Holy Week and Easter
Easter Gift & Easter Flower Donations
Holy Week
During the last week of the Lenten season we celebrate Holy Week, a sacred time of the year for Christians when the events of Christ’s passion, death and resurrection are remembered. In the remembering of sacred stories, we hope not only to remember, but to experience the drama of these stories ourselves, that we may know Christ’s love for us in a new way. All are welcome at any or all of these services.
Holy Week & Easter Schedule of Services
Click Here to join us on Zoom
Or click here to join us on YouTube Livestream
Maundy Thursday- In person only
March 28, 2024 @ 6:30 PM
Good Friday
Good Friday Bulletin (Noon Service)
March 29, 2024
12:00 PM @ St. John’s
6:00 PM - Community Service @ Stowe Community Church: Livestream link
Great Vigil of Easter
Great Vigil of Easter Bulletin
March 30, 2024 @ 7:30 PM
Easter Sunday
Easter Sunday Bulletin
March 31, 2024 @ 10:00 AM
An Easter Reflection
There’s an old Norwegian saying that goes like this:
“The woods would be silent if only the best birds sang.”
Easter is not only the principal holy day of our Church year, it’s also the festival of the Resurrection – the season of new life, new love in Christ. Easter is what Christianity is all about.
For in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, God showed the universe and us just how much God loves us. Easter is God’s love song for us and the world. And, our calling as Christians is to listen to God’s love song and to sing the song that the risen Christ puts into our hearts and on our lips as our love song to God. We’re also called to sing our song joyfully and the best we can. For indeed, the woods and the church would be silent if only the best birds or best voices sang.
One of my friends in our House of Bishops, was a classmate of mine at Virginia Theological Seminary over forty-five years ago. In our first year at Seminary, all students had to tape record a hymn a capella. Since I had sung all my life, this was not a challenge for me, but my friend couldn’t carry a tune. So, he asked me to help him learn to sing the hymn. That was a challenge, but our friendship survived and he made a joyful noise to the Lord as he learned to monotone the hymn. I learned then and there that the song we Christians are called to sing is always in our hearts whether or not we could carry a tune. For it’s a song of faith.
The truth is that all of us Christians have a song in our hearts. And our Church would be silent if only the best voices sang. Our calling is to sing the songs of our faith, separately and together this Eastertide and year round as we respond to the Easter Message and to God’s call to all of us to minister to God’s people and to rebuild our Diocese for God.
“Alleluia, Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!”
May this Easter season be full of hope, joy and gratitude!
Robert H. Johnson, Assisting Bishop, Diocese of Pittsburgh
Palm Sunday
"Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." (John 12)
Jesus knew that His entry into Jerusalem would lead to His death, but He also knew that His death would bring new life to all who believe in Him.
Palm Sunday is a reminder of faith and hope. The crowd that welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem believed in him and saw him as their savior. As we celebrate Palm Sunday, we are encouraged to have faith in God and to trust in his plans for our lives, even in times of trial and uncertainty.
But Why Ashes?
The symbolism of marking oneself with ashes traces its history to ancient traditions. The liturgical use of ashes can be seen in the Old Testament, where they denote mourning, mortality, and penance. In Esther 4:1, Mordecai puts on sackcloth and ashes when he hears of the decree of King Ahasuerus of Persia to kill all of the Jewish people in the Persian Empire. In Job 42:6, at the end of his confession, Job repents in sackcloth and ashes. And in the city of Nineveh, after Jonah preaches of conversion and repentance, all the people proclaim a fast and put on sackcloth, and even the king covers himself with sackcloth and sits in ashes, as told in Jonah 3:5–6.
In the early Catholic Church, Eusebius, a church historian, wrote in his book The History of the Church that once an apostate named Natalis came to Pope Zephyrinus clothed in sackcloth and ashes, begging for forgiveness. By the Middle Ages, those who were dying lay on the ground on top of sackcloth and were sprinkled with ashes. The priest would bless the dying person with holy water, saying, “Remember that thou art dust and to dust thou shalt return.”
These words are still uttered today by the minister, deacon, or priest when they mark the foreheads of their parishioners. Another admonition sometimes given is “Repent and believe in the Gospel.”
The connection of the ashes to the Gospels, which record the life of Jesus, comes from their preparation. The ashes used each year are made from burning the blessed palms from the previous year’s Palm Sunday celebration, which commemorates the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem the week of his death. Making the sign of the cross with these ashes ties the beginning of Lent, 46 days earlier, to the commencement of holy week the Sunday before Easter.
When was Lent established by the church?
