‘Weekly Post. Anno Domini 2023 October 24

Beloved of the Lord:

Today is Tuesday, 24 October, in the year of our Lord 2023. The scheduled services are as-follows:

• Tuesday (today): 6:30 PM, Mass, monthly Parish Requiem.
• Wednesday: 12:10 PM, Mass, Saints Crispin & Crispinian, Martyrs.
• Thursday: 6:30 PM, Mass, Blessed Alfred the Great, King & Confessor, followed by Soup & Study.
• Friday: 9:00 AM, Mass, Vigil of Saints Simon & Jude, with the Gregorian Canon.
  Immediately following, Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.
• Saturday: 5:00 PM, Mass, Saints Simon & Jude, Apostles & Martyrs.
• Sunday: 8:30 & 10:00 AM, Mass, Trinity XXI & Christ the King.
  Monthly Parish Brunch at County Grill following 10:00 service.

Do not forget the Parish Brunch, scheduled for this Sunday after the 10:00 service. There will be no coffee hour, and we will all depart immediately after the Mass has ended. Also, one week from today, on Tuesday, 31 October, we will have our Second Annual Trunk and Treat. We can never have too many trunks or treats, so please remember to volunteer! Sherri Fosdick will leading this event; please contact her for details, and to sign-up to serve.

It is astounding how quickly this year has passed. We will reach the Feast of Christ the King this week; in another five weeks, Advent will commence, and with it, the beginning of a new Church Year. Time flies, and carries us along with it.

As time passes, hopefully bringing many new and good things with it, we also know that time takes many, many things from us, in its inexorable flow. As you all know, Pepper passed in the beginning of July, this year. I was texting with one of my dearest Cousins, this-past week, and happened to catch her as she was at the 'vet with her dog, Dash. 'Long story short, in an unexpected developement, she had to have Dash put-down as we were texting. A few days later, another friend from out West lost her little friend, Benny. 'Just in the past few days, Linda Scharff's daughter, Malia, lost her wee Lilly Bean, of whom Giada was especially fond.

I some times suspect that our animal friends are, on the whole, closer to our Creator than are we. The random unkindnesses and cruelties that we perpetrate, the innate selfishness that we carry within us, and the host of other offenses that we regularly commit, are not practiced by them. Their love is unconditional, and, beyond this, self-sacrificing, as a rule.

The beauty and the glory that we see in the world around us, in nature, are the shards, the reflective remnants of God's intentions for how this world was to have been. So too we see His Son, not only in creation, but in these small, animal-borne responses to us. It is the Spirit that enables us to see, and to know, the essence, the primary relationships between all things, as God the Father intended them to be. As His will continues, let us pray that it be the river that eventually sweeps us along, and up, ever closer to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and the promises they made in Creation, still present to be seen, and heard, if we but look and listen for them, some times in the innocency of those closest to us. I remain

in His praise,

The Rev'd Canon. T. L. Crowder

Pastor, Saint Matthew's Parish