Septuagesima

At the end of today’s service at St. Mary’s we sang His Eye Is On the Sparrow.” I came home wanting to write this post and the first thing I did was look at other blogs – and nearly fell in into this trap. God’s eye is on the sparrow and on me too, but I’ve got to keep my own eye on the task at hand. That’s difficult.

The antiquarian in me mourns the loss of quaint prayer book terms like “Septuagesima.” In the 1979 prayer book, today is called the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany. In the calendar of the C of E’s Common Worship, the day is called the Third Sunday before Lent. MadPriest’s sermon on the Gospel for today makes great reading.. (You’ll have to scroll down because I waited too long to link directly to it.)

Today’s Eucharist at St. Mary’s was structured around our customary observance of a Poetry Sunday during Black History Month. We’ve been doing that for probably 15 years now – until today the poetry was in place of the sermon, but today it was interspersed throughout the service – at the introit, in place of a sermon, at the offertory, and before the dismissal, which worked a lot better.

I’m on the hospitality committee for Bishop Catherine Roskam’s visitation in two weeks, but the committee couldn’t meet today because two key players were absent. The day will be complicated by the fact that there will be a concert at 2PM in the church, and we will probably want to serve a real lunch in between instead of the rather pathetic coffee hours we have been having recently.

As you may be able to detect, most of the above was written on Sunday, but I am posting it on Monday. Sigh.