Quinquagesima (the Sunday before Lent)

Before I touch on our readings for this Sunday there are three important announcements.

Our Ash Wednesday service is at 10 am, Wednesday, March 2 in our usual location. It will be a service of Holy Communion with the imposition of ashes. Please join us, if you are able, as we begin our Lenten journey. Sunday, March 20 there will be no in-person Sunday services. I will be away again for a weekend army exercise (FYI, at this time I will generally be away for one weekend per month during the training year which runs from September to May). Finally, I encourage you to attend and to share the information for our Lent retreat, which is Saturday, March 26. Here is a link to the poster for the event which I encourage you to share as you see fit. Our readings this Sunday are extraordinary. We have perhaps one of the most beautiful and challenging passages ever written in any language in the Epistle reading, the "Love Passage" from 1 Corinthians 13. In our Gospel, we meet Jesus on the way to Jerusalem to suffer and die for us. Blind Bartimaeus is in a very fundamental way "everyone" and his life illustrates our basic need for healing in every respect, but most crucially in relation to sight. He also illustrates the virtue of tenacity in prayer. These two readings are very strategically presented to us on the Sunday before Lent. I hope you can join us this Sunday and on Wednesday morning as we begin our Lenten pilgrimage

Readings: You may access the prayer and readings by following this link. You may read the RSV and ESV translations of the readings here.