The COMMUNICATOR

St. Paul’s Anglican Church Crownsville, MD Winter 2020

A MESSAGE FROM FATHER WESLEY…

On and

Fasting gives birth to prophets and strengthens the powerful; makes lawgivers wise. Fasting is a good safeguard for the soul, a steadfast companion for the body, a weapon for the valiant, and a gymnasium for athletes. Fasting repels temptations, anoints unto piety; it is the comrade of watchfulness and the artificer of chastity. In war it fights bravely, in peace it teaches stillness. St. Basil the Great

Greetings St. Paul’s,

This past we began what is commonly called Shrovetide. Shrovetide is made up of , , and Sundays. The names are based on the Greek words for 70, 60, and 50, denoting how many days we are from . The term Shrovetide comes from the Middle English word shriven and means to confess. This emphasizes that, as we prepare for our Lenten observance, it is customary to attend auricular (private) with a priest. While we do not begin our formal fast until , we should begin a process of self-reflection aimed at developing a strong sense of contrition for our sins, a necessary first step to making a confession. Shrovetide ends on Ash Wednesday - a day where we remember that we are dust and to dust we will return. This somber focus on our mortality sets the stage for the Lenten season. During Lent, it is customary to practice fasting and abstinence. Culturally, many people today think Lenten fasting means giving something up (like video games, sugar, or social media). It should be noted that if it is a vice, or a barrier to growing in holiness, it ought to be given up anyway and doesn’t count for a Lenten fast. Fasting means that one eats one full meal and two small meals (though this practice can be adjusted based on one’s lifestyle and duties). Abstinence means that meat is not eaten. Every day in Lent, except for Feast Days and Sundays, should be considered a day of fasting. Abstinence and fasting are practiced on Ash Wednesdays and Fridays. Snacking between meals and alcohol should generally be eliminated on days where fasting is observed. However, it should be noted that fasting should not bring self-harm or prevent one from carrying out their duty. The Gesimas and Lent are hard, especially in our day. It is so easy to overindulge and give into our passions. Passions are often at the root of sin, which occurs when we let them control us instead of vice-versa. St. Paul tells us, “the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you would” (Gal 5:17; RSV). Fasting provides us an opportunity to work on mastering those passions. Most importantly, remember that fasting is a response to what God has done for us. Like Paul says in the 1 Corinthians 9 reading from Septuagesima Sunday, “I do not run aimlessly, I do not box as one beating the air; but I pommel my body and subdue it.” Because God has sacrificed himself for us, we use fasting as a way to sacrifice ourselves to God, conforming us to his image, ultimately making us “living sacrifices” (Rom 12:2). We don’t do this out of a dry sense of obligation but out of love. Paul emphasizes love in 1 Corinthians 13, “If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.” May God bless you this Shrovetide and Lenten season.

In Christ, Fr. Wesley+

A MESSAGE FROM THE SENIOR WARDEN, CATHY GATES…

It’s hard to believe that is over, a new year has begun and it’s already time for Lent!

Be sure to come to the Pancake Supper, Tuesday, February 25, 6- 8:30. It will be a time of good food and fellowship. A free-will offering will be taken. Please SIGN-UP so we know how many pancakes to make!

Lent is a time of spiritual renewal. It is time not only to prepare ourselves to honor the memory of Christ’s passion, death and resurrection, but also a time to renew and recharge our relationship with God. Here are three things that have helped me in the past.  Repentance – acknowledging things I do that are wrong, asking God’s forgiveness, and promising to try to do better in the future;  Self-denial – giving something up like a bad habit, or a favorite food or treat, and every time I’m tempted to give in, relying on God to help me stick to it; and  Spiritual discipline – taking on something like reading a chapter a day in the Bible or saying Family Morning Prayer (BCP pg 587) or Family Evening Prayer (BCP pg 589).

