From the Vicar...
Some thoughts on Ascension Day
By the time you read this, our Ascension Day Eucharist will already have been celebrated. But as I'm not anticipating bulging walls from the overwhelming attendance, I figure I still have a chance to say a word or two about the Feast of the Ascension.
Ascension Day celebrates the Risen Lord going to heaven. It is one of the seven principal feasts of the Church year in our present calendar. It has not always been thus. The earliest Christians made little of the Ascension as a festival. It was not until the fourth century that a new pattern began to emerge.
As the Church overtook the Roman world in that century, it began to celebrate its festivals differently. A cycle of feasts connected with events in Jesus' life began to be added to the established Sunday worship pattern. An early addition to the Sunday cycle was a fifty-day season for Easter. The fourth century pilgrim Egeria finds the Church in Jerusalem celebrating the Lord's ascension and the gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church on the final Sunday of the fifty-day Easter season. At the same time, in Augustine's church in North Africa, Ascension Day emerged as a fixed commemoration on the fortieth day during Eastertide, following the chronology of Luke's Gospel.
Ascension Day is something I associate with my life as an Episcopalian. It obviously celebrates an important event in the life of our Lord and of his disciples. In my twenties as a new priest celebrating all kinds of things I had never attended in my childhood and teen years, there was something really wonderful about discovering church festivals. Ascension Day is blessed with great liturgical texts, great readings, and, for that matter, great hymns and great sacred works of music.
A Prayer Book text I commend to you for reflection is this one from the Ascension Day liturgy:
After his glorious resurrection he openly appeared to his disciples, and in their sight ascended into heaven, to prepare a place for us: that where he is, there we might also be, and reign with him in glory. (from the Proper Preface for the Ascension, p. 379)
Whether or not you attended our Eucharist at noon today, I hope very much you will take a moment to reflect on the Ascension before this day draws to a close. As one of the great Ascension Day hymns puts it, "Hail the day that sees him rise, Alleluia!"
Our Shared Ministry Cycle of Prayer
Each week, in both of our churches, we pray for one ministry we share and one or two households in each church. About once every six weeks, we will instead using the Shared Ministry Collect we prayed throughout the opening months of our Shared Ministry.
In our prayers the next two weeks, we give God thanks for...
May 8
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Seacoast Area Youth Ministry; Joan HoSue; Nancy McHeachern, Ida Moriarty
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May 15
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Worship Committee at Trinity Church; Paula Kidder; Hope Murray & Tommy; Anne Newell
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Last week for our Discretionary Fund fundraiser
This is the last Sunday to buy tickets for our fundraiser for the Vicar's Discretionary Fund. Peter Monte (at Christ Church) and Gordon Lane (at Trinity Church) are selling raffle tickets for a $200 gift card from the Atlantic Grill in Rye. Tickets are $15 each or three for $30. See Peter or Gordon at coffee hour if you'd like to help us beef up this Fund, which helps people in need both within our congregations and in the community at large. The winning name will be drawn on Pentecost Sunday, May 15.