Vicar's News - 21 March 2021

This Sunday, the 5th Sunday in Lent, is the final one before the commencement of Holy Week next Sunday - Palm Sunday.

In this weekend’s gospel, St Andrew once more appears in Scripture bringing people to Jesus. This corresponds with what is said of him in the instances of his bringing Peter to meet Christ, and bringing the lad with the loaves and fishes at the feeding of the five thousand.

Eusebius mentions a tradition that these men had been sent by the Syrian King Edessa with a commission to invite Jesus to come to his realm, assuring him a hearty and princely welcome ... The coming of these Greeks was prophetic. The leaders of the nation were seeking even then to kill him, but Gentiles came to seek to know him; rejected by his own, the Gentiles would turn to him.

As you can discern from the Easter flyer below, there are a number of special services during Holy Week and you can book in for these here. They include:

an evening service on Holy Tuesday which will be followed by a fish and chip meal,
a Celtic healing service on Holy Wednesday,
on Maundy Thursday a concelebrated service by the Parish’s priests celebrating the institution of the Eucharist (with handwashing rather than footwashing) followed by a short vigil,
a Pilgrim’s walk on Good Friday morning ending here at St Andrew’s,
an afternoon service remembering Christ’s passion with veneration of the Cross, with communion reserved from the prior evening’s service;
an evening concert of soloists and choir singing Couperin's 'Leçons de Ténèbres', featuring soloists Tim Reynolds and Chris Watson with Clara Schutz (cello) and Calvin Bowman (organ) with the St Andrew's choir;
the new fire of Easter on Holy Saturday night and Easter Day services.

Fr Barry’s 60th anniversary service

We congratulate Barry again on his service as priest. His address may be downloaded here.

Good Friday

Register here for the Walk

Good Friday

Register here for the Tenebrae concert

Open Gardens Victoria

'The Hidden God' - the Book of Esther

The Book of Esther made it into the biblical scriptures even though it dos not mention God, whereas the book of Judith (which has a similar story of a women acting to save the Jewish people) does refer to God but didn't make it into the bible, but appears in the Apocrypha. There are also some parts of the Book of Esther that we do not read and these have been hived-off into the Apocrypha too as being text which appears to have been added later in an attempt to make the book of Esther 'godly' enough to be accepted as part of the canon of scripture. Bishop Paul barker is leading this 3-part study and you can join the livestream.

New service at Mayflower

We are starting a new service of Holy Eucharist at Mayflower Aged Care in Centre Road on Wednesday 7 April 2021 at 1.30pm in the lounge on level 3. The service will be on the first Wednesday of each subsequent month. Fr Barry Martin will be assisting as he is now a resident there. Unfortunately due to the current COVID restrictions on the number of people permitted in each common space, the service will initially be restricted to those in the aged care building. Hopefully residents from the independent units at Norman Place, Henshall Close, and Rodda & Dixon Terraces will be able to join us soon. We look forward to their inclusion when the COVID restrictions ease.

Lenten Bible Study

Our final Lenten study series based on materials prepared by St George’s College in Jerusalem will be held by Zoom on Thursday morning from 10-11am – join us here. This week “The Garden”.