HOLY WEEK ACTIVITIES

Holy Week begins with Palm Sunday on March 29th.

On Wednesday, April 1st, there will be Holy Eucharist at 5:30, a Lite Lenten Supper at 6:00, and the conclusion of the Lenten Series at 6:30pm.

On Thursday, April 2nd, Maundy Thursday worship will be at 9:30am, and the evening worship at 7:00pm will include Foot Washing and Holy Eucharist. Anyone who wishes to participate may do so.  (Just wear shoes that are easy to slip off.)

There will be one Good Friday worship service on April 3rd.  The Good Friday Liturgy will be at 12:00pm.  Holy Communion will be distributed from the reserve sacrament.

The Great Vigil of Easter worship service will be celebrated on Saturday evening at 7:30pm.  This service is a dramatic 1 hour 45 minute service.  It is also great for children and youth as they are encouraged to bring any type of bell to ring.

Easter Sunday, April 5th, will be celebrated at all three worship services with the Easter Egg hunt taking place at 9:45am.  Please meet in the Parish Hall with your Easter baskets, so children and parents can be grouped, receive their instructions, and be led to their respective church lawns for the hunt  The Flowering of the Cross will begin during the 8:30 service and continue at the 10:45 worship service, where the children will adorn the bare cross with their beautiful flowers.  If you are bringing children, don't forget Easter baskets, bells to ring at both Saturday and Sunday services, and ALL parishioners are invited to bring flowers for the cross!

     One of the many things I have loved about Mother Sherridan's time with us has been her liturgical vision - she has both respected the important Advent traditions, and also has brought new ways of looking at them, so that their symbolic significance is magnified by different words and/or actions. And of course, for me, having come from another diocese altogether, learning new customs and discovering other liturgical options has stretched my imagination, sometimes pushing me to the edges of my comfort zone, but never so far as to cross the line into absurdity.

     After being in conversation with many people - me, staff, and laity - she has modified our Holy Week schedule both in content and form. Maundy Thursday will be experienced a bit differently this year, in a way that is more in line with the tradition I am accustomed to. Since I've been at Advent, it has been the practice for the priest(s) to model Christ by washing the feet of the disciples, to demonstrate that faithful leaders must be willing to humble themselves in order to walk in Christ's footsteps. This year, a change we are making is that we are opening up this same privilege to you, the members of this church, so that you, too, have the opportunity to both have your feet washed, and in a different act of humility, to wash the feet of your neighbor. This was the practice of my home parish, and what feels "right" to me, so I am excited that Mother Sherridan is giving us all the same opportunity to live into the servant-nature of Christ.

   For the past several years, our evening service on Good Friday has been Tenebrae, a service of Old and New Testament readings, marked with the lighting of candles after each reading. Discovering that this was relatively new within the past few years, and not part of Advent's important traditions, she considered replacing it with Stations of the Cross, which I thought might be especially meaningful to the Hispanic Congregation. However, I checked with many of them, and Stations of the Cross had not been a part of their Christian formation at any time, so we decided to simply delete that service from the Holy Week services.

     Mother Sherridan is bringing back the practice of celebrating the Great Vigil of Easter on Saturday night, the night before Easter. The first part of the service is a series of Old Testament readings, read to illustrate the story of the world and God's creation of and work in it. Longer than most of our regular Sunday morning services, it is nonetheless worth the extra time it takes for participation in this one. We start in darkness with candles, lit from the new fire of Easter, until about midway through, when the risen Lord is proclaimed, and lights come on, bells ring (don't forget to bring a bell or two to ring during this transition) and the tone changes symbolically from sorrow to joy, the setting from darkness to light. The Easter Vigil is laden with rich symbolism - my favorite service in the Church year!  And because of the Old Testament stories which are an intrinsic component of the Vigil, Tenebrae would actually duplicate them, and we have enough going on during Holy Week that we definitely don't need the redundancy!

     For those of you who are averse to change in any form or fashion, there is good news for you, too! The Easter morning services, including the mid-morning Easter Egg hunt - will be exactly as it has been for years, with a flowering of the cross at both 8:30 and 10:45, the Big Hunt between those two services, and an amazing choir including additional musical instruments (brass!) to celebrate out Risen Lord.

