Always Good to Celebrate

With Lent fast on our heels, time is short to celebrate. Very soon our thoughts turn to various pre-Lent festivities. Most famous is Mardi Gras with its foods, music, and carnivals. Shrove Tuesday is another opportunity to clean the kitchen shelves before Lent with pancake breakfasts. Doughnuts also provide a way to rid ourselves of shortening before our Lenten experience. All of these festivals are to get prepared for the spiritual journey of Lent. Before the quieting of Lent, there’s something good in the traditions about eating, drinking, and singing in praise of God among us. These celebrations will keep us until the great celebration of Easter.

Next weekend at Christ the Redeemer we have an additional pre-Lent celebration. At worship and with fellowship in Atonement Hall, we celebrate the tenth anniversary of the dedication of our “new” church along with the chapel and pastoral wing. The actual date of the Dedication of the Church was February 27, 2000. That date comes in Lent this year, so we have a good excuse to celebrate early.

Time Flies
It seems no time since we gathered with Bishop Loverde, visiting priests and friars, and a large throng of parishioners for the grand inauguration of our Church space. If you take a bit of time in the worship space, you can recall the blessing of the baptismal font for the first time, the first proclamation of the scripture at the ambo, the anointing of the altar along with the church walls. One can almost smell the incense as it burned on the newly consecrated altar followed by the incensing of the walls and the Assembly. Then we gathered for the first time around the altar as God’s People.

Through these ten years, we have discovered that it is Christ that gathers us each Sunday to hear his Word and to share the food and drink of his Table. We begin to understand the long tradition of the Church with the Altar as the reminder of Christ among us. On it rests the Book of the Gospels; it is venerated by priests by bowing and kissing as we gather around and as we leave the worship Assembly.

Ten Plus
While we celebrate the ten years of living and worshiping in our building,

we, as always, look further over our shoulders. In liturgical memory stand with us those who have gone before us. The Church is gathered in the communion of saints. In this case that communion is those who worshipped from the beginning of the parish: the Saturday evening groups at 512 North York, the Sterling Middle School Community, and the worshippers who kept holidays at Park View High School. Since 1989, Atonement Hall still has lots of memories for all of us.

The church gathering space recalls the blessings of God for the parishioners of CTR through the years. The young people and teachers in religious education who have matured and grown are the foundation of our present community. We recall all those baptized, confirmed who came to the Lord’s Table for the very first time. The joys of the weddings days still give us rejoicing.

Not least of all we remember those who have gone before us. Again the communion of saints embraces the dead whose wakes and rites we have gathered to celebrate. Many of them supported CTR with their prayers and financial support on the way to our present structures.

Word of Thanks
Thanks to all of you parishioners for your faith and support in these many years. Our celebration next week represents a good time to remember the good folks and the good things, which God has done among us and through us.

Lest we lose our luster as God’s People, the reminders of God’s presence still surround us in the worship space. The ambo has been enlarged, a new presider’s chair allows the priest to gather the community, the chalice has been regilded, and new ciboria feed the faithful as they gather at the Table. In the midst of all of us the Table calls us to bless the Father in Christ today.

As we gather for worship in our Church and for celebration in Atonement Hall, next weekend represents a wonderful way to be reminded of Christ among us as his People. That presence is marked by the Tabernacle and Sanctuary Light which calls us to the embrace of the love of Christ for each and for all.

CDH