“Sing unto the Lord a new song,” says the psalmist. The Episcopal Church’s Canon II.6.1 requires each minister of the church to “see that music is used as an offering for the glory of God and as a help to the people in their worship.” But even if music were not required of us by the decree of both God and church,…

Holy week began on the Sunday before Easter with two services rolled into one: the reenactment of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem in the Liturgy of the Palms, followed by the Dramatic reading of the story of Jesus’ betrayal and death in our Passion Sunday service (‘passion’ comes from the Latin word ‘passio,’ which means ‘suffering’). After that we will walk through…

Every year on Ash Wednesday this day I am struck by the strange contradiction that we read the Gospel lesson in which Jesus tells us not to disfigure our faces when we fast, and then we disfigure our faces with ashes to begin our Lenten fast. One thing we need to bear in mind, though, as we remember Jesus’ words and prepare ourselves for a…