MASS SCHEDULE – THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT (March 23, 2014)
24, Feria
25, Annunciation of the BVM
26, Feria
27, St. John of Damascus
28, Feria
29, Feria
+ Wednesday School and Agape meets this Wednesday, March 26 at 5:45 p.m. Classes begin at 6:30 and run till 7:15 p.m. Please contact Jackie Jamison if you are interested in volunteering with the children’s classes since classroom assistants are needed!
The remaining Wednesday Study of Francois Fenelon by Chris James:
March 26 – The idea of pure love
April 2 – Disinterestedness
April 9 – Simplicity
+ The Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary – In the first chapter of Luke we read how the angel Gabriel announced to Mary that she had been chosen to be the mother of the Christ, and how Mary answered, “Here I am, the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be to me as you have said.” It is reasonable to suppose that Our Lord was conceived immediately after this. Accordingly, since we celebrate His birth on 25 December, we celebrate the Annunciation nine months earlier, on 25 March. For many centuries most European countries took 25 March, not 1 January, as the day when the number of the year changed, so that 24 March 1201 was followed by 25 March 1202. If you had asked a Christian of that time why the calendar year changed so awkwardly partway through a month, he would have answered: “Today we begin a new year of the Christian era, the era which began X years ago today when God was made man, when He took upon Himself a fleshly body and human nature in the womb of the Virgin.” C. S. Lewis commenting on God’s miraculous ways wrote this in his book on miracles: “ONE of those features of the Christian story which is Repulsive to the modern mind. To be quite frank, we do not at all like the idea of a “chosen people”. Democrats by birth and education, we should prefer to think that all nations and individuals start level in the search for God, or even that all religions are equally true. It must be admitted at once that Christianity makes no concessions to this point of view. It does not tell of a human search for God at all, but of something done by God for, to, and about Man. And the way in which it is done is selective, undemocratic, to the highest degree. After the knowledge of God had been universally lost or obscured, one man from the whole earth (Abraham) is picked out. He is separated (miserably enough, we may suppose) from his natural surroundings, sent into a strange country, and made the ancestor of a nation who is to carry the knowledge of the true God. Within this nation there is further selection: some die in the desert, some remain behind in Babylon. There is further selection still. The process grows narrower and narrower, sharpens at last into one small bright point like the head of a spear. It is a Jewish girl at her prayers. All humanity (so far as concerns its redemption) has narrowed to that.”
+ All Saints Men’s Group meets Tuesday March 25, 7:00 a.m. in the undercroft.
+ Our next Monday morning Bible study will meet March 31, 2014 in the Undercroft. For further information about the Monday morning Bible Study please contact Priscilla King, 540-456-6458 – kingplk@gmail.com.
+ Daily Mass is celebrated Monday through Saturday at 12:15 p.m. You and your family members are all remembered by name at the Altar of God every week. Please take an All Saints parish prayer list home with you & remember your fellow parishioners in your prayers!
+ All Saints parishioner may obtain a Mass card from the Church office. A Mass card is a greeting card given to someone to inform him or her that a deceased loved one or friend was remembered and prayed for at a weekly Mass. It is a specifically Christian way to express one’s love. Call Julie McDermott at the Church office (434-979-2842) and she will help you fill out the form. The celebrant will sign the card and we will mail it from the Church to the family of the loved one.