Newsletter, Lent 2024
(I’ve been very lax lately about both submitting content for the parish newsletter, and getting my reports and other non-sermon materials onto this blog. Trying to be better about that!)
Lent has followed hard on the heels of Christmas this year. As I type this I don’t feel remotely ready, but the Pancake Supper will start in 70 minutes!
The Holy Week schedule is included elsewhere in this newsletter, but I wanted to elaborate on one aspect that’s new this year: the Youth Retreat.
In 2020, during lockdown, on Maundy Thursday evening and into Good Friday morning we had a “virtual vigil” before the Reserved Sacrament in my guest room, which many participants found surprisingly meaningful. I simply opened a Zoom link, lit a candle, and let people come and go throughout the night as they wished. Then I reverently disposed of the remaining bread and wine (from our last service in the church on March 15 of that year) in the marshes by the St. Lawrence River, and we didn’t have Eucharist again until Easter of 2021. Since there was no sacrament on Maundy Thursday in 2021, there was also no vigil before it.
In 2022, having installed an alarm system and with many of us still being somewhat cautious about leaving the house, we kept vigil before the sacrament from 9 to midnight and 6 am to noon, but not in the middle of the night.
In 2023, we planned a similar vigil, but it ended up being cancelled when the power went out.
And then it occurred to me, just a few days after Easter of 2023: if the problem is that folks who are getting up in years don’t feel comfortable staffing a vigil in the chapel between midnight and sunrise, get a bunch of teenagers together (people notorious for being awake at antisocial hours) and have them do it!
Hence, the idea for the Holy Week Youth Retreat was born.
Peter Lekx and I are co-leading, and we’re inviting youth from all over the West Island, not all of them Anglican (and if kids from other parts of the metro area want to come, we’re not going to turn them away!). They’ll have dinner and Maundy Thursday worship with the rest of the parish at 6 pm on March 28, and then stay in the church building overnight. We’ll bake hot cross buns, decorate the Alleluia, and have other activities between 9 pm and bedtime. Overnight, we’ll take turns keeping watch in the chapel with the consecrated bread and wine from the Maundy Thursday service. In the morning, we’ll caravan over to Christ Church Beaurepaire, where there will be a Good Friday Breakfast at 10 am.
As I mentioned in church on Sunday, we’ll need a lot of adult chaperones for this event. Neil Mancor has already enthusiastically signed on with Peter and me, as have some of the parents, but we welcome more! However, you don’t need to commit to the whole event – the more adults volunteer to come in even for an hour, the more sleep the overnight chaperones can get! We’ll have a sign-up sheet up soon, you won’t have to worry about the alarm, and there will be lights on and plenty of people in the building (even if a lot of us are asleep).
I’m really looking forward to bringing this experience to our youth to help them understand the importance of Holy Week. Thank you in advance for your help, and have a blessed Lent!
In God’s peace,
Grace+
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