Featuring Rob’s sermon from Sunday, Go and Do! including TIME & MERCY, an upcoming St. John’s Selects presentation, links and information about St. John’s Lenten programming, a teaser on Rob’s Sunday evening book group, as well as other news from around our communities.
Featuring Aaron’s sermon from Sunday, a “Beyond the Music” segment about “Lift Every Voice And Soing,” Recapping The Rainbow Fish musical, Go and Do! including the final winter edition of The Black Heritage Trail of NH’s 2025 Elinor Williams Hooker Tea Talks, a fascinating article about the connection from St. John’s to The BHTNH, as well as other news from around our communities and state.
Featuring Aaron’s sermon from Sunday, a beautiful performance of a Chopin prelude from Sunday, Go and Do! including the Black Heritage Trail of NH’s 2025 Elinor Williams Hooker Tea Talks, and news from around our communities and state.
Featuring Anne’s sermon from Sunday, a “fresh from the vault” performance of the famous spiritual “Deep River” from the Parish Choir, Go and Do! including the Black Heritage Trail of NH’s 2025 Elinor Williams Hooker Tea Talks, and more!
Featuring Rob’s sermon from Sunday, an anthem from the Parish Choir, Go and Do! including Outside The Box, a recap of the Annual Meeting, plus a reflection on Bishop Budde’s inauguration day sermon from the Rev. Aaron Jenkyn.
Connected in story, connected in Christ. As we embark on this next season together, our focus will be on creating the space for you to share your stories, stories about how you have encountered Jesus in the ordinary and extraordinary moments of your lives, of the ways you have come to be part of this community, and the ways you go out to love and serve God in the world around you.
Celebrating Candlemas at home is about honoring the light and gathering with friends and family to bless the candles that will warm our hearts in the seasons to come. The magic of wintertime in New Hampshire makes this celebration especially beautiful to celebrate outdoors, as we mark the changing of seasons from darkness to light.
Blessing candles outdoors can be as simple as placing a taper candle or tea light in snow or as sophisticated as making an ice lantern or earthen candles to gather around. If you are able, purchase additional candles in advance that might use on your dinner table, or for birthday celebrations, throughout the year, whether you are 6 or 86 you will remember blessing them on Candlemas every time you light them.
As the daylight fades, gather outside and read together as much, or as little, of this liturgy as works for your family. The words have been adapted from the children’s book In the Candles Glow. The words are important, but not as important as the time you are spending gathered together, celebrating Jesus as the light of the world.
A reading from the Easter Exuslset:
On this, your night of grace, O holy Father, accept this candle . . . the work of bees and your servants’ hands . . . for it is fed by melting wax, drawn out by mother bees to build a torch so precious . . . Though [the bee] be tiny in the smallness of her body, she revolves prodigious knowledge in her tiny breast, weak in force but forceful in abilities. She, having determined the change of season, when winter has deposited the hoary frost and then the moderating climate of springtime has swept away the glacial feebleness, she immediately feels the need to come forth to her work.
God of all Creation - we ask your blessing on the bees, and the beekeepers, the flowers and the fields, the land and water, and all Creation. Bless the candles that we use at home and at church, that they may illuminate the way for us today and everyday.
Read the Story of Simeon and Anna found in Luke 2:22-40
Light the candles and pray together:
We thank God for sending us light to help us see in so many different ways. We light this candle to say thank you for its flame which changes into light. We light this candle to say thank you for the moon and stars which light up the night sky and show travelers the way and to say thank you for the sun which gives us day and helps us to see all the colors of the rainbow. And we light this candle to say thank you for Jesus — the Light of the World who came to show us the way to God. Amen.
Sing (or listen to): This Little Light of Mine
Candlemas in the snow.
The full text of the homily preached at Thursday’s Healing Eucharist:
In the Episcopal liturgical calendar there are three celebrations of light during this darkest time of year. The Nativity, Epiphany and Candlemas, which we celebrate today (note that Candlemas is actually on February 2, but for liturgical purposes we are celebrating at our Thursday Eucharist). When you add in Advent, this season stretches from the end of November to the beginning of February, which coincides with the ten darkest weeks of the year here in the northern hemisphere. Which means, as we celebrate Candlemas today, we have made it through those darkest days - thanks be to God!
