June and July 2014
St. Mark’s News Volume 18/Issue 6
From the Assistant Rector As summer heats up and the rain chances diminish, as the school year ends and graduates gear up for the far reaches of the academic universe—we enter into a new season. As Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost come and go, schedules begin to shift and trend toward the less hectic and we are left with a certain calm, a quiet, almost, in the calendar called Ordinary Time (or the season after Pentecost). It is an important lull, for us and for the church, serving to reveal a wonderful truth about God and His People. Years ago, as a new Episcopalian (and quite green to the nuances of the church calendar and its meaning), I asked a priest why the Church would remember this time after Easter and before Advent with such an uninspiring title. After a slight chuckle, he explained that the term ordinary is not to connote commonplace or suggest unexciting weeks. Rather, he said the term comes from the Latin word for, ordinal, or numbered days; the 33 or 34 weeks after Pentecost until reaching Advent. Going a little deeper, my mentor spoke of this season in summer as a time to reflect upon what has just happened (meaning Easter, and before Easter, Christmas). One way to look at the liturgical year is to see Christmastide (the four weeks of Advent and the twelve days of Christmas) and Eastertide (the forty days of Lent and the seven weeks of Easter) as two seasons that break into our regular days of Ordinary Time. These sacred days burst through our temporal time to reveal important realities of God and therefore crucial realities about us. God’s eternal truth and eternal time erupt into our linear world view, revealing the Character of God! This is big stuff.
In this Issue From the Assistant Rector ......... 1 Vestry Highlights ........................ 2 Outreach .................................... 3 Parish Life .................................. 5 Christian Formation ................... 6 Parishioner Highlights ................ 8 Celebrations ...................... 9 & 10 Caffeine Ministry ...................... 10 June ROTA .............................. 11
The only way we are made aware of God at all is because God, Himself, lets us in on who He is. The Church calendar is a powerful manner of understanding God’s nature and His/our reality. God opens the curtain of our existence, so to speak, letting us in on the greater truth we enjoy and will enjoy, more clearly, in the next life. In other words, Christmas and Easter are revelations of our true existence. Stories of God are ultimately stories of us. Once we are illumined to this, our proper response, like Mary and others, is to ponder what has just happened, what has just been revealed, and then, to hold them tightly in our hearts (Luke 1:29). When confronted with the mysteries of the cosmos, our soul’s response is to rest in the overwhelming experience. If Christmas and Easter celebrate moments of the mystery of Christ, this summer season of catching our breath is truly about celebrating these moments in one full mystery. Christ’s full story, as we are told to go out and share at Pentecost (the Great Commission), is the profundity of our lives! So, in your pondering, think on this great truth of God: what God touches, God transforms. There is nothing commonplace in that which has experienced God. The gift of Ordinary Time, this “time between
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