Apprentice 2 Jesus

An Anglicostal Connecting to a Real World

Week Three: The Affections of Christ and the Rhythm of the Church Calendar

Dan

A reason, among many, I have come into the Anglican Church is the church calendar. It reminds me that the Kingdom “calendar” is not our civic calendar. Churches won’t be commemorating civic holidays in a church service. (Memorial Day, Independence Day, Veterans Day, etc.) It is a reminder that we are not on the same page as the world… and that is a good thing.

We have now entered a particular season I have come to embrace over time, even before entering the Anglican Church: Lent.

There is so much to Lent and the reason we enter into this season so BEGIN HERE.

Lent is not mournful. It is sobering. We are spending time reflecting on the sacrifice of Jesus and how we need our lives in alignment with his purposes. Even in this somber time we are drawn particularly into the affections of Christ. It is his love that drives him to the Cross.

The Church calendar brings us around to these seasons and it is good to pay attention to them every year. The Church calendar is like a “bass note” to me. It is where I can find home, find that basic rhythm, and I can realign my life with Christ.

The calendar is a rhythm I have come to embrace so I don’t approach a season like Lent with dread. Instead, I approach with the question, “Lord, what would you teach me in this season as I visit it again?”

The rhythm helps us to keep diving deeper into the affections of Christ. It is not a ritual to be acknowledged, but a rhythm to be played.

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One response to “Week Three: The Affections of Christ and the Rhythm of the Church Calendar”

  1. Majik Avatar
    Majik

    As a boy raised in the Roman Catholic Church, I got ashes on my forehead from the thumb of a priest until I grew into a rebellious teenager who quit going to Ash Wednesday mass. From the age of twenty when I surrendered the life God had given me back to Him and began my adult faith as a “born again Christian” and was accepted into membership in the Evangelical Free Church and later into several Baptist churches when we moved to a city that didn’t have an Evangelical Free church, I didn’t observe “Lent” as a church season, but I tried with varying degrees of diligence to observe the time in my heart, if not also my practice, as a preparation for the annual remembrance of the Death, Burial, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

    For a brief period of time a few years ago, when my wife and I were members of a Presbyterian church, we observed a formal Lenten Season, and I attended once again an Ash Wednesday service and received from the thumb of our pastor the ashes from last year’s Palm Sunday palm leaves that had been saved and then burned a year later to make the “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” black smear on my forehead. I had never known where the ashes for Ash Wednesday had come from before that. I both loved and also grieved that the beautiful green palm fronds that we had joyously waved on the last Sunday before Easter Sunday while we sang, “HOSANNAH! HOSANNAH IN THE HIGHEST TO OUR TRIUMPHANT KING” only a few days before all humanity cried out, “CRUCIFY! CRUCIFY THIS FALSE MESSIAH, FAKE ‘KING OF THE JEWS!’”

    And all I pray now these days is “Lord . . . remember me when You come in Your Kingdom.” https://youtu.be/fVk7jhvhrLY?feature=shared

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