Innocents: A Blog / St Columba

A Second Iona

An acquaintance writes a weblog about European archaeology, and this article about the discovery sheds more light on one of our patrons, St Columba of Iona.

Experts unearth an Iona of the east - The Herald

WHEN St Columba landed in Scotland in the Dark Ages, he set about creating a centre of learning that would illuminate the Christian world.

His monastery on Iona, founded in 563AD, became a place of pilgrimage for saints and kings. It is believed to have produced the Book of Kells, one of the world's most famous religious manuscipts.

However, archaeologists have discovered the site of a second monastery in Scotland which they believe was also founded by St Columba at about the same time.

The linked article goes on to describe the ruined "second Iona," what was found in the ruins, what may have gone on there, and how the monestery came to be abandoned.

Summer Time Is Coming

St Columba will celebrate Holy Eucharist at 9am beginning Sunday, May 29th. Come to church a little later than before, and then get out and enjoy summer!

Good Friday Liturgy at St Columba

The Good Friday Liturgy will be tonight at St Columba at 7:00pm. The entrance to the parking lot is west of Barrington Road on Irving Park Road, just beyond Brown's Chicken.

Holy Week Schedule of Services

You don't have to stop thinking when you walk into church. Come experience an atmosphere where faith and thought come together in a spirit of fellowship.

Palm Passion Sunday March 20th

St Columba at 820am, Holy Innocents at 10:30am

Lessons

Procession and Liturgy of the Palms

Maundy Thursday March 24

Holy Innocents at 7pm

Lessons

Eucharist with footwashing and Vigil. There will be a sign-up sheet posted for parishioners to cover each half-hour of the Vigil.

After the celebration of the Eucharist, the Reserved Sacrament, symbolic of the Body and Blood of Christ, will be processed to a side altar for a solemn Vigil of Repose. At the conclusion of the Vigil, the candles are extinguished, the flowers are taken away, and the altar is stripped in token of grief and mourning. In the end, all is silence.

This rite is part of the Sacred Triduum of the season of Holy Week and Easter. Keep watch with us, in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection.

Good Friday Liturgy, March 25th

St Columba at 7pm

Lessons

The Reserved Sacrament is distributed for Communion, as there is no celebration of the Eucharist on this day.

Also a part of the Triduum, one's first Good Friday service in the Episcopal Church can be unnerving. Many fast for the entire day. Old, old hymns and chants are sung, and sound like funeral dirges. The feeling of sorrow or grief is tempered by hope, however.

The Great Vigil of Easter, with the kindling of New Fire

Holy Innocents SATURDAY March 26th at 8pm

Lessons

In this, the first Festival Eucharist of the Easter Season, we go from darkness and silence to Light and joyful rejoicing as the New Fire is kindled and the words of the Exsultet are chanted.

In some Episcopal churches, the Vigil takes place on Saturday night, and the Rite of the New Fire is part of a pre-dawn service Sunday morning, with the coming of the Light into the world time to coincide with dawn. In the early days of the church, of course, the Vigil simply went all night. In these modern times, the services are combined into one late on Holy Saturday, the final day in the Sacred Triduum.

There will be no Sunday morning service at Holy Innocents, but there will be a Festival Eucharist at St Columba.

Easter Sunday, March 27th - Festival Eucharist

St Columba, 10am

Lessons

A Festival Eucharist at St Columba's is a special event! We hope to have a choir in addition to organ music for this service. If you like to sing and have been too shy to show up at choir practice, please feel free to lift up your voice with us on this bright and glorious day of Resurrection.

Family Mass

This morning's Family Mass was in honor of the baptism of Jesus. The children of Holy Innocents and St. Columba's performed many of the tasks that are done in a worship service, including a Bible reading and bringing the gifts of the people to the altar.

During the Eucharist, all were gathered around the altar as Fr. Ted prepared the communion elements. Afterwards, there was time for some questions, such as "Why are you doing that?" while Fr. Ted cleaned the chalice and bowl he had used to serve the wine and bread. There were a lot of other questions about how and why certain things are done during communion. Family Mass is a good place for getting some kinds of questions answered.

The sermon this morning was a simplified version of the one given at the two "regular" services at St Columba and Holy Innocents.

Back in 1976, America's bicentennial year, a very creative writer came up with an intriguing idea. "Our nation is 200 years old," he thought. "I'll bet I can find someone who is alive today who is old enough that when they were a child, they remember someone who was then old enough to have been alive at the founding of the nation, a living link to the beginning of the country." And, sure enough, he found such a person. He was a Kentucky farmer named Burnham Ledford, who was over 100 years old in 1976; and he remembered when he was a little boy being taken by a wagon to see his great-great grandmother who was then over 100 herself and who was a little girl when George Washington was inaugurated as the first American president.

When the writer asked Burnham what he remembered, he said he remembered being taken into his great-great grandmother's house. She was feeble. She was blind. She was sitting in an old chair in the corner of a dark bedroom. "We brought Burnham to see you," his father said. The old woman turned toward the sound and reached out with long, bony fingers and said in an ancient, cracking voice, "Bring him here."

"They had to push me toward her," Burnham remembered. "I was afraid of her. But when I got close to her, she reached out her hands and began to stroke my face. She felt my eyes and my nose, my mouth and my chin. And all at once, she seemed to be satisfied, and she pulled me close to her and held me tight. 'This boy's a Ledford,' she said, 'I can feel it. I know this boy. He's one of us.'"

As young Burnham was recognized by his blind great-great-grandmother, Jesus was recognised by God at the moment of His baptism, and we are all recognised as Christ's own forever.

St Columba of Iona

St Columba is our sister parish; we are "yoked" together. Their service is usually earlier than Holy Innocents' in winter (in summertime we often switch service times). Normally their service is at 8:20 a.m., and the family service begins after it concludes, around 9:15 a.m. Children should arrive by 9:00 a.m. so they can be assigned a duty, such as carrying a candle or leading the procession.

Family Mass is held on the first Sunday of the month, but this month it was on the second Sunday due to the Epiphany feast last week. Next month's service will be Sunday, February 6th.

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• St Columba of Iona
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• 1800 W. Irving Park Road
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• Hanover Park, IL
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• 8:20 a.m. Holy Eucharist
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• 9:15 a.m. Family Mass (First Sundays of the month)
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Holy Innocents

There was a procession to the baptismal font today in honor of the Baptism of Our Lord, and we were all well sprinkled with holy water after we renewed our baptismal vows. This is supposed to be a solemn moment, but it is a joyful one too; quite a few priests seem to feel it's their duty to douse people as thoroughly as possible. Also there's often a sporting element, such as going for distance or accuracy.

Not sure how Fr. Ted did it, but he managed to hit me in the eye - and I was wearing glasses this morning. "Full marks," some might say.