Good day! I hope you are enjoying this holiday Monday. It’s a cheap hydro day so I’ve got a load of laundry going… 

My parish is having a worship service on the beach of the W.I Park in Richards Landing, Sunday, July 30 at 10am followed by a picnic brunch. If you are interested, we’d love to have you. 

A Liturgical Note for You  (something I’ve recently shared with my parish):

To Stand or Not to Stand… During the Eucharistic Prayer in the BAS, some congregations became accustomed to kneeling after the Sanctus (“Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might…”). This was a compromise introduced to help people feel more comfortable with the liturgy since everyone was used to kneeling so much throughout the BCP service of Holy Communion. The BAS, though, is an attempt to follow more closely the customs and mindset of the very early Christian Church. I’ve mentioned this before: early Christians were forbidden to kneel during worship since kneeling did not accurately represent the joyous knowledge of our salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus has inaugurated the kingdom, we are living in it, and we have been given the way back into relationship with Christ. The mood is therefore one of praise and rejoicing rather than penitentially kneeling. We are forgiven. In actuality, what is happening during the Eucharistic Prayer, though, is that many people are not standing or kneeling – they are sitting. This is a result of sore joints and uncomfortable kneelers. 🙂 I am sympathetic to this. Keep in mind, though, that sitting is not really a prayer posture option during worship services and should be something you do when you really need to. 

For “The Great Thanksgiving” we have six Eucharistic Prayer options and each is meant to be one unified prayer with no change of posture in the middle of it (p.184 of the BAS explains this quite tactfully). If you need to sit, please sit…but very preferably at the start of the prayer rather than in the middle of it. Likewise, if you want to kneel through the prayer, please kneel through the whole prayer rather than partway through. Along with the rest of the symbolism and signs found in our worship, our body postures inform our thinking and form and transform us so let us pray before the Lord “confident in God’s forgiveness” and rejoicing in our redemption. 

For Your Devotions:

July 3rd is the Holy Day of St. Thomas the Apostle. One of the 12 apostles, the most information we have of him is found in the Gospel of John. He was extremely devoted to Jesus and, of course, the best known incident we know of him is the ‘doubting Thomas’ story (but I think Thomas is unfairly singled out – the apostles all doubted…There’s a lot more to Thomas’ story than doubt). After the death of Jesus, Thomas’ history is sketchy but he is thought to have evangelized Parthia and even into India. He was martyred around 53 A.D.  For more info:  https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Thomas

July 6th is the commemoration of Thomas More, lawyer, died 1535. More was loyal to King Henry VIII and defended the Catholic faith against Luther and other reformers when the Reformation began. He condoned the torture and burning of many ‘heretics’. Things turned sour for him when he supported the supremacy of the Pope over King Henry’s break with Rome – we all know what Henry did with people who didn’t agree with him or got in his way… More was charged with treason and beheaded on this day in 1535. Why do we acknowledge someone who actually opposed the forming of the Anglican Church?  Well, More was a brilliant scholar and stood against Henry’s intended break with Rome because it was politically motivated – Henry didn’t support the Reformation either. More’s final words were “I die the King’s good servant, but God’s first.” For more info…  https://www.biography.com/people/thomas-more-9414278

In the joy of Christ,

Susan