This year, Easter is on ...

Do you know when Easter is this year?  Sure, you can Google it, but what did people do before computers and Google?

Excerpted from Tricia's email to the parish:

The 12 days of Christmas have come and gone, and we are now in the season of Epiphany, known as the season of light. The church calendar is set each year around two dates, those of Christmas and Easter. Christmas, of course, has the same date every year, and we can find the first Sunday of Advent (the beginning of the church year) by backing up the four Sundays before Christmas. Easter is a bit trickier. The official explanation is that Easter is always the Sunday after the full moon that occurs on or after the spring equinox on March 21. Got that? The earliest day that Easter can be is March 22; the latest is April 25. The date of Easter is important because from it the rest of the church calendar is set. Back up 40 days from Easter (excluding Sundays) and you will know the date of Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. Go forward 40 days and you get the feast of the Ascension. Go 50 days from Easter and you get the feast of Pentecost, the beginning of the longest season of the church year, that lasts until Advent.


There may be astronomers among us who can tell the date of Easter by looking at the stars and keeping track of the phases of the moon, but most let someone else do the calculations and rely on the calendars to tell us when this holy day is. (Or you can check the chart on page 880 in the prayer book that tells you the date of Easter through the year 2089). But in the church’s early days calendars were a luxury afforded only the privileged few. So it became a liturgical practice that every year the first Sunday after Epiphany (the January 6 celebration of the arrival of the wise men), a cantor would give the “Easter proclamation,” announcing in a chant the date of Easter and corresponding liturgical dates of the year. Of course these days we have that information literally at our finger tips. But Tom and I thought it would be interesting and fun to do the Easter proclamation. So come to church Sunday and find out when Easter will be this year. I already know, but I’m not going to spoil the surprise.

So, after all that, you can still go to Google to find out when Easter is this year.  But in the tradition which Tricia mentioned, you can listen to the Easter Proclamation.

Listen to Cantor John Morgan tell us about Easter and the rest of the church year:
https://app.box.com/s/sihkj673bu7muyk3nxxg

So now you know.

Led by a Star

If you weren't able to make it to church this past Sunday, we missed you and hope to see you soon.

Sunday was actually the Second Sunday of Christmas, but we celebrated Epiphany a couple of days early.

As we entered the nave, many of us (including the choir) saw photos in the pews and the choir stall. A fellow choir member leaned over and asked if I had any idea what it was. I had to admit that although it appeared to be an abstract painting, I had no idea what it was.

What do you think?

All was made clear when Tricia began her sermon. Here's the short version as posted by Tricia on Facebook:

An Epiphany offering. My favorite painting of the three kings does not hang in a museum or grace the pages of any art book. It hangs in our house and was painted by my mother. She didn’t start out to do a painting of the magi. Joe and I had asked her to do an abstract painting. But as she painted the forms began to emerge. Can you see them? Three kings, on horseback, not camels (as some of the earliest depiction of the magi showed).
They ride out of the mist with intensity, the horses galloping, the kings leaning forward in their saddles, determined to get to their destination as quickly as possible.
I love that the kings emerged from my mother’s canvas without warning, and I love that when she realized it she allowed them to continue, following their lead, not knowing where they would take her, having faith she would end up in the right place.
That in itself is the essence of this story.
The wise men set out, following a star, not knowing where it would take them or what they would find.
But they trusted that God would lead them where they needed to go, even if it wasn’t anywhere they could have predicted.
May we have the courage to do the same.

The complete text of Tricia's sermon can be found here.

As always, you can find past sermons here:

http://www.stdunstan.net/sermons.htm