Laetare Sunday at St. Stephen's

The altar is looking a bit rosy this Rose Sunday

Thank you to all re St. Stephen-ites who helped out at the Food Bank today. 

The week of March 25

Join us this week at St. Stephen’s

Wednesday March 27 –

6:00 p.m. – Holy Eucharist

Fr. Jamie, celebrant/Sandy Holbrook, preacher

James Mackay, music

No incense will be offered at Mass during Lent.

Soup supper following

Friday March 29

6:00 – Stations of the Cross

Sunday March 31  – 4 Lent/Laetare  

11:00 a.m. – Holy Eucharist

Dedication and Blessing of the new Retable

Fr. Jamie, celebrant/preacher

Children’s Chapel

Coffee Hour following

Join John Peter Anderson this morning at Mass, who will be offering healing prayer and anointing following Holy Communion.

Sermon by Pastor Robert Drake from tonight's Mass

Thank you to Pastor Robert Drake for his sermon on St. Oscar Romero this evening at Mass. Here is his sermon:

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How appropriate to die during Lent.

How appropriate to consider a small seed, a grain of wheat falling into the

earth,       dying,      and then sprouting anew,        bearing much fruit.

How appropriate to hate my life so much

that I willingly give my life to Jesus Christ.

How inappropriate each of those statements.

They are inappropriate because they are overly simplistic.

39 years ago, Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated while in the middle of consecrating the Eucharist. March 24, 1980. Lent.

Easter that year was April 6.

It would be overly simplistic of me to suggest that Romero was

like a grain of wheat dying in a field and bearing fruit.

It would be overly simplistic of me to suggest anyone of us could “hate”

our life to such a degree

that we would be as willing as Oscar Romero to give it up.

How overly simplistic to read Romero’s writings and immediately take them to heart.           In a 1977 mass, Romero said,

“Christ the Redeemer needs human suffering, needs the pain of those holy mothers who suffer, needs the anguish of prisoners to suffer tortures. Blessed are those who are chosen to continue on earth the great injustice suffered by Christ…”

Romero’s words, like the man himself, are more complex.

Likewise, John’s words in the Gospel reading are more complex.

I do not think “hating” our life is what the Apostle John had in mind when he wrote,

“those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”

John uses the Greek work “μισέω”, correctly translated, “hate.”

Though this English word does a poor job encompassing

John’s full meaning.

John does not want us to “hate” ourselves in the psychological sense. Rather, John intends a more relational aspect of the verb “μισέω”.

He wants us to disown,

to renounce,

to reject everything in our life that is not dedicated to Jesus Christ.

John seeks an exclusivity in our life, an exclusivity in our spiritual life. John calls us to a life separated from the world in a spiritual sense

and joined to the life of Jesus, also in a spiritual sense.

We disown our life,

renounce our life,

reject our life, in favor of our eternal life with Jesus Christ.    Now.

Not later, not in the life to come, but in this life now, here on earth.

But, we do not disown our obligations in our physical world,

to ourselves,

for our society, or

to our neighbor.

We do not “μισέω” our physical needs

nor do we “μισέω” the needs of the poor.

This distinction, between the spiritual and the corporeal,

between the eternal nature of spirit

and the temporality of human physical needs,

this is why Romero is a complicated figure, is why his death cannot be

symbolized as the grain of wheat dying to bear fruit.

When he received an honorary doctorate from the

Catholic University of Leuven in February of 1980,

he gave a speech in which he talked about the persecution of the church.

But he noted that not all parts of the church were under attack, not all parts of the church were being persecuted.

Only those priests,

only those bishops,

only those nuns who put themselves on the

“side of the people, and went to the people’s defense” were under attack.

He closed his speech with the following sentence,

“Here again, we find the same key to understanding the persecution

of the church: that is, the poor.”

By which he meant, when the church sides with the poor,

the church suffers persecution.

But in a complicated way, Romero was careful to avoid the Marxist materialism that undergirded Latin American Liberation Theology.

In June 1977 he preached that

Christians have a Gospel-inspired right to public, political organization,

and to make collective decisions about their life in society.

But then, lest he betray his exclusivity to Jesus Christ,

lest he betray his “μισέω” for this life, he wrote,

“Be careful not to betray those evangelical, Christian, supernatural convictions in the company of those who seek other liberations that can be merely economic, temporal, political. Even though working for liberation, Christians must always cling to their original liberation.”

