We are a small Episcopal Church on the banks of the Rappahannock in Port Royal, Virginia. We acknowledge that we gather on the traditional land of the first people of Port Royal, the Nandtaughtacund, and we respect and honor with gratitude the land itself, the legacy of the ancestors, and the life of the Rappahannock Tribe. Our mission statement is to do God’s Will in all that we do.

Origins of the 12 days of Christmas

“ . . . . AND A PARTRIDGE IN A PEAR TREE”

During the next few weeks you’ll be hearing it over and over, perhaps to the point of saying, “Enough already”! But you might be interested to know the origin of the

familiar “secular” holiday song; it has roots as a teaching tool to instruct young people in England in the content of the Christian faith!

From 1558 to 1829, Roman Catholics were not able to practice their faith openly in  Protestant England, so they devised ways of passing on their beliefs to their children.

“The Twelve Days of Christmas” is one example of how they did it. Each of the gifts mentioned represents something of religious significance:

1. On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me:  

The “true love ” represents God, and the “ me ” is the believer who receives the gifts.  The partridge in a pear tree is Jesus Christ who died on a “tree” as a gift from God.

2.Two turtle doves are the Old and the New Testaments – another gift from God.  

3.The three French hens are faith, hope, and love –the three gifts of the Spirit that abide. (I Corinthians 13)  

4.The four colley* birds are the four gospels which sing the song of salvation through Jesus Christ. (Although most modern versions say “ calling ” birds, the proper word is “ colley ”, which is a type of blackbird common in England.)  

5. The five gold rings are the first five books of the Bible, also called the “Books of Moses” or the “Pentateuch”.  

6. The six geese-a-laying are the six days of creation. (On the seventh day, God rested.)  

7.The seven swans – a – swimming are the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. (I Corinthians 12:8-10)  

8.The eight maids –a – milking are the beatitudes. (There appear to be Nine in Matthew 5: 3 -11, but the first eight are the ones directed at others ; the ninth refers only to Jesus’ listeners on the mountain.)  

 9. The nine ladies dancing are the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit. (Galatians 5: 22 -23)  

 10. The ten lords – a- leaping are the Ten Commandments.  

 11. The eleven pipers piping are the eleven faithful disciples.  

 12. The twelve drummers drumming are the twelve major points of the Apostles’ Creed.  

So the next time you hear “The Twelve Days of Christmas”, consider how this otherwise Secular sounding song was a tool to instruct the young. Remember, it’s still Christmas for 12 days . . . until theFeast of the Epiphany!

-Father Rod Caulkins, St. James Episcopal Louisa 

Advent 2, Year C

Explore Advent, Part 2

“Advent is a time to look for “desert places”: the place of solitude, the place of true silence in which we can become fully awake to our sin and God’s forgiving grace which alone can heal it.”-Br. Robert L’Esperance

This week we focus on John the Baptist through scripture, art and commentary. Let’s move to  Advent 2.

John the Baptist      

John the Baptist in art

 

John the Baptist Presentation

 
St. Nicholas      

St Nicholas Day is December 6. 

 

Here is a presentation that provides the background of this saint who has had a colorful and varied history over 1800 years.

 

Advent 2 – Peace

The Second Week of Advent is the week of Peace. This verse tells us that Jesus came to be the Prince of Peace. The word peace is the Hebrew word shalom which means completeness or well being. Jesus did not come just to end wars, but to make us complete by saving us from our sinfulness.

One of the hallmarks of the Christmas story is when the angels appear to the shepherds and proclaim, “Peace on earth,” in Luke 2:14.

Jesus brought about peace, in the most unexpected ways, when he arrived. The Jews, particularly the zealots, wanted a rebellion. They wanted their Savior to overturn the oppressive rule of the Romans and bring about peace in a violent way.

But Jesus had something else in mind. Jesus brings us peace in a number of ways.

First, he gives us inner peace. Because of his work on the cross, we have a chance to receive salvation and be indwelled by the Holy Spirit. This grants us an inner peace (John 14:27). Not only do we have the peace that comes from our assurance of salvation, but we also have the peace of mind knowing God will heal this broken world and will come again.

Second, we have peace with others. We put aside our differences (Galatians 3:28), especially with other believers, because we belong to the same family. We have the same purpose: to let others know about the peace of Christ.

The Hebrew word for peace: Shalom, goes far beyond not fighting with others or peace as we know it. Shalom which means completeness or well being. Jesus did not come just to end wars, but to make us complete by saving us from our sinfulness. As pointed out in the book Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be, shalom is, in essence, how things are meant to be: a slice of heaven.

The peace of God allows us to look at others through heaven’s eyes and help guide the world to see God’s here and not-yet here kingdom.

Peace from God, biblical peace, allows us to trust in God’s promises (Proverbs 3:5), through restful, tranquil faith, despite the dark, scary world around us.

Preparing the Way of the Lord – Perspectives on Advent 2

1. Looking at Sin by Debie Thomas

John’s gaunt austerity is the only gateway we have to the swaddling clothes, angel’s wings, and fleecy lambs we hold dear each December. As baffling as it may seem, the holy drama of the season depends on the disheveled baptizer’s opening act. So again, why the wilderness?

