For the Sixth Sunday After Pentecost this year, the Collect and readings are from Proper 9A. As usual, it is the larger theme(s) of the Gospel reading that determines the church’s selection of the corresponding psalm and OT reading. The Collect this week petitions the Lord Father to “grant us…the spirit to think and do…
Today in the Spirit: Proper 8A
This coming Sunday’s readings from Proper 8A prolong in the worshiper a sense of end-time-like distress, though the content is not about our future but the present, the world in which we now live under the reign of Christ who has come, died, risen, and ascended. Accompanied by these Year A readings in particular, the…
Today in the Spirit: Proper 7A
The messaging the church puts forward at this stage on Sundays in Year A is hard going on both the ears and the heart, and yet as always laced with grace. Building on readings from prior weeks, the focus is on the reality of spiritual opposition to our Lord’s work of the gospel and to…
The Feast of the Visitation: A Rookie Anglican Guide
The Church celebrates the Feast of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary to Elizabeth and Zechariah on May 31st. It commemorates Mary’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth, Jesus’s first meeting with John the Baptist while both were in utero, and Mary’s joyful praise as expressed in her Magnificat. The Collect Almighty God, by whose grace…
Rogation Days: A Rookie Anglican Guide
Days of fasting and prayer amid a feast season seem counterintuitive. However, Rogation Days remind us that our lives and seasons are in God’s hands. “Rogation” comes from the Latin noun rogatio, meaning “asking” (the verb is rogare, “to ask”). The Rogation Days are also known as Rogationtide. When are the Rogation Days? The Sixth…
Ordinary Time: A Rookie Anglican Guide to the Season after Trinity
Welcome to Ordinary Time! Now, if you’re like me, you might hear “Ordinary Time” as “boring time,” but that’s not the case! The Church Year revolves around two cycles: first, the Christmas cycle (Advent, Christmas, Epiphany). Next, the cycle shifts to the Easter cycle (Lent, Holy Week, Easter, Pentecost). The rest of the year is…
Holy Week: A Rookie Anglican Guide
Starting on Palm Sunday, Holy Week begins. As I put it in my overview of the Church calendar and the Christian liturgical year, The last week of Lent, Holy Week, remembers the last week of Christ’s earthly life, beginning with Palm Sunday’s commemoration of Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Holy Week is the week between…
The Church Calendar: A Rookie Anglican Guide to the Christian Year
What time is it? At first glance, it might not seem like it, but this is one of the most important questions a human being can ask! Thankfully, there’s an Anglican answer! Or, better, there is a Christian answer that the Anglican tradition helps proclaim! While the secular calendar organizes life around civic holidays, national…
The Ache of All Saints’ Day
I cannot remember the last All Saints’ Sunday I sat in the pew instead of the chancel. However, this All Saints’ Day, I wasn’t collared and vested, leading the liturgy in the parish I serve. I sat in a pew in another parish because I’m taking a sabbatical this autumn. Where does an Anglican priest…
Ascension Day & the Real Absence of Christ
Ascension Day is forty days after Easter. After Jesus rose again, he spent forty days with the disciples, then, “…he parted from them and was carried up into heaven” (Luke 24:51). His ascension marked the beginning of his absence. Imagine the roller coaster ride the disciples went through, from their disappointment at Jesus’s death to…