Though Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, Lent is the older of the two. Lent was established and accepted only after the early church sorted out how to calculate the date of Easter. At the Council of Nicaea in AD 325, “all the Churches agreed that Easter, the Christian Passover, should be celebrated on the Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal equinox.” Since the spring equinox usually falls on March 21, the date of Easter in the Western Church can occur anytime between March 22 and April 25.
At Nicaea, the council settled on the 40-day fast period for Lent because it has roots in biblical writings. God sends rain on the earth for 40 days and 40 nights when Noah and his family go into the ark (Genesis 7:4). Moses sits atop Mount Sinai receiving instructions from God for 40 days (Exodus 24:18). Elijah “walked forty days and forty nights to the mountain of God, Horeb” when he flees Jezebel’s wrath (1 Kings 19:8). The 40 days of Lent, however, are primarily identified with the time Jesus spent in the desert fasting, praying, and being tempted by the devil (Matthew 4:1–11).
But though the length of Lent was set by the council, it’s start date in relation to Easter was still undecided. It was not until AD 601 that the start date of Lent was set. Pope Gregory moved the start of Lent to 46 days before Easter, and established Ash Wednesday at the same time. This allowed for 40 days of fasting—where only one full meal and no meat are to be consumed—with six Sundays counted as feast days—when fasting does not apply—for a total of 46 days.
Palm Sunday
The Donkey
By G. K. Chesterton 1874-1936
When fishes flew and forests walked
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood
Then surely I was born.
With monstrous head and sickening cry
And ears like errant wings,
The devil's walking parody
On all four-footed things.
The tattered outlaw of the earth,
Of ancient crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
I keep my secret still.
Fools! For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet.
Source: The Collected Poems of G. K. Chesterton (Dodd Mead & Company)
Reflection on Fourth Sunday in Lent
Dear Friends,
Luke’s Gospel gives us the precious story popularly called “The Prodigal Son,” although the true central figure is the Loving Father, who has two sons. No single story told by Jesus may have been able to so succinctly summarize his entire ministry. He tells it to explain himself to the “Elder Sons” of Israel, the religious leaders who disapprove of his search and welcome given to obvious sinners. How wonderful to see the heart of God revealed as wanting to gather everyone, the “not quite so good as they think” and the “bad” alike, into His feast!
Saint Paul teaches the content of the “Prodigal Son” in his call to the Corinthians to be reconciled to God, a new creation in Christ. In Christ, we see a God who wants to reconcile (bring into his life and fully restore) all the people of our world. So it’s important that we leave behind human categories that separate and judge people, and take the view of God in Christ.
Comment: The saying is often true that “we are our own worst enemies.” It is terribly easy for me to lose sight of God’s good and loving heart. Sometimes I run after my own desires to my own loss, and other times simply refuse the way God shows me. Other times I find myself criticizing and judging other people as unworthy or inadequate in some way. In each case, I keep myself out of the feast of knowing and sharing in God’s desire to seek and gather all. O Amazing Grace that gathers me, may I see with your eyes, and love with your heart!
Excerpt. David S. Robinson, Rector, Saint Matthew’s Episcopal ChurchMaple Glen, PA 19002
Out of “the bewilderness” and into resurrection
An Excerpt.
Sometimes we can find ourselves in a place that feels like a spiritual desert, a kind of wilderness. We are human, and life deals us suffering; pain is real, and none of us is spared. We all hit rough patches, places where we feel alone, frightened, desolate even. I have found myself at times in a state I can only describe as bewildered grief—that is to say, the "bewilderness".
We end Lent with a resurrection story, of Jesus raising his friend Lazarus from the dead. I love the line in which Martha, Lazarus’ sister, asks Jesus not to remove the stone covering the tomb, since it has been four days since her brother’s death, and surely, she tells Jesus (in the King James Version), “he stinketh.” As I read that story this year, I remembered that there is such a thing as feeling spiritually dead, feeling stuck and, well, stinky. Just as Lazarus was brought from death to life in the physical realm, so we can move from spiritual death into life and health.
The way out of the "bewilderness" is through it. And on the other side, we can claim our place as God’s beloved sons and daughters. When Lazarus emerged from the tomb, still wrapped literally in the trappings of death, Jesus commanded the startled crowd to “unbind him and let him go.”
As we journey into Easter, remember that even if you are in the "bewilderness", you are loved, longed for, called, claimed. Love is more powerful even than death, and God wants us to be whole and brave and free. Let the Spirit lead you into the light. Let the crucified and risen Christ unbind you and set you free.
The Rev. Mary Scott Wagner
The Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts