Shrove Tuesday greetings, saints,

I pray you all have remained warm and safe as we brace for another round of snow and ice!

In light of the looming forecast and my experience on the roads today, I am cancelling all three services tomorrow. Instead, we will live-stream a prayer service at 12pm on our St. Peter & St. Paul YouTube page. You can find the link here. The service will be the Liturgy of the Word from our normal Ash Wednesday service. You can find the liturgy here.

As we face the start of Lent without that sacred symbol, the ashen cross, I encourage you to remember that our most holy sacrifice unto God is a broken spirit and contrite heart (Psalm 51:17) – in other words, repentance. While as Anglicans our normal means is to enter into this through Liturgical Corporate worship, we can, through prayer and fasting, still offer our holy sacrifice of repentance when our normal means are closed off to us. Indeed, the Bishop has given us a dispensation from our corporate meeting due to extreme and rare weather, but he has given no such dispensation to our Ash Wednesday fast. Let us follow the example of David then and offer up a broken spirit and contrite heart, beseeching the Lord to create in us clean hearts and renew right spirits within us even as we lament the loss of our sacred Ash Wednesday assembly.

I look forward to seeing those of you who can attend on Sunday for our first Lenten Sunday together.

Shalom shalom,

Fr. Andrew Thebeau