In this morning’s gospel, the Transfiguration of Christ is the culminating point of His public life, as His Baptism is its starting-point, and His Ascension its end. This glorious event has been related in detail by St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke while St. Peter (in his second letter) and St. John, two of the privileged witnesses, allude to it.
“His face did shine as the sun: and his garments became white as snow”, according to the Latin translation, or “as light”, according to the Greek text.
Lockdown 3
It does not come as any great surprise that we are in lockdown again – let us hope that it will indeed lift on Thursday.
What a shame to miss the Lunar New Year celebration that our Chinese congregation planned for Sunday morning – an experience of teas from different parts of China.
And our pancake evening on Tuesday also had to be cancelled, along with the two services on Ash Wednesday. No imposition of ashes and six services cancelled (including Choral Evensong).
We hope that the following will substitute for those cancelled services:
Sunday
· video Eucharist on our YouTube channel
· 9am Morning prayer by Zoom
· 10am Bilingual service by Zoom
LINKS are at the top of this newsletter.
Wednesday
· video Eucharist for Ash Wednesday (link to be emailed separately).
The Parish Office, mainly music, and the Op Shop are closed until Thursday (subject to the lockdown ending in time).
Spring Lantern Festival celebration
The Spring Lantern Festival is a Chinese festival celebrated on the fifteenth day of the first month in the lunisolar Chinese calendar. It marks the final day of the traditional Chinese New Year celebrations. During the Lantern Festival, children go out at night carrying paper lanterns and solve riddles on the lanterns.
On Friday, 26 February from 6-9 pm, our Chinese parishioners will celebrate the Lantern Festival in church Cloister. All parishioners and friends are welcome. There will be a chance for you to learn Chinese traditional paper cutting, paper lantern making, Chinese riddles solving and some students and parents from BGS and Firbank will perform some traditional Chinese instruments. We encourage you to wear traditional Chinese clothes like Qipao, Hanfu. Please don’t forget to bring your scissors to cut the paper and your drinks as we will not provide drinks and food under the Covid-19 circumstance.
Lenten Bible Study
This year the Brighton Covenant Churches are using a study series based on materials prepared by St George’s College in Jerusalem. For St Andrew’s, I will be conducting the studies on-line by Zoom on Thursday mornings from 10-11am. These commence this Thursday (18 February) and you can join at 10am here.
Help needed - Refreshments at 10am service
This weekend we are reintroducing refreshments after the 10am service. Because of Diocesan restrictions on the provision of food served by parishes under the Parish’s COVID-Safe plan, these will be limited, at this stage, to tea, coffee, mineral water or cordial. All the cups will be disposable, so please place your finished cups and napkins in the bins provided in the narthex. Biscuits individually served on napkins (to avoid cross-contamination) will be available too. The refreshments will be provided by the Parish, but we do need to make a roster of people to assist with pouring the tea and coffee.
Please ring the Parish Office if you can assist – 03 9592 1240
This week at St Andrew’s
click here to see our calendar of services and events
