I don’t know about you, but when I first heard about “Ember Days,” I thought of a dying fire! However, when I began my ordination process, I quickly found out that Ember Days, also called Embertide, are about ordination and Holy Orders, not about fireplaces. What Are Ember Days? As the 2019 ACNA BCP notes,…
The Great Fifty Days of Easter: A Rookie Anglican Guide to Eastertide
Easter Sunday is only the beginning! A great fifty-day feast (known as “Eastertide,” “Easter Season,” or “Easter Time,” as well as “Paschaltide,” “Paschal Season,” or “Paschal Time”) kicks off on Easter Day. In the Church Year, this is quite literally fifty days of feasting. Easter is the high point of the Church Year. It makes…
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…
Lent: A Rookie Anglican Guide
Beginning on Ash Wednesday and lasting for 40 days, Lent is a season of fasting and penitence in preparation for Easter. The Church year revolves around two “cycles,” one for Christmas and one for Easter. As the Christmas cycle begins with Advent, the Easter cycle does likewise with Lent. The season has a penitential character….
The Book of Common Prayer: A Rookie Anglican Guide
You can’t be curious about Anglicanism for long without running into the Book of Common Prayer, commonly called the Prayer Book or simply the BCP, which forms the liturgical heart of the Anglican tradition. Of course, based on the title, you might reasonably assume that there’s just one Book of Common Prayer out there. However,…
Holy Communion: A Rookie Anglican Guide to the Eucharist
Each Sunday, in churches across the Anglican tradition, the faithful come forward to receive a piece of bread and a sip of wine, being told that these are the body and blood of Christ. It is an ancient practice that traces back to the words of Jesus himself. So, what happens during a liturgical service…
The Long Way Home: Dwelling in the Anglican Way
My “Anglican story” is intimately tied to the desire to be firmly anchored in the tradition it represents and the calling to establish more churches in that same tradition. A few years ago, my wife and I joined the Anglican Church in North America through confirmation. This is intriguing because, at that time, I was…
Marching from Fundamentalism to the Canterbury Trail (By Zach Jones)
Growing up, words like “Jesus” and “Church” were commonplace. My parents raised me and my siblings in a Christian household, and I cannot remember a time where I did not know about how Jesus died for my sins and rose again. In my Baptist upbringing, the Gospel was shared almost every Sunday. I knew the…
Confirmation: A Rookie Anglican Guide
What is Confirmation? Confirmation is a church practice that falls into the category of what the Anglican Catechism calls “rites and institutions commonly called sacraments.” Along with Confirmation, there are four others like it: Absolution (confessing one’s sins and receiving forgiveness in the presence of a priest), Ordination, Marriage, and Anointing the Sick. These practices,…
The Incarnation: What is it? Why does it matter?
During the Christmas season, I keep returning to the doctrine of the incarnation. St. John writes in the opening verses of his gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” John 1:1, 14 The Doctrine of the…
How to Chant the Venite
The Venite is a canticle used in Morning Prayer, based largely upon the text of Psalm 95. It is featured in certain editions of the Rookie Anglican Daily Office Booklet. Below is an audio file of the easiest way, in my opinion, to chant the canticle. As you can see in the pagescan from the 1940…
How to Chant the Magnificat (The Song of Mary; Luke 1:46-55)
The Magnificat – also known as the Song of Mary (Luke 1:46-55) – is a canticle used in Evening Prayer. It is featured in certain editions of the Rookie Anglican Daily Office Booklet. Below is an audio file of the easiest way, in my opinion, to chant the canticle. As you can see in the…
