A couple of days ago I clicked over to the "Calendar of the Church Year" at Satucket - and realized it had already integrated Holy Women, Holy Men - the trial-use calendar in the Episcopal Church.
What struck me first was that the HWHM church year is absolutely chock full 'o' saints; there's hardly a free day anywhere. It kind of gives you a headache.
What struck me next was that it's just about impossible already to find an Episcopal parish that celebrates even the Principal Feasts and Major Holy Days of the Year: Ascension, Epiphany (when it's not on a Sunday), Holy Name, Presentation, Transfiguration, Annunciation, any of the Apostles and Evangelists, etc., etc.
And then I started wondering what the point of the whole thing was. I mean, if the church isn't celebrating any of these major feasts now - it seems mighty bizarre for them to be adding hundreds more that nobody will celebrate. It seems like a completely empty gesture, in fact - as if the Great Church Year had really no meaning at all, and offered no benefit.
What I'm hoping is that they'll add a few new people to the calendar year, as happens every so often - they could get rid of a few people, particularly John Chrysostom, while they're at it, from my point of view - and then offer the rest of this stuff as a devotional, at which it could serve very well.
The Great Church Year is one of the best things about the church in the first place, to me; if it's not taken at all seriously, I'd really rather be a Quaker.
What struck me first was that the HWHM church year is absolutely chock full 'o' saints; there's hardly a free day anywhere. It kind of gives you a headache.
What struck me next was that it's just about impossible already to find an Episcopal parish that celebrates even the Principal Feasts and Major Holy Days of the Year: Ascension, Epiphany (when it's not on a Sunday), Holy Name, Presentation, Transfiguration, Annunciation, any of the Apostles and Evangelists, etc., etc.
And then I started wondering what the point of the whole thing was. I mean, if the church isn't celebrating any of these major feasts now - it seems mighty bizarre for them to be adding hundreds more that nobody will celebrate. It seems like a completely empty gesture, in fact - as if the Great Church Year had really no meaning at all, and offered no benefit.
What I'm hoping is that they'll add a few new people to the calendar year, as happens every so often - they could get rid of a few people, particularly John Chrysostom, while they're at it, from my point of view - and then offer the rest of this stuff as a devotional, at which it could serve very well.
The Great Church Year is one of the best things about the church in the first place, to me; if it's not taken at all seriously, I'd really rather be a Quaker.
5 comments:
Hear, hear! Agreed on all accounts.
Thanks, RSM. The whole thing is really strange, to me....
(I'm beginning to think it might be a Puritan influence coming from someplace in the church.
Because in general we are thinking and talking about the feast days (if that), in lieu of actually celebrating them....)
I'm convinced that the primary function of HWHM is so that, for your standard MOTR parish that feels like they "have" to have a mid-week mass, it'll provide the priest with something to read instead of having to look at the biblical texts and come up with an actual sermon...
There's definitely that to consider, too....
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