Sunday, April 4, Easter Day
Almighty God, who through your only-begotten Son Jesus Christ overcame death and opened to us the gate of everlasting life: Grant that we, who celebrate with joy the day of the Lord's resurrection, may be raised from the death of sin by your life-giving Spirit; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Sunday, April 4 is Easter Day. Find the readings here.
Dear Friends in Christ,
This week’s worship videos are now available.
Morning Prayer, Rite II
Morning Prayer, Rite I
Alleluia! Christ is risen.
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!
Happy Easter, one and all! I hope you are celebrating as joyfully and faithfully as our circumstances allow. You'll see that Mark and our choir have outdone themselves again for our worship video today. We are also blessed with an excellent sermon by our diocesan Canon for Immigration & Multicultural Ministries, The Rev. Canon Jean Baptiste Ntagengwa, Th.D. His preaching is thoughtful and urgent, timeless and topical, personal and accessible — don't miss it.
Special thanks to everyone who has made our observance of Easter something special this year: our staff, our flower guild, our choir, and our volunteer leaders who took initiative and created delightful Easter gift bags for our members and friends. (If you didn't get one, please let me know so we can include you.)
Like last Sunday, you'll notice that in the video, we're using images of our church decorated for Easter in place of the usual artwork. Thanks again to Mark for sharing those with us.
I think it's time to allow fully vaccinated people back in church without restrictions, so I hope and pray that our bishops will relax their regathering guidelines so that in-person worship will be a realistic option for us. They said not to expect any changes until April 19, though, and I'll be on vacation April 18-24, so please bear with us.
And what better way to bear with us than by joining your church family for coffee (or bubbly, if you're feeling particularly festive) hour at noon:
• To join on a computer, tablet, or smartphone with the Zoom app installed, click here: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86398096400?pwd=dk5oTjNkYzNIOVl4TEExcCtiZEw2dz09
• To call in on a smartphone, tap here: +16465588656,,86398096400#,,,,,,0#,,296917#
• To call in on a conventional phone, call (646) 558-8656 then enter the Meeting ID: 863 9809 6400 and the Passcode: 296917
Here are Mark's music notes:
What can we say about Easter Music? And during a pandemic, for more than a year? Well, we’ve all done very well, as young Mr. Grace might put it. We’ve included several of our favorite things to sing that have adapted pretty well to our ways of doing things, the “Jubilate” canon which we’ve added a little surprise at the end. We’ve also sung our Easter Troparion “Christ is Risen from the Dead,” with its characteristic stamping. The major effort is the Te Deum which was introduced to us by Marjorie Fergusson several years back. She wondered if I knew it, that she had sung it every Sunday at church back in Sierra Leone. I managed to find it and found this charming setting by a “Jackson of Exeter,” which for a time was “sung in every village church in England” back in the early 19th century. It was exported to the British colonies where, in places, it is still sung! This is the longest piece we’ve done! Easter Blessings to you all!