For starters, because the wilderness is a place of vulnerability, risk, and powerlessness. In the wilderness, we have no safety net. To locate ourselves at the outskirts of security and power is to confess our neediness in the starkest terms. In the wilderness, we have no choice but to wait and watch as if our lives depend on God showing up. Because they do. And it’s into such an environment — an environment so far removed from safety as to make safety laughable — that the word of God comes.

“Sin.” We associate it with shame, guilt, and condemnation.

Advent begins with an honest, wilderness-style reckoning with sin. We can’t get to the manger unless we go through John, and John is all about repentance. Is it possible that this might become an occasion for relief? Maybe, if we can get past our baggage and follow John out into the wilderness, we will find comfort in the fact that something more profound is at stake in our souls than, “I make mistakes sometimes,” or “I’ve got a few issues.” What ails is something deeper, grimmer, and far more consequential.

Sin, at its heart, is a refusal to become fully human. It’s anything that interferes with the opening up of our whole hearts to God, to others, to creation, and to ourselves. Sin is estrangement, disconnection, sterility, disharmony. It’s the sludge that slows us down, that says, “Quit. Stop trying. Give up. Change is impossible.”

Sin is apathy. Care-less-ness. A frightened resistance to an engaged life. Sin is the opposite of creativity, the opposite of abundance, the opposite of flourishing. Sin is a walking death. And it is easier to spot, name, and confess a walking death in the wilderness than it is anywhere else.

John underscores his message of repentance with a harrowing description of the coming Messiah

I wonder if we squirm because we misconstrue the meaning of judgment. I tend to equate judgment with condemnation, but in fact, to judge something is to see it clearly — to know it as it truly is. In my dictionary, synonyms for judgment include discernment, acuity, sharpness, and perception.

What if John is saying that the Messiah who is coming really sees us? That he knows us at our very core? Maybe the winnowing fork is an instrument of deep love, patiently wielded by the One who discerns in us rich harvests still hidden by chaff. Maybe it’s in offering God every particular of our lives that we give Him permission to “clear” us — to separate all that’s destructive from all that is good, beautiful, and worthy.

Finally, Matthew suggests that the wilderness is a place where we can see the landscape whole, and participate in God’s great work of leveling inequality and oppression.

Unless we’re in the wilderness, it’s hard to see our own privilege, and even harder to imagine giving it up. No one standing on a mountaintop wants the mountain flattened. But when we’re wandering in the wilderness, and immense, barren landscapes stretch out before us in every direction, we’re able to see what privileged locations obscure. Suddenly, we feel the rough places beneath our feet. We experience what it’s like to struggle down twisty, crooked paths. We glimpse arrogance in the mountains and desolation in the valleys, and we begin to dream God’s dream of a wholly reimagined landscape. A landscape so smooth and straight, it enables “all flesh” to see the salvation of God.

Where are you located during this Advent season? How close are you to security and power, and how open are you to risking the wilderness to hear a word from God? What might repentance look like for you, here and now? Where is God leveling the ground you stand on, and what will it take for you to participate in that uncomfortable but essential work?

Debie Thomas: The Voice of One Crying

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Advent Thoughts

Advent is a season of Watching and Waiting. It is a season of leaning into hope

Lord Jesus:
Come into our world and heal its wounds
Come into your church and raise it up
Come into our homes and make them holy
Come into our work and make it fruitful
Come into our minds and give us clarity
Come into our lives and make them beautiful
O Come, O Come Emmanuel

God of the past, the present and the future, grant me patience when I must wait, courage when it’s time to take action, and the wisdom to know when to wait and when to act. Amen.

Getting Ready for Advent

Happy New Year! – Advent is a season of waiting, of rest but also a time to find new beginnings. Since the 900s Advent has been considered the beginning of the Church year.  Today we move from a concentration from the Gospel of Matthew to the Gospel of Mark

The name “Advent” actually comes from the Latin word adventus which means “coming.” It is a reminder of how the Jewish nation waited for the Messiah and how Christians are now waiting for the return of Christ.

Advent is like a breath of fresh air -a new church year, a new set of Gospel readings, and the anticipation of the birth of Christ.

The Advent season is a time of preparation that directs our hearts and minds to Christ’s second coming at the end of time and also to the anniversary of the Lord’s birth on Christmas. It blends together a penitential spirit, very similar to Lent, a liturgical theme of preparation for the Second and Final Coming of the Lord, called the Parousia, and a joyful theme of getting ready for the Bethlehem event.

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The Wonderful Season of Advent

The name “Advent” actually comes from the Latin word adventus which means “coming.” It is a reminder of how the Jewish nation waited for the Messiah and how Christians are now waiting for the return of Christ.

Advent which begins this Sunday Nov. 28 is like a breath of fresh air -a new church year, a new set of Gospel readings from Mark, and the anticipation of the birth of Christ.

The Advent season is a time of preparation that directs our hearts and minds to Christ’s second coming at the end of time and also to the anniversary of the Lord’s birth on Christmas. It blends together a penitential spirit, very similar to Lent, a liturgical theme of preparation for the Second and Final Coming of the Lord, called the Parousia, and a joyful theme of getting ready for the Bethlehem event.

