Lenten rituals

You are invited during Lent to participate in two practices—both on Wednesdays—February 21-March 20.

4:45pm Stations of the Cross (in the church)
“The Stations of the Cross is a devotion dating from the late Middle Ages and encouraged by the Franciscans, yet it is only in the last two or three hundred years that the number and sequence of stations have become established. Nowadays it has become common for a fifteenth station—the Resurrection—to be added. Occasionally those stations not explicitly derived from the Passion story in the gospels are omitted.

“A variety of different approaches to the Stations of the Cross has developed. The Stations of the Cross may be a public service or a personal devotion. The series may be used as a whole on one occasion or one station may be used each day for meditation. Pcitures or sculptures mounted on the walls of the church allow one to move from station to station, for public and personal use, but the devotion also works well at home, perhaps with the assistance of pictures.” —A Manual of Anglo-Catholic Devotion

5:15pm Holy Hour (in the Chapel of the Nativity)
“This devotion developed from the custom of keeping vigil in a chapel where the Blessed Sacrament was reserved during the time between the Maundy Thursday Mass of the Lord’s Supper and the Good Friday Liturgy. These reflections can be used to guide your prayer as part of a watch during those profound and holy hours. At other times, they can be used as a form of prayer in the presence of the Sacrament. It can be a time of worship and adoration with meditation on this aspect of our Lord’s passion , or it can be a way of working toward that simple but demanding prayer, ‘Thy will be done.’” —Saint Augustine’s Prayer Book