St Johns February 2021 Newsletter
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Inside this issue….. February Newsletter 2021 5Lent 2021 Lent begins with an account from Matthew’s Gospel 4:1-11 of our Lord suffering 5Ash Wednesday very real temptations during the forty days He spends in the wilderness. So what 5Please Remember in were these temptations, and where did they come from. your Prayers… 5Fr. Ron’s Lenten Scripture informs us explicitly that the temptations endured by our Lord come from challenge that ancient enemy of the human race, the devil. And these temptations are a 5Adult Forum Classes challenge or a test. The devil seems to be curious about the true identity of this 5Confirmation & extraordinary person Jesus of Nazareth. “If you really are the Son of God, prove it!” Reception he says. “Command these stones to become loaves of bread.” 5“the Examen” 59 things you can do… How often do we not hear similar challenges addressed to us, or to our families, or 5Masks for Sale our communities, or our church or our world? We know we are called to be the 5Food Bank Volunteers hands and feet of Christ in the world today, but how often do we neglect, or post- Needed pone our involvement? 5Stewardship 5St. John’s Jesus Christ came into this world to do something far more wonderful than changing Columbarium stones into bread. Jesus came to change our hearts of cold stone to hearts that are on 5Planned Giving fire with divine love. Jesus has not come to dazzle us into the Kingdom of Heaven 5Calendar with dizzying displays of acrobatics. Jesus calls us to live in friendship with Him. 5Intercessions And, as a token of this divine friendship, Jesus does something infinitely more impressive than turning stones into bread or throwing Himself from the Temple into the hands of angels. Jesus transforms bread into His living Body and Blood, before which angels fall in adoration. Jesus effects this transformation so that we, too, might be transformed by feeding on Him, and that we, in turn, might set to work transforming this world around us. As we begin the season of Lent, we should think of how we shall accompany our Lord in His fasting and prayer during these forty days in the wilderness. Most im- portantly of all, we should think about how we imitate Christ’s charity, whether by way of almsgiving, or visiting the sick, the lonely and the elderly. By the end of Lent, God will not really be checking to see if we have a thinner waist. God will be looking to see if we have a larger heart of love to share with others. I pray that each and every one of you enters more fully into the invitation of Lent so that even greater bonds of love and affection will rule your hearts as children of God and that it may bless this community of faith into doing even greater things for our Lord, His Church and the world! In Christ, Father Ron Newsletter Editors Fr. Ron Pollock Neva Rae Fox Lillie Hardingham The Rev. Canon Ronald N. Pollock LENT 2021 …Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the king- dom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” (Mark 1:14-15) When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth…(John 16:13) When you think of the word “Lent,” what comes to mind ? Giving up chocolate or sweets ? A job to be done ? A task to be carried out ? A long boring season ? A lot of times we want to jump right into whatever it is we’re trying to accomplish and just get the work done ! But when it comes to seeking and listening to God in the season of Lent, it’s important to stop, be silent and wait. Prayer and discernment should always be the first step we take. Through prayer and discernment, we must listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit. We seek out God’s truth in our lives and in the world around us, asking the Spirit to guide us. We try to discover what God is up to and how we can be a part of it. We go to Christ in the Gospels to learn from who He was then and to comprehend who He is today. We remain fully open to His presence in our lives and in the lives of those around us. We listen and observe, and then we follow where He leads. Finding and following the path can be difficult when there are too many things in the way. Listening for a strong quiet voice is impossible if there is too much noise in our lives. So how can we quiet the noise so the Holy Spirit can get through to us ? How can we declutter our lives to make room for God’s light ? We begin with repentance. Through repentance, we clear out the things that get in the way of God and we sur- render to the cleansing power of God’s boundless love and forgiveness. Re-orienting our lives towards God, we choose to follow the trail that is marked by God’s love rather than the trail that proceeds from selfishness, violence or indifference. In this process of intentional prayer, discernment and repentance, God’s love begins to reveal itself. We are able to see signs of Christ’s kingdom here on earth: signs of renewal and restoration, of hope and healing. Christ’s vision of making all things new and alive in His love begins to show itself in our lives and in the world around us. The transformation of our lives, and of our communities and our world, begins to seem possible. As we move forward in this season of Lent, let’s take a moment to stop, listen, and pray that God will reveal God’s way and truth to us. Pray with the Psalmist: “Make me to know your ways, O Lord; teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth, and teach me…(Psalm 25:4-5). Faithfully, Father Ron ASH WEDNESDAY All are cordially invited to receive ashes on Wednesday, February 17 at 7 am, 12 noon, or 7 pm outside in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church, 158 West High Street in Somerville. The very brief interaction will include the sprinkling of ashes on the top of people’s heads rather than using them to make a cross on people’s foreheads. The priest will address each person individually and say “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Ash Wednesday marks the first day of Lent. A number of resources, such as prayers, Scripture readings, and a Litany of Penitence will be found on the church website: www.StJohnSomerville.org. Sprinkling ashes on the top of people’s heads rather than marking foreheads with ashes is a return to the original practice in the life of the Church. The practice of sprinkling ashes is not new, it is the norm in many countries around the world. “The first recorded use of ashes is in the tenth century in Germany. In that case, the penitents were sprinkled with ashes, extricated from the assembly to the accompaniment of Genesis 3:19-20 (the exclusion of Adam and Eve from the garden), from which the formula for the imposition of ashes in later centuries were derived. It was in England, in the eleventh century, that we have evidence of the sprinkling of ashes on all the faithful, noted there in the writings of the Aelfric, the Abbot of Eynsham. By the end of that century, Pope Urban II will make the practice of sprinkling ashes on all of the faithful the practice of the western church” (A Note on Ash Wednesday and the Imposition of Ashes in a Time of Pandemic by Bishop J. Neil Alexander) “Given the spread of the coronavirus, the practice has the advantage of not requiring the priest to touch multiple people. In this season of pandemic, death is acutely before our eyes far in excess of anything most of us have ever known. Speaking to that and ritualizing it with a subtle, but powerful shift in the manner in which the ashes are administered has the potential of being a rich ritual exchange with significant pastoral connotations. And, calling attention to this slight adjustment, deeply rooted in the tradition, may be its own gift to us and our people in this difficult time” (A Note on Ash Wednesday and the Imposition of Ashes in a Time of Pandemic by Bishop J. Neil Alexander). Sprinkling ashes on the head recalls the Biblical method of putting on sackcloth and ashes as a sign of penance. “Now on the twenty-fourth day of this month the people of Israel were assembled with fasting and in sackcloth, and with earth upon their heads (Nehemiah 9:1). The use of ashes is a tradition with roots in the Old Testament “I turned to the Lord, to seek help, in prayer and petition, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes” (Daniel 9:3). Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent, a time when Christians are called to prayer, fasting, self-denial, almsgiving, which means donating money or goods to the poor, and performing other acts of charity. Ashes are rich in symbolism. They remind us that God created us from the earth, and that we will return to it when we die. They also symbolize God’s promise that even though our bodies will return to dust, our souls are meant to live forever with God.