Both the Apostle John and Saint Oscar Romero call us to

distance ourselves from this life even as we cleave closer to our poor neighbor.

With the shooting in New Zealand,

with nationalism rising around the globe,

and with white supremacy rising in America,

today we must all cleave closer to our neighbor and remember our

“original liberation” in Jesus Christ.      Amen.

The week of March 18

Join us this week at St. Stephen’s

Monday, March 18

Fr. Jamie’s day off

Wednesday March 20 –

6:00 p.m. – Holy Eucharist

Fr. Jamie, celebrant/Pr. Robert Drake, preacher

James Mackay, music

No incense will be offered at Mass during Lent.

Soup supper following

Thursday March 21 –

7:00 p.m. – “The Notes Between the Notes” song cycle performance at the Plains Art Museum

Friday March 22

10:00 a.m. – Memorial Service for Ann Whitehead (+March 15), Fr. Jamie, officiating

6:00 – Stations of the Cross

Sunday March 24  – 3 Lent

11:00 a.m. – Holy Eucharist

Fr. Jamie, celebrant/preacher

Children’s Chapel

Healing Prayer/Anointing

Coffee Hour following

12:45 – Vestry.

Look who made her first visit to church this morning.

New Retable

A busy Friday at St. Stephen's as our retable (the "shelf" behind the altar put up in the 1970s) was replaced with a beautiful new one which matches the new altar. Thank you to Kip Vossler for his very hard work on this beautiful project. Here are some before and after photos.

Snowy St. Stephen's (with more snow coming) 

Wednesday Lenten Mass and Supper

Join us this evening March 13 for our Wednesday night Lenten  Mass.

Steve Bolduc will be the preacher this evening.

Holy Eucharist will be at 6:00 p.m.

Soup and sandwich supper to follow mass

No incense will offered at Mass during Lent.

The week of March 11

Join us this week at St. Stephen’s

Monday March 11 –

Fr. Jamie’s day off

Wednesday March 13 –

6:00 p.m. – Holy Eucharist

Fr. Jamie, celebrant/Steve Bolduc, preacher

James Mackay, music

No incense will be offered at Mass during Lent.

 Soup and sandwich supper following

Friday March 15

6:00 – Stations of the Cross

Sunday March 17  – 2 Lent

11:00 a.m. – Holy Eucharist

Fr. Jamie, celebrant/preacher

Children’s Chapel

Coffee Hour following

A surprisingly well-attended Mass this morning despite all the snow. And we got to do the Great Litany too!

Somewhere under all that snow is the back sidewalk to Snowy St. Stephen's. No sooner did I make my way in through knee-high drifts than the plow crew came and cleaned us out. If you can make it to Mass today, the church is warm and cozy but please be very careful on those roads. 

Lent at St. Stephen's

Here's Gin Templeton working hard at putting up the beautiful new framed Stations of the Cross which will be blessed and dedicated tonight at our 7:00 p.m. Ash Wednesday Mass.

Burning last year's palms for Ash Wednesday ashes

Shrove Tuesday Pankcake Supper 2019

It was a wildly successful Shrove Tuesday pancake supper tonight It was especially wonderful to have the Presentation Sisters of Fargo as our guests and as recipients of our proceeds tonight. Thank you to all our volunteers to make this evening so special.

Ash Wednesday

Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper

The week of March 4

Join us this week at St. Stephen’s

Tuesday March 5

5:30 -7:00 pm – Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper

Wednesday March 6 – Ash Wednesday 

7:00 p.m. – Holy Eucharist/Imposition of ashes

Blessing and dedication of the Stations of the Cross in memory of Fr. Jim Hauan

Fr. Jamie, celebrant/preacher

James Mackay, music

Friday March 8

6:00 – Stations of the Cross

Sunday March  10   – 1 Lent

11:00 a.m. – Holy Eucharist

Fr. Jamie, celebrant/ preacher

Children’s Chapel

Coffee Hour following

Rondelles re-dedicated and blessed

On Sunday March 3, we re-dedicated and blessed the series of 8 rondelles that originally hung in the nave of the church. They are now in their new home in the Undercroft, where they are beautifully displayed and where they will be fully  appreciated.

Re-dedication of the Rondells/Burial of the Alleluia

Join us this Sunday, March 3, as we re-dedicate and bless the rondelles that originally hung in the windows of the nave in their new location of the Undercroft.

We will also Bury the Alleluia as we prepare for the beginning of Lent.

11:00 a.m. Holy Eucharist, with procession to the Undercroft.