‘Weekly Post. Anno Domini 2024 March 16

Beloved of the Lord:

Today is Saturday, 16 March, in the year of our Lord 2024. The scheduled services are as-follows:

• Saturday (today): 5:00 PM, Mass, Lenten Feria.
• Sunday: 8:30 & 10:00 AM, Mass, Passion Sunday (Lent V).
• Monday: 10:00 AM, Mass, S. Cyril of Jerusalem, Bishop, Confessor, Doctor.
• Tuesday: 5:30 PM, Mass, S. Joseph, Spouse of the BVM, sung Mass.
  6:30 PM, Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, Evensong.
• Wednesday: 12:10 PM, Mass, S. Cuthbert, Bishop & Confessor.
• Thursday: 6:30 PM, Mass, S. Benedict, Abbot, followed by Soup & Study.
• Friday: 10:00 AM, Mass, Compassion of the BVM.
  Immediately following, Stations of the Cross.
  Immediately following, Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.
  5:00 PM, Stations of the Cross.
• Saturday: 5:00 PM, Mass, Lenten Feria.
• Sunday: 8:30 & 10:00 AM, Mass, Palm Sunday. Parish Brunch following the 10:00 Service, at Marker 20 in Hampton.

Tomorrow begins Passiontide, the final approach of our Lord to His Cross. There will be changes, both visually in the Church, and audibly in some of our prayers, indicating the progressing Season. As Holy Church prepares for the coming Sacrifice, so must we all, in our hearts and minds, prepare for the horror, and our role in it.

At the end of the preceding 'Weekly Post, the question was raised as to whether we can exert any control over our thoughts and emotions. Though very briefly, it was answered with a 'yes'. Let us examine why that not only is, but must be, so.

To have answered that question in any other way would negate that we were made free; free in our minds and wills to choose, or to deny, the Christ, above many others choices that we may make. All of our salvation depends-upon this freedom. We must choose to follow Jesus, and choose freely.

If there is no free choice, if our salvation does not depend-upon, at-least in-part, our participation, then no understanding of salvation that has been held- or espoused-by the Church, over these millennia, may stand. For us to have no role therein reduces us to automatons, with every part of our lives having been determined by our creator. Without choice, even our love for Him would be meaningless, existing only as a programmed response, hard-wired from the beginning. This is precisely where protestants, most especially calvinists, fail. Calvin must deny free choice as an element of salvation, lest his notion of the elect be reduced to a non sequitor. He misses the very point, the heart, of our having been created by God. Just as we chose to crucify Him, so too we may choose to repent for this, and follow him. As a side note, to suggest that our Lord would choose to condemn anyone to Hell, without the possibility of altering that outcome, denies any common understanding of a loving Father in Heaven, and introduces a cruelty in-place-of that love that I, as a worshipping Christian, cannot accept.

Now, where are we? If we have prayed, and searched, and prostrated, and sacrificed correctly, over these recent weeks, we should have arrived at a clearer understanding of who we are. If this has been done, hopefully the intellectual framework that has been presented herein has become a matrix, to hold, in proper order, the results of your searchings. I pray that, at whatever level, some of this has been fruitful to you, in your reflections. I remain

in His praise,

The Rev'd Canon. T. L. Crowder

Pastor, Saint Matthew's Parish