     Holy Week, ushered in on Palm Sunday with Jesus entering the City of Jerusalem, riding on a donkey, and concluding with Easter morning services to joyfully celebrate the miracle of the Resurrection, is designed to allow everyone to enter into Christ's Passion, Death, and Resurrection. I want to encourage you to come to as many of the services as you can, to immerse yourself into the retelling of Jesus' final days on earth. It's been my personal experience that the more completely I honor the Lenten season, and the more fully I participate in Holy Week liturgies, the more amazing and joyous is the proclamation and celebration of the Resurrection. I invite you to share that experience.

Laurie+ 

 THANK YOU!
.... to Miroslava Flores and her team for preparing delicious tacos for the Parish Breakfast last Sunday.  Breakfast will be prepared for parishioners on the 4th Sunday of each month. Look for the poster in the Parish Hall to sign up to host & prepare a breakfast of your choice!

....to the Girl Scouts who generously donated oil, peanut butter and other items for Advent's Food Ministry!

Let Us Break Bread Together - for a Good Cause!
We've reaped so much joy from the breakfast tacos prepared as a fundraiser for the Costa Rica mission trip.  It is truly the gift that keeps on giving.  It was a wonderful time for community building, coming together to support a common goal and the food was AWESOME! 

Recognizing that at this point in our parish life, we simply cannot commit to a weekly breakfast, and yet, unwilling to completely retreat back into former separate circles, we are opening up the opportunity to share breakfast once a month - every month on the 4th Sunday - to serve a two-fold purpose:  to again experience that joy of community building between the Spanish and English language congregations, and also to begin the fundraising efforts for future Youth Mission experiences.

We are specifically asking for 2 things - participation and help!

Please mark your calendars for the 4th Sundays from now until the end of summer - that's April 26th (also Mother Sherridan's last Sunday with us), May 24th (Memorial Day weekend), June 28th, July 26th, and August 23rd.  I understand that this is not a new practice, but rather one which is being revitalized.  Let's gather together and share one another's company as though we were at one, big, family breakfast!

Secondly, we need volunteers to actually FIX and SERVE the breakfast as well as clean up afterwards!  This can be done by a couple of people, a family, or an entire group, delegating different responsibilities to the participants.  And it can be any type of breakfast food - for example, tacos, of course, but also egg casseroles, bacon, egg, and cheese biscuits, pancakes with eggs and sausage, the list of possibilities is endless.

ALL PROCEEDS, after reimbursing the cost of the grocery items, will be placed in a special "holding" fund for future use by Youth going out on Mission.  It's never too soon to start saving for future goals.

Of course, the church will reimburse you for the cost of the breakfast fixins.  Just bring your receipts to turn in and we can cut you a check relatively quickly - usually within a week or so.

We are asking for freewill donations for breakfast.  Remembering that this is a fundraiser with a dual purpose, we hope you will be generous.  Please come and enjoy the fellowship of your church family, while donating to a very worthwhile cause!

Laurie+

(There is a sign-up poster for hosts in the Parish Hall or you may call the church office at 542-4123 to volunteer!)

Copies of the prayer list are in the Narthex.  Please call the Church Office at 542-4123 each month to ask that prayers be continued or to celebrate that prayers are no longer necessary. 

Your prayers are asked for the following:

Parishioners:  Blanca Brashear, Duane Payne, Chula Griffin, Marty Heaner, Bill & Katherine Reed, Robert Buchanan, Bob & Dee Robey, Ana Maria Castellanos, Donnie Mejia, Beverly Rappe, Jack Yonge, Jaime & Cruz Mata, Estella Perez, Silvia Emerson, Mary Lou Douglas

Family Members:   Margarita Romero, Sue Fischer, Dorothy Harris, Serena Ramsey, Curtis John Hammonds, David & Adelina Ochoa, Gina & Emily Garcia, Evan Rath Henstenburg, Brad Buchanan, Ilsa Lee, Jane Slade, Silvia Mejia, Monica Ramos, Manuel Cabrera, Austin Tice, Susie Oliveira, Earl & Regina Bussert, Tammy Johnson
 Friends: Ninfa Middleton, Sarita Walker, Lourdes Cortinas, Edith Huth,  Charlotte Logan, Beth Colley,  Betty Levin, Edward Campos, Darryl Acher, Samantha Alvarado, Alma Castilleja