St. Mary's Regina

THE FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT

March 10, 2024

THE FATHER IS MY HOPE; THE SON IS MY REFUGE; 
THE HOLY SPIRIT IS MY PROTECTIOR.
ALL HOLY TRINITY, GLORY TO THEE!

LIVE AUDIO STREAMING during today’s service is available on the Order of Service page. Recorded audio will be added following worship.

GETTING READY FOR SUNDAY: PREVIEW OF THE READINGS.

In the Sunday Eucharistic lections in The Book of Common Prayer, the season of Lent is understood as pilgrimage of the soul. It is a hazardous journey through a spiritual wilderness of demonic trials and temptations that separate us from the true and living God, and hold us in bondage and captivity.  The first three Sundays of Lent have been all about how it is that Christ liberates us from the deceptions and power of the Evil One. On this the Fourth Sunday in Lent, the Church holds before us the goal and end of our journey. IN our Epistle reading from Galatians, St. Paul refers to “Jerusalem which is above is free and is the mother of us all.”  In symbolic terms, Jerusalem is our spiritual home, a place of freedom and peace where we  enjoy union and communion with God in  a fellowship of love.   Such also is the parish Church, the earthly counterpart of the heavenly city, which brings us to birth through the waters of baptism, and like a good mother, nourishes us through Word and Sacrament and guides us in our way. The Gospel lesson relates the story of Christ’s  feeding of the 5,000 in the  wilderness with 5 loaves and two fish, which is for us an image of the Eucharist, where our “bodies and souls are preserved unto eternal life”, and where we are refreshed and given the strength we need  to continue the journey home.

THE LESSON:  Galatians 4:26-31

Continue reading “Lent 4 March 10, 2024 Bulletin”

THE THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT

March 3, 2024

THE FATHER IS MY HOPE; THE SON IS MY REFUGE; 
THE HOLY SPIRIT IS MY PROTECTIOR.
ALL HOLY TRINITY, GLORY TO THEE!

LIVE AUDIO STREAMING during today’s service is available on the Order of Service page. Recorded audio will be added following worship.

GETTING READY FOR SUNDAY: PREVIEW OF THE READINGS

Lent is a season in which we are confronted with the reality of “ spiritual warfare,” that is  our battle with “the demons”, which is to be interpreted  not merely in a reductionist  psychological sense, but in an actual spiritual sense of demons as actual “ malignant intelligences” and “ evil powers” that impact our lives and seek “to corrupt and destroy the creatures of God.” ( Book of Alternative Services p. 154) Our Gospel lesson today portrays Christ as the one who through the finger (power) of God casts out demons and overpowers Satan. In baptism, when we renounced “ the world, the flesh, and the devil” and united ourselves to Jesus in His death and Resurrection,  we became partakers of Christ’s victory over sin, death, and the devil, and the house of souls was swept clean. But as we see in the parable which Christ tells, unless we continue in repentance and acquire  thevirtues, the house of our souls remain vulnerable to demonic attack. In our Epistle lesson St. Paul unpacks Christ’s teaching, warning us to be especially on guard against the demons of sexual sin, covetousness, and idolatry.

Continue reading “Lent 3 March 3, 2024 Bulletin”

​THE SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT

February 25, 2024

THE FATHER IS MY HOPE; THE SON IS MY REFUGE; 
THE HOLY SPIRIT IS MY PROTECTIOR.
ALL HOLY TRINITY, GLORY TO THEE!

LIVE AUDIO STREAMING during today’s service is available on the Order of Service page. Recorded audio will be added following worship.

GETTING READY FOR SUNDAY: PREVIEW OF THE READINGS.

THE LESSON:  1 Thessalonians 4:1-8

Continue reading “Lent 2 February 25, 2024 Bulletin”

THE FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT

February 18, 2024

THE FATHER IS MY HOPE; THE SON IS MY REFUGE; 
THE HOLY SPIRIT IS MY PROTECTIOR.
ALL HOLY TRINITY, GLORY TO THEE!

LIVE AUDIO STREAMING during today’s service is available on the Order of Service page. Recorded audio will be added following worship.

GETTING READY FOR SUNDAY: PREVIEW OF THE READINGS.

The Gospel lesson for this First Sunday in Lent presents us with the story of the temptation of Christ in the wilderness, which is of great importance for the pilgrimage of faith that is ours in the season of Lent, and extends throughout our lives. We are a party to and participants in a cosmic conflict between God and His Christ, on the one hand, and the devil, on the other.  There are temptations to be faced, and choices to be made. The Good News is that Jesus Christ has unmasked, exposed and defeated the devil at the point of temptation, and shares His victory with us. It’s why in our Epistle lesson for today St. Paul exhorts us not to accept the grace of God in vain,  but to see the rough and tumble of life as the occasion for the proving of our faith and the faithfulness of God.

