Our worship schedule for March and April is found to the right of the HOME page. A February-March 2025 schedule is available for download on the RESOURCES page. A schedule for April-May 2025 will be available there by the end of March.

Commemorations and feast days are part of the Book of Common Prayer calendar throughout the year, and this week, on Tuesday, March 25th we mark:

The Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

 The Annunciation by Joos van Cleve, c. 1525, from the Friedsam Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art via Wikimedia Commons. Gabriel and Mary are shown in a sixteenth-century interior furnished with objects carrying symbolic meaning. The artist was a leading painter in Antwerp whose traditional techniques show an Italian Renaissance influence.

The Annunciation marks the visit of the angel Gabriel to Mary, the mother of Jesus, announcing that she would bear a son.  Although the focus at this time in Lent is on the approaching passion and crucifixion of Jesus, we also remember Mary, stalwart by his side even in the midst of terrible grief. From a version of the Regina Coeli come these words of the Church’s song of joy to her, included by some churches in Eastertide liturgies:

“Rejoice and be glad, O Virgin Mary, Alleluia, For the Lord hath risen indeed, Alleluia.

“O God, who through the Resurrection of thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ hast vouchsafed to give joy to the world: grant, we beseech thee, that through his Mother the Virgin Mary we may obtain the joys of everlasting life.” 

On Friday, March 29th, the calendar commemorates John Keble of Oxford, Scholar and Poet, 1866. John Keble died on a Maundy Thursday, a priest staunch in his commitment to Anglicanism, and a man of “deep and constant prayer.” He was an inspiration to those who began the Oxford Movement and a writer of devotional poetry. An excerpt from his poem, “Wednesday Before Easter,” captures the essence of Passiontide, which occurs this year in the second week of April:

“O Father! not My will, but Thine be done” –
So spake the Son.
Be this our charm, mellowing Earth’s ruder noise
Of griefs and joys:
That we may cling for ever to Thy breast
In perfect rest!