In addition to renewing relationships with God, Lent is also a time to reach out and help those less fortunate. Our Missions Committee does a fantastic job of helping several organizations in our community throughout the year thanks to your generous support. But Lent is a great time to do a little more. This year, we’re going to have Mite Boxes available for children and adults. You may be unfamiliar with a Mite Box, but it’s based on the Biblical story of the Widow’s mite which appears in both Mark 12:41-44 and Luke 21:1-4. (A “mite” is a very small contribution or amount of money)

“And he looked up, and saw rich men casting their gifts into the treasury. And he also saw a certain poor widow casting in thither two mites. And he said, Of a truth I say unto you, that this poor widow hath cast in more than they all: For these have of their abundance cast in unto the offerings of God: but she of her penury has cast in all the living that she had.” (Luke 21:1-4, KJV)

So, a Mite Box is for the collection of small coins or small amounts of money traditionally used to help the poor. And putting money in the Mite Box may help you focus on your self-denial. For example, if you give up chocolate, every time you’re tempted to buy a candy bar, take the money you would have spent and put it in the Mite Box. Or maybe your children have taken on an extra chore at home. Every time they perform that extra chore, they could be making a small amount of money to put in the Mite Box to help those less fortunate. Mite Boxes will be turned in on Easter Sunday with everyone presenting their Mite Box at the altar. (More to come on that later)

** Annual Meeting April 19th, 10:00 am. Mark your calendars.

May you all have a blessed Lent leading to a joyous Easter.

Cathy Gates

FROM THE JUNIOR WARDEN – John Schulte:

Well we’re in the throes of Winter Season! It is a busy time in our church calendar year with Christmas Season, , Lent and then the Beautiful Flowers that Spring brings to help us celebrate Easter!

St. Paul’s historic buildings and grounds will in the Spring bring big changes too. Anne’s Garden will be receiving a much-needed re-vamping thanks to our garden Chair Jeff Conipath. Some of the interior changes will be obvious while some, not so much. We are partnering with BGE to complete the upgrades to our lighting throughout the parish buildings to LED lighting. Additionally, a VERY generous benefactor gifted us with a fantastic new storage building! (It even has its own steeple that is lighted by night)!

The Chapel is scheduled to receive a long-overdue refinishing of the main floor and Altar areas. This will help to preserve our ‘Jewel’ for generations to come. The unsightly chair rack has been replaced with 2 chair carts that are hidden in the closet near the entrance just inside the fellowship hall. The look without that ugly rack made a huge difference to that area. Our hall is getting busier with now 2 AA meetings each week, Fr. Wes is teaching a Confirmation class and there are Bible Studies each week too. The Youth Group is growing and has functions there as do the Ladies Guild, Prayer Shawl ministries, Sunday School and parishioner functions. All these activities add to the wear and tear of that area and kitchen, so please, after you and your group use the hall, remember to leave it clean and straight for the enjoyment of the next event.

In Mid-January, we had a break-in. While not many things were taken, our Safe, File cabinets and office carpet were destroyed or heavily damaged. The costs incurred including almost $1,500.00 just to re-key all the locks on the property and replace ALL the associated keys really cost us a sizeable amount of non-budgeted monies. With the increased use of the hall comes an increase in supplies including paper products, coffee and other drinks, trash bags, etc. The grounds up-keep throughout the property, increased dumpster emptying, repairs and up-keep, electric and heating costs all add to increased maintenance. PLEASE REMEMBER the Building Fund in your weekly basket donations to help us continue to keep St. Paul’s looking Great! I want to thank all our volunteers for their time and expertise in helping to keep everything looking ship-shape.

John Schulte

P.S. Keep a look out for our annual Spring Spruce up Sign Up Sheet to ‘Wash Away’ the Winter Doldrums and dirt from St’s Paul’s buildings and Grounds. Your help is Always Appreciated!

STEWARDSHIP:

Opportunities to support St. Paul’s in 2020

To all who have already included St. Paul’s in your 2020 charitable gifting, THANK YOU! If you haven’t, now is the perfect time. Here are some ways you can help make sure St. Paul’s continues to do its very best to serve God, our community and all who depend upon us most.

