  St Alban’s Episcopal ChurchBolivar, Missouri Saturday, April 16, 2022 Holy Saturday Easter Eucharist tomorrow Dyeing eggs/making a treat Remembering the bees A couple of Holy Saturday activities Today we wait. We are past crucifixion, but not yet at Easter. So it’s a good day to dye some eggs, or to paint them; to bake a special dessert for tomorrow, or to gather ingredients for some Easter morning Resurrection rolls. This is kind of a cool activity for kids – They love seeing how the marshmallow disappears – and leaves a sweet but empty “tomb.” 8 large marshmallows 1/4 cup of melted butter 2 tablespoons of sugar 1 tablespoon of cinnamon 1 8 oz can of crescent roll dough Preheat oven to 350. Mix cinnamon and sugar. Unroll the dough and separate each piece. roll marshmallows in butter and then in sugar/cinnamon. Place one coated marshmallow in the middle of each unrolled piece of dough and then roll it up. Pinch the seams to seal the marshmallow in. Place on pan with parchment paper or lightly greased pan. Bake about 12 minutes or until the outside is light brown. Remove from oven and then brush with remaining melted butter and sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar. Feast! This is a kind of cool way to dye some eggs; there are many “recipes” online for using different natural dyes.   Easter eggs and our Easter egg hunt We will NOT do our Easter egg hunt this Sunday after Church. After all this rain the fields are saturated, and going outside to hide them or to find them, would guarantee soaking wet feet and soggy chocolates, too! So we will transfer it to the second Sunday of Easter. Hopefully that will be a sunnier, drier day.   The Bees, the Paschal Candle If we were doing the Vigil this year, which we aren’t, because we cannot darken the church at all when Easter comes so late in spring, you would hear the great hymn, the Exultet. In that hymn, God is praised, the story of our salvation is recounted, and the bees are praised, too. Without them to pollinate plants, there would be no life on earth. And no wax for the candles, either! Here is the verse about the bees: “On this, your night of grace, O holy Father, accept this candle, a solemn offering, the work of bees and of your servant hands, an evening sacrifice of praise, a gift from your holy Church.” We have a new Paschal candle this year – and it was decorated by Eve and Eleanor Woosley – but I did add a tiny bee at the top!  In advance of Easter Day We will not require masks for now. Our COVID numbers are way down in Polk County. If you are more comfortable still wearing one, please do. We will return to the common cup for communion this week. I am including a small part of an article that Cheryl Moon, the parish nurse at St John’s in Springfield wrote to explain why it is safe to do this. I will post the entire article on our facebook page and website and make copies available to anyone who would like to read it. She wrote: “People who regularly take communion from a common cup are no more likely to contract communicable diseases than those whose religious practices do not include the use of a common cup” “Respiratory pathogens are not normally able to survive the mildly acidic pH of the moth followed by the very acidic pH of the stomach. The corona virus is a respiratory virus that needs to land on the very neutral lining of the respiratory system to thrive and replicate.” As always, however, if you are more comfortable receiving only the bread, as many of our children already do, that is also full communion. Flowers for Easter Day Please remember to bring cut flowers, flowering branches, or potted flowers to decorate the altar today or tomorrow morning. We do it all together, with children helping to bring in the candles, letdown the Easter banners, carry in the flowers – all that we need to make the dark space left over from Good Friday festive and full again! |
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