Fifth Station: Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus to carry his cross
My Song is love unknown, my Savior’s love to me, love to the loveless shown that they might lovely be. O who am I that for my sake, my Lord should take frail flesh, and die.
He came from his blest throne salvation to bestow, but men made strange, and none the longed for Christ would know. But Oh my friend, my friend indeed, who at my need his life did spend.
Sometimes they strew his way, and his strong praises sing, resounding all the day hosannas to their king. Then “Crucify!” is all their breath, and for his death they thirst and cry.
Why, what has my Lord done? What makes this rage and spite? He made the lame to run, he gave the blind their sight. Sweet injuries! Yet they at these themselves displease, and ‘gainst him rise.
In life no house, no home my Lord on Earth might have; in death no friendly tomb but what a stranger gave. What may I say? Heaven was his home but mine the tomb wherein he lay.
Here might I stay and sing, no story so divine: never was love dear King, never was grief like thine. This is my friend in whose sweet praise I all my days could gladly spend.
Samuel Crossman (1624-1683)
If you go into the middle aisle and stand where I do when, as subdeacon, I hold the gospel book for Ruth as she reads, you will see what I see every Sunday. Look down: there is a raised area at your feet. It’s small but distinct: the tiles in that spot have all risen slightly to form a little hill. Every time that I stand there, I find myself very moved by the notion that I’m standing where sub-deacons have stood to do the same service for more than 150 years. Something has seeped into those tiles and created a physical marker of a liturgical tradition from that long line of parishioners. The moisture from our shoes? The pressure from our weight? I don’t know but I feel in good company when I’m standing there on our spot.
We’re now in the season of deep and abiding traditions. I honor the myriad ways in which Lent is observed at Christ Church. Raised in the lowest of low-churches, I never heard the word “Lent” until I was in my 20s and started studying medieval literature in school. Now it’s a precious part of my life at Christ Church. I cherish being part of a group who honor traditions that go back decades or millennia.
Traditions can sometimes become obstacles to change—Ruth’s remarks at the Annual Meeting made me think about that. But our church seems to possess a special gift of finding ways of adapting traditions meaningfully for the present. Compline is an extraordinary example. Here’s to looking back and looking forward, stepping where our elders have been but walking out confidently toward the future as well.
Deb Vanderbilt
Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.
These words are harsh, offensive, even – a discarnate denial of human dignity. They evoke morbid images of decaying corpses riddled by worms, and humanity reduced to a sack of organic chemicals.
Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.
And yet! We are dust shaped into a brain that thinks, at least sometimes; dust fashioned into a heart that loves, at least on occasion; dust formed into handsthat heal and create, at least from time to time; dust molded into tongues sing and tell of wonder. We are dust that creates (discovers?) music. We are dust that reflects on being dust, and marvels at its own being.
We are dust that is capable of tracing its origins outside of and beyond itself – to the creative powers at work in nature, in history, in the bodies and hearts of other human beings, and in our Creator. The dust of which we are made is a highly sophisticated dust which can trace the story of its origins, of its absolute and unredeemable debt to other dust, in the biochemistry of all its primate brothers and invertebrate sisters; all animate life and all vegetable life; in mineralized remains of creatures extinct from the earth a million years before the coming of humanity and in the primordial grime and slime of earth. In planets, stars, and protozoans.
To remember that we are dust is to remember our many exotic relatives and the many communities that have given us breath, life, and consciousness. It is to remember that life comes to us not from necessity but mystery. It is to rememberthat Something came out of Nothing; in fact, Something and Nothing came out of a Nothing bigger and older than both. This absurdity is holy and drenched in wonder. We who observe Ash Wednesday and celebrate Easter marvel also that we were brought into being by Love.
Perhaps the only viable response to a life so given is gratitude and joyful recognition that we live under the obligations of relatedness. From just considerations as these, the old medieval confessionals speak of sin as radical forgetfulness, and penance as remembrance. Lent, then, is the season of penitential preparation for Easter’s Resurrection, and we begin Lent with an act of memory that will deliver us ever more deeply into the mystery of our dust: an act of memory that will open us to the divine communion and solidarity of all created being.
Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
+Ruth
©Stephen Kennedy- Mix Media Dimentions: 4'X4' This work resides in a private collection in Rochester, NY
MUSIC DIRECTOR"S NOTES Stephen Kennedy
The season of Lent gives us the opportunity to experience some of the most powerful and poignant music in the sacred repertoire. Arvo Pärt ‘s Kyrie eleison from his Berliner Messe, and his “Littlemore Tractus”, a setting of a portion of John Henry Newman’s sermon from 1843, are two modern works that will be woven into the 11:00 AM Eucharist in the coming weeks. The text to “Littlemore Tractus” reads:
May He support us all the day long, till the
shades lengthen, and the evening comes,
and the busy world is hushed, and the fever
of life is over, and our work is done! Then
in his mercy may He give us a safe lodging,
and a holy rest, and peace at the last.
