Special services for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day

Please join us for our Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services!

Christmas Eve
Monday, December 24, 2012
Music: 6:30 p.m.
Service: 7:00 p.m.

Christmas Day
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
10:30 a.m.

For further information, please call 617-227-5242

Church of St. John The Evangelist
35 Bowdoin St.
Boston MA 02114

Meditation for November 25: The Feast of Christ the King

Praying with our Roman Catholic sisters and brothers and Anglican sisters and brothers in New Zealand

Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in your well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

The collect for today follows the formal pattern of the collect, employing an invocation, a petition, an aspiration, and closing with an ascription. This pattern can inform our private prayer as it enlivens our corporate prayer each week. This Sunday, as a result of accords passed at Vatican II, is one of four in the church year, when we will be praying exactly the same collect as our Roman Catholic sisters and brothers. It will be a prayer across the world for unity and hope.

Down under in New Zealand, Anglican churches will pray similarly and powerfully:

Almighty and eternal God, you have made of one blood all the nations of the earth
and will that they live together
in peace and harmony;
so order the course of this world
that all peoples may be brought together
under Christ’s most gentle rule; through Jesus Christ our Lord
who is alive with you and the Holy Spirit,
 one God now and for ever.
Amen.

Meditation for October 28: “Oh Taste and See”- But How?

Google “Blind Bartimeaus, son of Timeaus, a blind beggar…sitting by the roadside” yelling at Jesus and at least 40,000 entries will pop up. Mark’s account of the event and Jesus’s response — “Go; your faith has made you well” heals the sin-sick soul and yet we know not to expect dramatic acts like this.

Or should we? How? The Psalmist has an answer: “Taste and see that the LORD is good; happy are they who trust in him!” (34:8). I remember the first time I heard the hymn “Taste and See” (LEVAS). I heard it sung vigorously, bodies in motion, in a cathedral on the island of St. Thomas, a cathedral built for the Anglican Church by freed slaves. It sets my soul in motion — still.