Sunday Mornings
10:00 am Morning Prayer and the Holy Communion (with music)
with organ prelude/postlude, and hymns sung from the Hymnal 1940. Prayers and Scripture readings are taken from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer and the King James Bible. For more detailed information, check the current Liturgy Calendar.
Current Liturgical Season: The Easter Season
Easter Day is the day that Jesus rose from the dead. This is the reason that from the beginning the church has gathered on Sunday to celebrate the Eucharist. In the Eucharist the Risen Christ is “known to us in the breaking of the bread.” Jesus rose from the dead on Easter in his body, which had been changed from mortal to immortal. He demonstrated his bodily presence to his disciples by showing them his scars (John 20:20, Luke 24:39-40) and by eating in their presence. The resurrected body of Jesus is the model for our resurrection hope.
Easter is a day and a season. The forty day fast of Lent prepared us for Easter. Now we celebrate the Resurrection with a forty day season of Easter. This reflects the teaching of Acts 1:3 that the Risen Christ appeared to his disciples for “forty days” before his Ascension.
During Eastertide, our prayer shifts from Lenten fasting and penitence to Easter feasting and joy. We develop a rule of prayer for Easter, just as we did for Lent. Prayer is not abandoned, but the focus shifts. In the joy and celebration of Easter we seek to maintain what St. Augustine called the “fruit of the fast”-the growth in self control and love that the fast produced in us.
From Father Rick:
At Eastertide, I often get questions about how we number the Eastertide Sundays;
“Jesus rose from the dead ‘on the first day of the week.’ Because it is the ‘first day,’ the day of Christ’s resurrection recalls the first creation. Because it is the ‘eighth day’ following the sabbath, it symbolizes the new creation ushered in by Christ’s resurrection. For Christians it has become the first of all days, the first of all feasts, the Lord’s Day—Sunday.”
So, Easter Sunday is its own day-not Easter I. Our Book of Common Prayer establishes this concept by counting first, second, third etc. Sundays after Easter.