The Advent wreath, four candles on a wreath of evergreen, is shaped in a perfect circle to symbolize the eternity of God. The Advent Wreath is beautiful and evocative reminder of the life-giving qualities of light. The evergreens used in the wreath are reminders of ongoing life, even in the face of death.

There are 4 candles, one for each week in Advent, are used with one larger white candle in the middle as the Christ candle. During each Sunday of the Advent season, we focus on one of the four virtues Jesus brings us: Hope, Love, Joy and Peace. Three of the candles are purple. This is the color of penitence and fasting as well as he color of royalty to welcome the Advent of the King.

The Third candle is pink, a color of joy, the joy that Jesus is almost here and fasting is almost order. Gaudete Sunday (from the Latin meaning “rejoice”) which is taken from Philippians 4:4-5, the Entrance Antiphon of the day.

Advent begins in a season of darkness but using the Advent wreath we see light winning over darkness. Lighting candles is a way we can keep time in Church And as the season passes, and another candle is lit each week, light finally wins out over darkness with the turn of the solstice in the stars and the birth of Christ on the ground.

At the center of the wreath is a white candle, which is called the Christ Candle. This candle is lit on Christmas Eve as a reminder that Jesus, the light of the world, has been born and has come to dwell with us.

It is a season of waiting, of rest but also a time to find new beginnings. Since the 900s Advent has been considered the beginning of the Church year. It is antidote for our society’s frantic behavior during the holiday season. There is so much in the world that tells you, you are not enough or you haven’t do enough before Christmas but you have to find out during Advent that you are enough.

The first week of Advent is all about hope. Lamentations 3: 21-24: “Yet this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion; “therefore I will wait for him.” (NIV).

The altar changes during Advent to represent the new season, particularly in the use of color. Today, many churches have begun to use blue instead of purple, as a means of distinguishing Advent from Lent. Blue also signifies the color of the night sky or the waters of the new creation in Genesis 1. Blue emphasizes the season is also about hope and anticipation of the coming of Christ. Christ is about transformation as the sky changes from dark to light filling our lives with grace.

Advent Traditions

Advent Wreath

The Importance of Advent 1

The first Sunday of Advent is one of change. A change to the altar in color; a change in the year – Advent is the first Sunday in the church year where this year we shift in the lectionary from Year A (Matthew) to Year B (Mark). A change in focus since Advent means to come:

The Coming of God to the world as a human baby
The Coming of God to the world in His glory at the end of time where God’s purposes will be fulfilled
The Coming of God into the world today. Jesus comes to us now in word and sacrament, in prayer and praise, in his Body, the Church. By the work of the Holy Spirit, the Jesus who was born in the past in Bethlehem and who will come in the future is present to us and in us now.

The altar colors changed to blue, the altar flowers were green

In a timing of coming, the Gospel emphasizes the need to prepared for future events. Isaiah envisions a time of full justice when all nations honor God and live in peace. In Romans, Paul reminds us that the nearness of our salvation enables us to love selflessly and live honorably. Paul asserts that the greatest motivation for the Christian’s moral life lies in the future–the Christ’s second coming. The end of time is near at hand. The great day of salvation is coming–sleep/night/darkness will give way to waking/day/light.

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Waiting in Advent

Article 1

From Very Reverend Rebecca Kello, Christ Episcopal Church, Bowling Green, Ky:

“One aspect about Advent that has always been striking to me is the concept of waiting.

“In Advent we wait in the darkness, we wait in anticipation and sometimes even in fear. We wait patiently and sometimes we wait in frustration. We wait so much that it can seem like all that we are asked to do during this season is to wait for the Christ child to be born and then we will be able to celebrate.

“In this daily reader however, Henri Nouwen’s essay, “Waiting for God” offers a challenging take on what it might mean to wait, not in a passive way, but to wait actively: A waiting person is a patient person. The word patience means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us. Impatient people are always expecting the real thing to happen somewhere else and therefore want to go elsewhere. The moment is empty. But patient people dare to stay where they are.

“Patient living means to live actively in the present and wait there. Waiting, then, is not passive. It involves nurturing the moment, as a mother nurtures the child that is growing in her. Zechariah, Elizabeth, and Mary were very present to the moment. That is why they could hear the angel. They were alert, attentive to the voice that spoke to them and said, ‘Don’t be afraid. Something is happening to you.

“‘Pay attention.’ I don’t know about you, but I am always amused by how often angels come, particularly during Advent, and bring a message that something is happening and always precede it with, ‘Don’t be afraid!” What Nouwen invites us to here as we enter this season of Advent is a time of active waiting; he invites us to a time of waiting that finds its depth and grounding in the fact that powerful things happen when it seems that nothing is actually happening at all.

“This is the season of waiting, where we wait actively for the Christ child. It’s the season of darkness and light dancing together, and yet even in times when the darkness feels like it is consuming, we wait; we wait in hope. It’s the season where we listen for the angel’s plea, as Nouwen bids us, “Don’t be afraid. Something is happening to you. Pay attention.”

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