‘Weekly Post. Anno Domini 2024 February 17

Beloved of the Lord:

Today is Saturday, 17 February, in the year of our Lord 2024. Due to the interruption in the heating system in the Parish Hall, the Potluck supper has been cancelled, but there will be a coffee hour, as-per usual. All other scheduled activities for Sunday will proceed as-planned. The services for the week are as-follows:

• Saturday (today): 5:00 PM, Mass, Lenten Feria.
• Sunday: 10:00 AM, ONE MASS ONLY, Lent I, including the installment of our Vestry, Altar Guild, and Lay Readers.
• Monday: 10:00 AM, Mass, Lenten Feria.
• Tuesday: 5:30 PM, Mass, Lenten Feria.
  6:30 PM, Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, followed-by Evensong.
• Wednesday: 12:10 PM, Mass, Ember Wednesday.
• Thursday: NO SERVICES.
• Friday: 10:00 AM, Matins.
  Immediately following, Stations of the Cross.
  5:00 PM, Stations of the Cross.
• Saturday: NO SERVICES.
• Sunday: 8:30 & 10:00 AM, Mass, Lent II.

As-noted above, tomorrow, Sunday, will see one Mass, and the Installation of the Parish Guilds. There will be NO POTLUCK, only the usual coffee hour. Deacon Collins and I will be attending the Spring Clericus (gathering of the Clergy) of the OAC, in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. As-such, the service schedule towards the end of the week has been modified. Attend accordingly, and say your offices at home during those times that services have been cancelled.

Great Lent having begun on Ash Wednesday, and tomorrow being the First Sunday in Lent, we are now well-into this Season of Satan, sin, and death. We must now, with great intention, and even greater faith, force ourselves, like Dante, to go further in, and further downward, first in our minds, and then, in the deepest, darkest recesses, into our hearts. The time has come, and now is....

Our Jewish forbears had a rather different construct than do we for the metaphorical heart. To them, it was the seat of thought and reason, unlike we 'moderns', who assign these to the mind, located in the brain. Thus, the heart, to us, bears the burdens and vicissitudes of our emotions.

Regardless of where we seat these things at our inner table, we must begin with thoughts. Emotions are the beginning of all things, but to make them comprehensible, and then relatable, they must be transmitted, or handed-over, from the heart to the mind, which begins to shape and categorise them into some form that may leave the inner landscape, and enter the outer world. Having been so refined, these emotionally generated thoughts are returned to the heart, where the determination of whether-or-not to release them ~ act-upon them ~ into the world outside of ourselves is made.

Since these emotion-thoughts begin and end in the heart, why do we commence our search for ourselves in the mind? Simply put, this is the easiest point for us to access. When travelling inward, it appears as the interface between ourselves and others; hence, the first thing that we see.

What are we seeking there? The ways of our mind are the initial subject of our journey to self. Are we mostly concerned with ourselves? or others? or God? or His Church? or do we think of Him and His only a little, if at-all in our daily rounds? Our mind is largely a slave to our heart, but in those free moments, if such exist, where does the mind, of its own volition, so-to-speak, go, and why?

Begin your Lenten searching here. What do I think, and why do I think it? How does ~ or why doesn't ~ my mind consider God? How do I understand God, and His role in my life ~ what do I think of Him, and His Son, and the Holy Ghost? What is my relationship to Him? Ready ... set ... go! for the discovery of the foundation of your Lenten construct. I remain

in His praise,

The Rev'd Canon. T. L. Crowder

Pastor, Saint Matthew's Parish