Continue reading “Lent 1 February 18, 2024 Bulletin”

QUINQUAGESIMA SUNDAY

February 11, 2024

THE FATHER IS MY HOPE; THE SON IS MY REFUGE; 
THE HOLY SPIRIT IS MY PROTECTIOR.
ALL HOLY TRINITY, GLORY TO THEE!

LIVE AUDIO STREAMING during today’s service is available on the Order of Service page. Recorded audio will be added following worship.

GETTING READY FOR SUNDAY: PREVIEW OF THE READINGS.

Quinguagesima is the last of Pre-Lenten Sundays. In today’s Gospel lesson Jesus declares to His disciples, “Behold We up to Jerusalem, and everything written about  the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished.” ( Luke 8. 31.) Here we see that Lent is a spiritual journey with Jesus to Jerusalem. It is not an accident that this prophecy of the Passion is followed by a miracle whereby Jesus restores the sight of blind man who then follows him on the road. Lent is a time for us to be healed of our spiritual blindness in regard both to our sin, and the forgiveness of God, which is our healing. The Epistle for today, St. Paul’s famous “ hymn to love” provides us with a further illumination of the character of our Lenten journey, and the journey through life as disciples of Jesus. It is a journey into spiritual maturity, of “giving up childish things,” and the perfection of love: God’s love for us and our love for God.

THE LESSON:  1 Corinthians 13:1-13

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ^it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect;  but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

THE HOLY GOSPEL: Luke 18:31-43 

Then he took the twelve aside and said to them, ‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. For he will be handed over to the Gentiles; and he will be mocked and insulted and spat upon. After they have flogged him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise again.’  But they understood nothing about all these things; in fact, what he said was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what was said. As he approached Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging. When he heard a crowd going by, he asked what was happening.  They told him, ‘Jesus of Nazareth is passing by. ’Then he shouted, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’ Those who were in front sternly ordered him to be quiet; but he shouted even more loudly, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’ Jesus stood still and ordered the man to be brought to him; and when he came near, he asked him, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ He said, ‘Lord, let me see again.’  Jesus said to him, ‘Receive your sight; your faith has saved you.’ Immediately he regained his sight and followed him, glorifying God; and all the people, when they saw it, praised God.    

PARISH LIFE NOTES

WELCOME Bishop Helen who will be preaching and presiding at The Holy Communion and administering the laying on of hands with prayer to Anya, who is renewing the vows of her  baptism today. Sunday Salad lunch will follow the service in the Upper Hall. Please bring a salad to share!

CONDOLENCES to the family of Malcolm Tait who passed away in Calgary on February 4. May he rest in peace and rise in glory.

ASH WEDNESDAY PENITENTIAL SERVICE WITH IMPOSITION OF ASHES  will take place next Wednesday at 5.45 p.m.

LENT is not intended to be an annual ordeal during which we begrudgingly forgo a handful of pleasures. It is meant to be the church’s springtime, a time when, out of the darkness of sin’s winter, a repentant, empowered people emerges. 

Put another way, Lent is the season in which we ought to be surprised by joy. Our self-sacrifices serve no purpose unless, by laying aside this or that desire, we are able to focus on our heart’s deepest longing: unity with Christ. In him—in his suffering and death, his resurrection and triumph—we find our truest joy.” ( Dorothy Sayers)

RECTOR’S RETREAT. Claude Schroeder will be on spiritual retreat at Kingsfold Retreat Centre this week, returning to the parish next Tuesday.

SALT OF THE EARTH AND LIGHT OF THE WORLD LENT PARISH BIBLE STUDY. In the Sermon on the  Mount Jesus declared to His disciples, ^“You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden under foot by men. “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. Nor do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house.  Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” ( Matthew 5. 13-16.) Join us for 5 week Lenten Bible study on Chapters 5 and 6 on “The Sermon on the Mount.” Sign up sheet and contact information available on the table in the Narthex.

2023 TAX RECEIPTS will be available for pick up after the service today.

NOMINATIONS FOR 2024. Our Churchwardens, Andrew and John will be seeking out nominations for people to serve as warden and vestry members for the coming year. 

ANNUAL MEETING has been scheduled for Sunday, March 3^rd. The business will be to review ministry reports, financial statements and to elect parish officers for the coming year.

WORSHIP THIS WEEK

Morning Prayer	Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday at 8:30 a.m.   Wednesday at 9:00 a.m.
Ash Wednesday Penitential Service	Wednesday at 5.45 p.m.