 St Alban’s Episcopal Church Bolivar, Missouri Sunday, April 9, 2023 Easter Day – 10:30 Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Easter Vigil in the morning?! Well, yes. Except, of course, it isn’t exactly a vigil by then! What we do, because we are too small to do both a Saturday night Vigil and a Sunday morning service is to combine elements of the Vigil service with our Sunday morning festive. Eucharist. Why? Because the lighting of the new fire and the Paschal candle set us up for the celebration of Easter. The story of God’s mighty acts before the time of Jesus lead us to the wonder of the resurrection – and we are poorer without them. We will, of course, keep that part shorter than we would if we were doing it on Saturday evening. .We won’t include all the lessons – but we can’t do without the Exodus story! And we will renew our baptismal promises. But after the announcement of the resurrection, we will certainly enter in again with the decorated processional crosses, pull down the black, bring in all the candles and flowers for the altar and finally the bread and wine for the feast. Then we will hear the Sunday morning readings, delight in an Easter song by the all ages choir,and hear our favorite (and short!) Easter Homily of St Chrysostom by responding with glee – “embittered!” , and stamping of feet, andshouting “Alleluia!” as hell is defeated and, “not one dead is left in the tombs!” The Eucharist will move swiftly to Communion – the meal of the New Covenant.  There are some Easter flowers already awaiting tomorrow’s celebration – but if you have some to bring please DO bring them anyway – from your yard or from the store. Thanks to Paula Shepard and Janet Wray for the soup and other foods on Thursday evening, to Becca Cox for keeping up with the newsletters and all the other details of this week’s services, to Elijah and Xavier for cleaning off the back patio completely so that it will be a good place to visit as weather warms, to Louise Ritter for ironing all the linens and polishing the brass today – Coffee hour There will be coffee and juice and three kinds of muffins tomorrow after Church for those who want to stay and chat.   |
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