Advent Evening Study of Handel's Messiah

Wednesday evening at 7:00 we will pick up the Advent portion of the study we began during Lent. This is study of the biblical texts used in the Messiah, and of how they are used in the oratorio. We will listen to some small portions of the Messiah, but no musical knowledge or ability is required. The first section was quite interesting. I hope you can join this Wednesday, and December 7, 14, & 21. It is not necessary to attend every session.

Clip of the performance

Clip of the performance 2

Free Chamber Concert Sunday, October 30, 4 p.m. Church of the Holy Communion St. Peter featuring organist Stephen May from the Cathedral of Our Merciful Saviour in Faribault wind quintet Flariboneba Come enjoy: Organ and wind music by Bach, Dvorak, Franck, Haydn, and Handel arranged by Stephen May Expert organ solos with Stephen May Beautiful hymn arrangements with Flariboneba, including Mankato Symphony Orchestra and Faribault musicians: Kris Raaen, flute; Martha Lindberg, oboe; Phyllis Bongard, clarinet; Joel Raaen, trombone; Al Tonn, tuba The concert will feature sacred and Classical music, and the organ at the Church of the Holy Communion. A freewill offering will be taken.

Soren Kirkegaard

Join us this Wednesday, the 19th at 7:00 PM
for Doug Huff's talk on Soren Kirkegaard.

Bishop Visits this evening

Please join us for pot luck supper with Bishop Brian Prior this evening at 6:00,

and Doug's talk on Dietrich Bonhoeffer Wednesday evening at 7:00.

Fall Job Search Trainings, Sept. 7, Oct. 5 and Nov. 2

Finding a job can be difficult, especially in today’s economy. If you’re currently unemployed there is help. Church of the Holy Communion is offering a job search training.

You can learn an easy 6 step program to find the job you've been looking for.
The training runs from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm and is being offered on the first Wednesday of September, October, and November. That's September 7, October 5, and November 2.

This could hold the key to your success. It's free, and lunch is provided.

The Episcopal Church of the Holy Communion is located on Highway 169, in St. Peter.
For more information or to register call Tom Harries at 507-934-2542

Celebration of our Nation with the Riverblenders

On Thursday June 30 at 7:30 PM the Church of the Holy Communion will offer a joyful service of prayer, patriotic hymns, and songs in celebration of our nation. We are truly blessed to live in a country so rich in cultures, resources, and freedom. As we begin the observance of the Fourth of July holiday, we invite everyone to give thanks and praise to God for the many blessings bestowed upon our great nation.

God dwells in the world

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being. (John 1:1-3)
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, (John 1:14)

The created world can be thought of as God’s house, God’s home. According to its Greek derivation, the word “ecology” means “the doctrine of the house.” We Anglicans are particularly incarnational in our understanding. That means we treat Jesus’ presence in the flesh of the world as a type or perfect example of something more generally true. God is present within and among the created world. God inhabits the world, dwells in it. Since God also created the world we are reminded that the world belongs to God. We are guests in God’s house.

When I am a guest in someone’s home, I try harder than at my own house to treat the place with care. I don’t want to spill coffee on the furniture or make a watermark on the table because the owners have invested themselves in choosing and caring for them. Some people are more concerned about such things than others, of course, but the question is not whether they will be upset. It is part of my respect for the hosts to careful of their place.

Some of you have heard me tell of my stay at the Mad Carpenter Inn in Laramie, Wyoming. It is an old house that has been lovingly renovated and refurbished by the owner, a gifted carpenter. He added every imaginable decorative flourish as he replaced trim, floors, and wainscoting throughout. Guests naturally respond to the beautiful wood with exclamations of wonder. They also take extra care not scratch, break, or watermark anything. This strikes me as a fine example of how people ought to treat the Earth God has so carefully created—with gentleness and care.
If we want to preserve the world in a condition to sustain ourselves and our grandchildren, not to mention passing its beauty to them.

The paradigm of dominating the earth…needs to be replaced by the paradigm of inhabiting the earth, which aims at establishing compatible and sustaining forms of interaction between humans and nature.

We are welcome guests in God’s house—beloved children whom God is more than happy to shelter and feed. But we’re not toddlers anymore. So let’s treat this wonderful world with the respect and care due the home of one who loves us.

Shalom,
~Tom
The Rev. Thomas D. Harries

Palm Sunday Procession

Bring drums, cymbals, or whatever you have for making a joyful noise as we recall Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem.

The day is supposed to be sunny, though chilly. We'll gather in the parish hall for blessing of the palms, then those who are able are invited to process out, around, and in by the main doors of the church.

Once inside, the tone shifts dramatically as we move to a dramatic reading of the Passion.

Hope to see you there.
~Tom

Lenten Discipline

It’s not too late to adopt a Lenten discipline.

The season of Lent is a time of preparation for Holy Week and Easter. And part of the preparation is to repent of our sins. “Repent”, as you will recall, means turn away from. Therefore, the best possible Lenten discipline would be one in which you either give up a harmful activity (turn from a sin of commission), or take on a loving one (rectify a sin of omission).