As we think back, we recall the ways that the darkness sets in during those early days of winter and the ways the season of Advent calls us into stillness, as we watch and we wait with patient hope for salvation to come. Then as the winter solstice and the longest night passes we celebrate the glorious Feast of the Nativity, the birth of Emmanuel, God with us. As we move into Epiphanytide the celebration continues with the revelation that Jesus is the son of God, the salvation we have been waiting for, and we look for new revelations, signs of God, with us in the here and now. The stars glimmer overhead and the moon glows in the cold night air as we watch in wonder. And as this season comes to end, with the Presentation of Jesus at the temple, we bless and light candles, to carry us forward into a new season, to remember that Jesus is the light of the world.
You see, Candlemas is also a turning point in the church year. Even as we celebrate the light of Christ in the world, we start to look ahead to the darkness of Lent, Good Friday and the cross. Even as Simeon held the infant Jesus in his arms, he foresaw that his way would be difficult and painful. But the candles we light remind us that darkness does not triumph – the light cannot be put out.
More than a decade ago, I became a mom during the season of Advent. The stillness and rest of the season, and then the celebration of the Nativity and light that followed carried me through those early days of parenthood, surrounded by family and friends, and immeasurable amounts of love. But as I think most new parents can relate too, there was a moment in which I realized that this child of mine, this being that I grew and carried and loved more than anything, would one day have to go out into the real world, which suddenly looked very different to me as a new mom, than it had just a season before.
I can only imagine what Mary and Joseph were holding in their hearts when they heard Simeon’s song, knowing what was ahead for Jesus.
"This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed-- and a sword will pierce your own soul too.”
This life that Mary and Joseph were called to would be filled with both joy and sorrow, hope and pain. This life we are called too, is filled with both joy and sorrow, hope and pain. And when we give birth, when we become parents, when we love someone, the hope and pain, joy and sorrow is magnified exponentially.
It was during those first months of parenthood, after the Christmas decorations came down, and our visitors had left, and my maternity leave was coming to an end, that the world began to feel so dark and I didn’t want to let my newborn go into it. And in that strange way that God works, I happened upon the story of Anna and Simeon, Mary and Joseph, and in the turning of the pages, and the turning of the season, I began to realize that I was not alone. That Mary and Joseph walked this path before me, and because of that, my son would never be alone. And so on a cold winter night in February, I slipped out into the dark and lit a candle on my snow covered porch as a reminder of the great light of God’s love for us, made incarnate in Christ.
With every Advent, with every birthday, with every Candlemas, I remember that feeling I had as a new mom and I find myself ever more grateful for this tradition that calls us to bless and light candles to carry forward into a new season, remembering that Christ is the light of the world.
I still light candles outdoors each February, and as my kids have gotten older, our celebration and creations have become ever more elaborate. We light candles in the darkness, and bless the ones we will use at the table each night, we read the story of Simeon and Anna, and we offer thanks for the traditions of our church, for the work of the bees, and farmers and those that care for the land and for those who have made the candles. And we pray that the light of the world would break through the darkness and reveal to us the continuation of God’s promise. Let that be our prayer today as well. Amen.
If you are looking to find some amazing music performed by the St. John's musicians you've come to know and love, we invite you to visit our Music Playlist on YouTube, and do a little surfing, or buffet-style musical "dining." There are so many fine offerings, we think you could easily find something new each day to feast upon.
Rob offers the following guiding points of contemplation: It's called "fishing," not "catching" for a reason! Jesus invites us into his process — the process of listening as loving. May we love BIG in this coming year, and not dwell too often in this "sweet spot" in which we find ourselves here at St. John's.
On Sunday, January 14th at 11:30AM in the Philbrick Room, St. John's "Outside the Box" ministry welcomed Sam Khumbula and Blessing Sithole, two young men from Zimbabwe whose stories of determination, drive and deep faith are truly amazing. We caught up with Parishioners Suzi Raeside and Maggie Skafidas to hear about this wonderful presentation…
"Prayer for Love," text by C. Eric Lincoln, music by J. Jefferson Cleveland. Featuring The Parish Choir. We select and share this piece for its text, particularly timely at this time of year as we celebrate the life and legacy of The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This arrangement of Cleveland's hymn comes from a collection of African American religious music entitled "Songs of Zion."
