Incumbent’s Report, January 23, 2022
The 2022 Confirmation class!
The last two months have included a lot of highs and lows at All Saints’ by the Lake.
The second annual Virtual Bazaar was a resounding success, and at the beginning of Advent we re-started weekly morning prayers and Bible study on Wednesdays, offering it in a hybrid format. On December 12, Lessons & Carols triumphantly returned in person, with a church full to the maximum capacity and the choir singing live for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic.
All four confirmands and their teachers met for the second time on December 19 to begin learning about the Bible. Over the coming months, they will also interview longtime parish members, help to put on an Easter Vigil service, and carry out an outreach project. The Confirmation service is scheduled for Pentecost (June 5, 2022). Adults who wish to be confirmed or received are more than welcome to plan to be part of that service as well, so if you’ve never formally joined the Anglican church and would like to do so (or would like to reaffirm your baptismal vows), please let me know!
Sadly, as the Christmas holidays approached, the new Omicron variant once again threw a wrench into many of our plans. With just a few days’ notice, we pivoted back to broadcasting from the church for Christmas Eve and Christmas I, and then, as of January 2 (Christmas II) to Zoom church from home. Enormous thanks to Chris Grocholski and Dion Lewis, the Tech Committee, Jennifer Gibb, Terry Hidichuk, Peter Lekx, Margaret Beattie, and everyone else who worked overtime to pull it off!
All of the above services were Eucharist, with pre-consecrated wafers being made available to those who wished to pick them up. The Worship Committee then met for an “emergency” meeting on January 4 and decided to switch back to Morning Prayer as the standard Sunday service until the churches are allowed to open again. We plan to include some variations such as Morning Prayer from the Book of Common Prayer, over the coming weeks.
Planning is underway for Shrove Tuesday (March 1) and Ash Wednesday (March 2); stay tuned for more! And of course the Annual Vestry will be held in February 2022. I am delighted to announce that Linda Smith has accepted my invitation to join the Corporation as a Deputy Warden, and Raymond Noël, who is completing his term as Warden, will transition to Building Committee Chair, which will preserve his remarkable breadth of institutional memory about the church building! We still welcome nominations (self or others!) for Newsletter Editor and Buiding Concierge.
Just before Christmas, we also bade a sad farewell to Bob Morell and Camille Isaacs-Morell, who are leaving the parish after fifteen years of active and faithful ministry. They will be deeply missed, but we wish them well and look forward to seeing them around the Diocese.
The parish will participate as a congregation in the Montreal Dio online course on the Acts of the Apostles in Lent, taught by our own Rev’d Dr. Professor Heather McCance. There are two baptisms that were scheduled for January 9 and which will take place when it’s possible to hold those services, and at least one more planned (God willing!) for Easter Sunday (April 17).
As of this writing (January 20), hospitalizations for COVID-19 in Quebec have dropped for the first time in several weeks. We fervently pray that the peak of the Omicron surge is here, and that cases will drop quickly, enabling the relaxation of restrictions and the return to in-person church.
We are heartened that despite the rapid spread of Omicron, we are still not aware of any examples of COVID being spread at All Saints’. Numerous households in the parish have come down with the virus over the last month, but all have recovered well, and as far as we know, nobody caught it at church. This is a tribute to the work of our leadership and the quality of our caring for each other – even if that means not seeing each other in the flesh! We pray for those who remain ill or in other difficulties, and we hope that we will be able to gather in person this Easter as we were not for the Easters of 2020 and 2021.
I wish everyone a warm and safe winter, and every blessing in 2022!
Peace,
Grace+
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