John Henry Newman (1801-1890), Wisdom and Innocense, sermon preached on February 19, 1843 in Littlemore
“Sicut cervus”, Palestrina’s four-voice motet from the Renaissance, and Herbert Howells twentieth-century wartime setting of verses of Psalm 42 will also be a part of our Lenten Eucharists this season. Text portrayal in these two works is dramatically different in both musical style and character. Palestrina’s iconic work uses only the first line of the Psalm and Howells's work is a setting of the first three verses. Howells’s work was composed during wartime bombings of London. Noted English Congregational minister, composer and musicologist Eric Routley writes: Like as the hart is not just a good setting of the musings of a Hebrew Psalmist, but an engagement with the human condition as we all know it: longing, questions, anguish, taunts, doubts – but in the midst of it all, a realization that God is somewhere there to be asked the questions. Howells enables us to own all this for ourselves and, most important of all, to own it within the context of worship, where we do ‘appear before the presence of God’. Below is the text of Psalm 42:
1Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks: so longeth my soul after thee, O God.
2My soul is athirst for God, yea, even for the living God: when shall I come to appear before the presence of God?
3My tears have been my meat day and night: while they daily say unto me, Where is now thy God?
At Compline, we regularly reflect on the end of things so that we may better prepare for the beginning of the coming week. A work that is new to the Schola’s repertoire is Orlando di Lasso’s setting of “Tristis est animae mea”. This text from Matthew 22:38 reads:
My soul is sorrowful even unto death;
stay you here, and watch with me.
Now ye shall see a multitude, that will surround me.
Ye shall run away, and I will go to be sacrificed for you.
This work will be included in a concert on Sunday, April 3 at 8:00 PM entitled “From Death To Life”. This concert will feature the Eastman Organ Department, the Schola Cantorum, and Rochester musicians performing organ and choral music from St. Mary’s in Lübeck Germany. Works by Dieterich Buxtehude, Giovanni Gabrieli, Jacobus Handl, Orlando di Lasso, Franz Tunder, and Jacobus Vaet will be performed. Kerala J. Snyder, Professor Emerita of Musicology, Eastman School of Music (University of Rochester) is the architect of this concert. Organists will be Edoardo Bellotti, David Higgs, Nathan Laube, and William Porter.
I walked alone in a dark wood acrylic on canvas ©2005 T.Jutsum
Ash Wednesday
In a ring the children chant
ashes ashes all fall down
do they know what they say
words that speak our destiny
now visible for all to see.
John Cedarleaf
Candlemas
How do you see, midway winter and spring?
light gaining over dark like refiner’s fire?
How do you see life, in this time, as you are?
Can you see joy confronting so large a thing
as life and not feel glad , part of it, and bring
light to your heart and light to sing
praises to a Holy Templewhere we aspire
to worship the light brought long ago?
Be silent for a moment. Remember light,
the first time you saw it, perhaps the sun
silvering the pine and into shadow sifting.
Be silent for a moment and give sight
to long-forgotten thoughts again spun
as we light hallowed candles lifting
Candlemas, midway winter and spring.
Let light revive our spirits, hope aspire!
How do you see life, in this time, as you are?
Nothing is unbearable. No large or small thing
can undo life if we are bearers of light. Bring
this to your heart, and let the light sing
yes, to where you might not have seen,
yes to where you might not have been
yes, to see another as you
yes to this life as so large a thing
that each bird, each flower, each star
alights in you praises and Holy glow.
Kitty Jospe
Ash Wednesday
A snowflake just kissed the window
as if tossed from the church across
the street—a soft, broad kiss blown
into a whiteflurry as if to say
it’s time to do things a different way.
Slow shake of March, winter grist for Indigo
and missed colors of wings.
Snow kiss taken, listening for the say of things.
(Golden Smoke, p. 64)
Kitty Jospe
Chicago Backyard© Elizabeth Dugdale Spring is around the corner © Renate Eckart
SCHEDULE OF SERVICES AND EVENTS
Ash Wednesday: 12:05pm Holy Eucharist with Ashes
5:30pm Sung Eucharist with Ashes
Maundy Thursday: 12:05pm Holy Eucharist and Stripping of Chapel Altar
7:00pm Sung Eucharist with Stripping of the Main Church Altar
Good Friday: 12 noon - 3pm Passion Liturgy and Stations of the Cross
Easter Vigil: 7:00pm Great Vigil of Easter
Easter Sunday: 8:00am Holy Eucharist in the Chapel
11:00am Festive Eucharist
Shrove Tuesday is still being planned. When I hear something I will let you know. It will be in Sunday's bulletin so I have to know by Thursday morning.
Ruth has a Lenten Series: Thursdays February 18, 25 and March 3, March 10, Lenten Series: "The Jewish Prayers of Jesus and the Psalms of Lent"
Christ Church Youth Ensemble’s Choral Evensong
February 21, 5:00 PM
The Youth Ensemble has been rehearsing for a Choral Evensong that will take place on February 21st at 5:00 PM. The Youth Ensemble will be augmented by members of the Christ Church Choir. Music will include the “In Paradisum” from
Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem.
Jeremy Jelinek, Stacey Yang, and Madeleine Woodworth organists; Elizabeth Wheelwright Harp. Fellow, Davis Badaszewski is the organizer and director of this Liturgy.
This ensemble performs on the third Sunday of each month at the 11:00 AM Eucharist. Rehearsals directed by the VanDelinder Fellows take place on Sundays from 12:25 PM to 1:00 PM.
This ensemble is accepting new members, so please contact
Stephen Kennedy for more information.
