we'll meet back at Pine Valley Community Church at 9:00 for one all-church Easter service. I am hoping for a joyful and exuberant celebration of the Resurrection, preferably with the singing of my favorite Easter hymn, "Christ the Lord Is Risen Today." (One can only hope!!)

Today is also the Annunciation, the day in which we remember and celebrate the Angel Gabriel announcing God's will to Mary who replied with the words that we all should say to God each day, "Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word" (Luke 1:38 ESV). So today is a double-feast day of the solemnity of the Annunciation and the celebration of Palm Sunday which marks the beginning of Holy Week. (It's also Timothy's 23rd birthday--so today is a real party for us!)

I wish a blessed Holy Week to you and yours, dear readers. May we all experience the sorrow of Christ's sacrifical death for us and the joy of His glorious Resurrection by which He saved all people, past, present, and future, from all of their sins, past, present, and future.

Following in His footsteps this Holy Week,