 Pledge your support / Contribute as generously as you can It’s not too late to send in your St. Paul’s pledge form. Forms are available in the back of the church and the chapel and in our church office. Alternatively, contributions will be gratefully accepted via weekly offerings or special gifts to advance the work of St. Paul’s.

 AmazonSmile Foundation Imagine what would happen if each of us were to remember St. Paul’s when we purchased ANYTHING from Amazon! Once a charitable organization is enrolled in the AmazonSmile Program, Amazon will give that organization .05 percent of the cost of items purchased on Amazon. ST. PAUL’S IS ENROLLED IN THE PROGRAM! To take advantage of making contributions to St. Paul’s by this program, just log on to https://smile.amazon.com. You will be asked which charitable organization you want to support.

IMPORTANT: We are listed as Saint Pauls Anglican Church. (Saint must be spelled out and no apostrophe in Pauls.) This is the full Amazon site, so anything bought or even rented on Amazon will translate into donations to St. Paul’s. What is also important to remember is you need to go to the smile.amazon site and not just amazon.

 Planned Giving When creating/updating your will or other planned giving documents during 2020, please consider including St. Paul’s among your charitable gifting choices. Remembering our church in this way will help make sure the critical work of St. Paul’s continues, unabated, for years to come!

 Share Your Ideas! Let us know of opportunities you see for St. Paul’s to broaden the scope of our gifting programs. Contact Clint Rosso, Stewardship Committee Chairman, 301-706-0040 or [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you!

Blessings, Kathi Terlizzese

CHOIR

We had a very successful Lesson and Carols and Christmas Eve concert this past December. We’re gearing up for the season of Lent, , and glorious Easter celebration music. I consider myself blessed to be working with such a wonderful group of people. Everyone works hard learning the music and shows great teamwork as we’re making our way through our songs. Once a week is all we have, there are not enough hours in a day…so I send out a brava and bravo to the choir.  I’d also like to send out a big thank you to Jan Wyatt, she has a lot of plates spinning and handles them with grace. (okay, so you take a long stick with a point and you put a plate on it and get it spinning, then you get another stick and a plate get that spinning and keep the first one spinning, how about 10 plates every day?)

Musically yours, Andrea Linnell

FRIDAY BIBLE STUDY

The 10am to 11:30am bible study is tackling St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans. It is an exciting study into St. Paul's great exposition and we have an enthusiastic group of parishioners exploring the sixteen chapters. It is not too late to join us! Just let Fr. Thomas know so he can order you the text. If you would like to know more, please call Fr. Thomas (410-647-1671 or [email protected]) for more information.

Fr. Thomas

HOSPITALITY COMMITTEE

PANCAKE DINNER FEBRUARY 25

The hospitality committee will be helping to set up, serve, and clean up after the dinner. We hope that many in the parish will attend this event. Those who are helping are:

Gary Rigby Mike Davis Heather Davis Cindi DiBenio Joan Dodge

Thank you, in advance, to those helping. Henry Riser made the arrangements to have the food prepared and delivered to the parish hall.

Lucile Seborg, Chairman

ALTAR GUILD

We would love to welcome new members. If you are interested in being a member of this wonderful group of ladies, please contact Sharon Beard at 410-255-0258.

PRAYER SHAWL MINISTRY

St. Paul’s Prayer Shawl Ministry has been very busy with our continued work of making and giving prayer shawls, prayer blanket, book marks and prayer shields. We thought that we had hit a snag with the distribution of the prayer shields to our military troops but we did not give up. Prayers for this particular ministry were soon answered and we are back on track!! With the wonderful help of Marie and Chapel Garner who personally met with the Anglican Chaplain at Fr. Bragg, much was discussed and put into action. The chaplain was excited about our ministry and even gave the Garners the names of other chaplains to contact. These chaplains will see that the troops get the shields. So we are once again going strong. We received a letter from SGT Lia Cater and here are a few lines from that letter. She addressed it to the “Ladies of the Shield.”

