Now that Candlemas has been celebrated, and the last vestiges of Christmas are firmly in the rear-view mirror, thoughts turn towards Lent and Holy Week. Easter is late this year, Sunday 20 April, so there are a few weeks of Ordinary Time to go before we arrive at
Ash Wednesday. But here is a preview of what is to come including our Ash Wednesday services, our Lent Course: “How can we read the Bible?”, and our Lent Compline services.
Ash Wednesday is on 5 March. There will be a Prayer Book Communion Service at 8am, and a Choral Eucharist at 6.30pm, with imposition of ashes at both services. There will also be Zoom Morning Prayer at 10am GMT, as usual on a Wednesday. While Morning Prayer is happening on Zoom, Arnold House School will be in church for their Ash Wednesday service. It’s going to be a busy day!
During Lent, Gary will lead a course entitled “How can we read the Bible?” This is a combination of on-Zoom and in-person sessions. Across five Tuesday evenings (8pm, starting on 11 March), he will introduce some very different ways in which the Bible can and has been read; this will happen on Zoom. Then, across four Sunday afternoons (3.30pm, starting on 16 March), he will lead a real-life study of a particular biblical text. The Zoom sessions and the text sessions belong together, but you can come to all of the one and none of the other, or to all of both, or to some of the first and some of the second. Mix and match as your diary allows.
Also during Lent, there will be Compline on Zoom at 5pm every Sunday, from 9 March to 6 April inclusive. The home clergy will be joined by on-line visitors from other places/parishes, who will offer their reflections on a work of art. So that we do not miss out on a Taize service in March, we will have one at 5pm on 2 March (normally, it would be on 9 March, the second Sunday of the month, but we will hold it a week early).
Palm Sunday is on 13 April. Kristina is being seconded for Holy Week and Easter to St John the Evangelist Episcopal Church in Hingham, Massachusetts, whose Rector is Ed Thornley. Ed used to be the Associate Vicar at St Marylebone Church, and he and his wife Devon were unfailing supporters of our Easter Vigil while they were in London. While Kristina is away, we will welcome The Revd Jonathan Halliwell, the Curate of St John and St Philip, The Hague (in the Diocese of Europe) for the whole of Holy Week. Jonathan is experiencing a call to be a permanent deacon (rather than the diaconate being a one-year transition to priesthood, as it is for most clergy), and the ceremonies of Holy Week are particularly rich in diaconal roles. As Jonathan is an ex-Cambridge Choral Scholar, we can look forward to some special singing of the Exsultet at the Easter Vigil!