Reflections: it seems we know very little of what it was like when our Lord was born of Mary into the world. It is mostly shrouded in mystery … seemingly confined to a little stable and a few shepherds and wise men. In contrast, we know a lot more of what happened when His Spirit left from the Cross. The earth darkened as the sun went out. Graves opened and the dead walked the streets. The earth quaked … the temple veil, a massive wall of the strongest cloth, rent in two. No doubt the whole planet groaned and shuddered. The loss of God’s Grace from among us was as terrible as anything could be and still not destroy us during those dark hours before His return on Easter morning. Read the rest of this entry »

Wednesdays: No services this Wednesday 23 December. Wednesday services resume next week December 30th.

Please note that our Choral Mass for the Vigil of the Nativity of Our Lord will begin at 6pm on Thursday 24 December. There will be a Low Mass for the Nativity of Our Lord at 10am on Christmas Day.

Next Sunday December 27th, Feast of St. John Apostle,   Morning Prayer at 9:30am; Choral Mass at 11am.

If you are planning to bring a Poinsettia to adorn the chapel, please bring them by Sunday 20th Dec, and latest by Wednesday 23rd.

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On the Third Sunday of Advent, we anticipate heaven as we participate in the living Liturgy of the Church and  we pray for those guiding us as we dwell here in our in between time. Look again at the charge the Bishop gives the new priest on p. 340 of the Book of Common Prayer, including “the horrible punishment that will ensue” if he were to fall short of his calling.

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Our Advent II Gospel is a real mind twister if we don’t have a saving and reassuring belief based upon Holy Scripture. Our Lord spells it out in stark clarity. There is no analogy or exquisite symbolism …  He tells it like it is and will be. It is a dramatic and frightening account of the ruination of the world - the end of the world as we know it:

“Jesus said unto his disciples, There shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring; men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.” Read the rest of this entry »

The grand theme of this First Advent Sunday is one of Judgment AND Hope.  The scale of perspective is huge … stretching across all time, past, present and future. Judgment looking back … and Hope looking forward.  We look backwards towards the millennia of reasons for our judgment by God.  And look forwards towards hope for mercy and salvation from God. Read the rest of this entry »

In this Sunday’s Collect of “Sunday Next” we are urged to stir up our wills and bring forth plenteously the fruit of our good works so that we may be plenteously rewarded by God. It’s time to ponder and pray how we are to tithe to support our part of the Bride of Christ, St Ann Chapel. Appended below is our Pledge Letter which we send to all donor members at this time of the year so that we can responsibly budget for the year ahead. St. Ann in its short life has always slipped by on the thinnest of operating margins; and this year it appears we  are dropping below that and possibly face cuts in the choir and clergy budgets. So I am urging us all, who love St. Ann Chapel and the faithful and true Anglo-Catholic liturgy and doctrine, to stir ourselves to pray and seek Our Lord’s guidance about how we should each respond to her need. For those of you who worship here occasionally I’m asking you to consider a small pledge to add to the others and thereby in communion with each other help lift her backup into comforting solvency. These outposts of the “faith once delivered” such as St. Ann are important to so many remnant folk that it’s a holy cause to keep them there and viable. So please do what you can. THANK YOU!

“Repent ye; for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”

A  Bible memory verse: Jeremiah xxiii,

“The Lord liveth”

Wednesdays: Evening Prayer 5:45, Low Mass 6pm, and Bible study 6:45 on the Gospel of St. John (picking up at John 2:13)

Thursday November 26th, Thanksgiving Day, Low Mass 10am.

Next Sunday November 29th, First Sunday in Advent,  Morning Prayer at 9:30am; Choral Mass at 11am.

Where is our citizenship? I think most of us most of the time don’t really know and it can be quite a shock “to have your papers checked”, as it were. This is a very good thing to figure out before that final papers check at the departure gate. What does your passport say? Read the rest of this entry »

“Seventy times seven”?! When Jesus, the author of all moral principles, tells Peter to never give up forgiving his brother, he’s laying out a hard truth for him and the other disciples as He is describing what the Kingdom is like. But why do we have this hard saying, this impossible requirement laid upon us  too? Two reasons. One about us and the other about God. Read the rest of this entry »

This Holy Sunday, we moved from one of the latest feasts to be established in Catholic observance, Christ the King, to what is probably the earliest, the Feast of All Saints. By the time of St. Polycarp in the second century, a disciple of St. John Apostle, there had arisen the holy and very human custom of celebrating the lives of exemplary Christians martyrs. Read the rest of this entry »

This past Sunday we celebrated The Feast of Christ the King. As a feast it is very recent in church time. In 1925 Pope Pius XI regarding a world torn by WWI and increasingly filled with tyranny and godless states, proclaimed a high feast to declare the Kingship of Jesus Christ over all the world … and to pray for the peoples of the world to recognize that Kingship. Read the rest of this entry »