It’s not popular in our upbeat, positive-thinking, success-oriented culture to think about our sinfulness. It’s a downer. In addition, our individualism discourages us from taking any responsibility for the sins of our government or our economic system. I suppose, if one is completely unaware of ever hurting anyone, one will not feel guilt or the need for forgiveness. But most people who look at their lives honestly realize that they are, in fact, prone to sin.

Given that realization, the question becomes, “What are we to do?” We can pretend we have no transgressions, but it’s difficult to fool our own subconscious, which usually finds some subtle way of making us feel worthless. We can look for someone to blame for our shortcomings, a common approach among those with just enough knowledge of psychotherapy to be dangerous. We can project what we don’t like about ourselves onto others, which is a large part of racism. All of these are like taking Tylenol. They ease the pain, but don’t remove its cause.

Or we can take the high, hard, narrow road by looking with clear sight at our own sins, repenting, and asking God’s forgiveness. That is the only way we can actually be set free from our sins. We may still not avoid their natural consequences. But if we can fully receive God’s forgiveness, we can escape the burden of guilt.

The idea behind a Lenten discipline is that it reminds us to look clearly at our sinfulness and repent of it. Thereby the triumph of Christ over every sin and even over death at Easter is made all the more meaningful to us. For we realize what a great blessing it is to be forgiven. And we relive during Holy Week and Easter the events that made such blessed forgiveness possible.

God bless you.

The Practice of Lent

Dear People of God: The first Christians observed with great devotion the days of our Lord’s passion and resurrection, and it became the custom of the Church to prepare for them by a season of penitence and fasting. ... I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word. ~BCP 264-5, Ash Wednesday
"What are you giving up for Lent this year?” was a common question when I was a kid. Why would we prepare by fasting?
One traditional reason which we no longer accept is the idea behind asceticism in general: that the body of flesh and its desires are bad and only the higher things of mind and spirituality are valuable or good in the eyes of God. In this view you mortify the flesh in order to subdue its desires and thereby get closer to God. This mind-body dualism comes from Plato and the church fathers rather than from the Jewish tradition in which Jesus was raised. It did get into Christianity very early and we've only fairly recently got rid of it, mostly.
The basic idea of taking time during these 40 days to prepare to receive and celebrate the great blessing of God at Easter, however, is still useful and good. Even fasting and self-denial can have their place when understood not as punishment but as a means to draw our attention toward God. Approached this way the body becomes our ally not our enemy. If you deny yourself something that you ordinarily enjoy for the sake of preparation and spiritual growth, then each time desire arises you can use that as a cue to pray or give thanks instead. Fasting can work in a similar way. When hunger arises and you experience a yearning for food, you can use that as a reminder of your yearning for God and for a world filled with God's justice and peace.
Self-examination is also very helpful but we want to get beyond the traditional implication of self-judgment. St. Ignatius, who created the Ignatian exercises—one of the earliest organized systems for spiritual growth in the Christian tradition—taught a daily practice called the examination of consciousness, often referred to simply as the examen. You can do it in your head, but it's even better to write it in a journal so that you can look back from time to time and see where you've been. In doing the examen you basically ask three questions—two of yourself and one of God.
You ask yourself, “In what ways have I been blessed today? Or, “What am I thankful for?” Make a list. At least three items. Challenge yourself not to use the same three things all the time but to expand your appreciation. Give thanks to God. Then you ask, “Did I do anything harmful, for which I need forgiveness?” and “Is there anything I'm struggling with, where I want God's help?” Finally you ask God directly for forgiveness and help with these things.
This deceptively simple exercise has transformed many people down through the years, bringing them to a place of greater hope and joy in God.

Gratitude for one very tiny part of Creation

Dear Friends,

Wonder and gratitude, along with humor are among the best ways to honor God and give flight to the spirit. Lately I've been rereading Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything and I came across this passage, which made me wonder again at the amazing intricacy God has brought into being.

"Every cell in nature is a thing of wonder. Even the simplest are far beyond the limits of human ingenuity. To build the most basic yeast cell, for example, you would have to miniaturize about the same number of components as are found in a Boeing 777 jetliner and fit them into a sphere just five microns across; then somehow you would have to persuade that sphere to reproduce.

"But yeast cells are as nothing compared with human cells, which are not just more varied and complicated, but vastly more fascinating because of their complex interactions.

"Your cells are a country of ten thousand trillion citizens, each devoted in some intensively specific way to your overall well-being. There isn't a thing they don't do for you. They let you feel pleasure and form thoughts. They enable you to stand and stretch and caper. When you eat, they extract the nutrients, distribute the energy, and carry off the wastes ... but they also remember to make you hungry in the first place and reward you with a feeling of well-being afterward so that you won't forget to eat again. They keep your hair growing, your ears waxed, your brain quietly purring."

There is an old old saying that God inspired the creation of two bibles. One was written out by hand and later printed and comes to us as words on a page. The other is all around and within us and consists of creation itself.

This is not the most auspicious time, here in Minnesota, to appreciate the glories of nature. As I write we're about to have an ice storm. Yet even now, if we consider our own bodies with their remarkable capabilities or use our mysterious imaginative minds to transform little black squiggles into meaning we will find ample cause for wonder and praise.

I wish you a New Year filled with joy and wonder in all God's works.