“I have placed my Prayer Shield in my Kevlar – my helmet. As I secured it there, I thought to myself “another added layer to the whole armor of God”. As a smile fixed onto my face, a flushing of my soul filled my body with warmth and peace. And in that moment as I bolstered my “battle gear” with yet another thing to fortify God’s Word in my life and daily armor … I couldn’t help but feel God’s peaceful and comforting presence. …. I thank you for your efforts – this is one of The Best “Care Packages” I have received on deployment. I thank God for each and every one of you. While many of us who serve in the Military are Christian, its sometimes difficult to feel God’s presence amongst all that goes on. But then there are days that His presence is apparent- days like the day I received your gift – and knowingly every day that follows, when I “suit up” and take my Kevlar up and know that in spirit and in truth – I am covered. …. May the shields you send around the world fortify God in the hearts of every military member that places them in and on their uniforms and gear. Knowing that God’s protection is upon them.”

The Prayer Shawl Ministry meets in the parish hall every 2nd Wednesday from 1-3 and ALL are welcome. If you can knit, crochet, sew, embroider, quilt, use scissors, sort yarns or support in any other way you are needed, young, old, in between, male or female!!

If you know of someone in the military who would like to have a prayer shield or if you know some- one that you would like to receive a shawl or blanket, please give their names and addresses to Dona Peters, Jan Wyatt, Cathy Gates, or Martha Blaisdell.

Please continue to keep St. Paul’s Prayer Shawl Ministry in you prayers as we strive to better serve our Lord in this mission

Faithfully, Dona Peters

YOUTH GROUP

Our January meeting was postponed to February because of the “ice storm,” it was better to be safe than sorry and we had a great February gathering. We’ve grown again since our humble 1st meeting of 4 to 22 (not including a friend or two that tags along.) Our meetings are high energy, Bible teaching, filled, crafts, recreation, and more fellowship during lunch. We had a fun time at Games Day this past Saturday including biblical based “what love is” crafts. Hopefully they will follow through with their grateful heart prayer boxes. They are to put a person’s name in the box and pray for them for a week, then add a name or change to a new person or concern. Next month’s meeting will be March 14. We’ll spend some time upstairs in the church following a children’s version of the . We do this every year and they understand Jesus’ last walk before His Crucifixion, this helps them understand what Easter Day means.

“It takes a village to raise our children.” What better place could there be? 

Yours in Christ, planting seeds, Andrea Linnell

CALENDAR

Feb. 15 10am – Altar Guild meeting Feb 18 6:30pm – Vestry meeting Feb 24 6:30pm – St. Mathias HC Feb 25 6pm – Shrove Tuesday pancake dinner Feb 26 7:30am, noon, 7pn – Ash Wednesday service Feb 28, Mar 6, 13, 11:30am – Stations of the Cross and 20, 27, Apr 3 Bread & Soup Feb 29 10am – Ladies Guild of St. Paul’s Mar 17 6:30 – Vestry meeting Apr 5 Palm Sunday Apr 12 Easter Apr 19 10am – Annual meeting Apr 21 6:30 – Vestry meeting May 2 11am – Ladies Guild Spring Tea Jun 28 Church picnic

CHECK THE CALENDAR BEFORE SCHEDULING ANYTHING

*We at St. Paul’s are a very busy parish. If you are leading a group, please see that your meeting times are on the master calendar in the church office. There is a calendar in the bulletin each Sunday with the upcoming events. Take it home and post it. *Please get any announcements for the bulletin to Jan by Friday morning. *If you have moved or changed your phone number, cell number or email, please let Jan know to we can keep our records up to date. Thank you. Jan

The Rev. Tom Burr – Rector The Rev. Wesley Walker - Curate The Rev. Eric Holle – Assisting Priest The Rt. Rev. Robert S. Loiselle, Sr. – Rector Emeritus Mrs. Cathy Gates – Senior Warden Mr. John Schulte – Junior Warden

St. Paul’s Anglican Church P.O. Box 380 Crownsville, MD 21032