614. Oh, dear Saint Mary Magdalene, what have they done to you?

Saint Mary Magdalene …whose feast day we celebrated last Wednesday, July 22.  This is a reprise, slightly improved, of a post from a couple of years ago. (I’m getting lazy. Well, it’s summertime, and we have family visiting.) _____________________ I thought writing about Mary Magdalene would be simple. It wasn’t. I discovered that there is […]

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595. Holy Friday night: Matins of Holy Saturday: the “Lamentations Service”

    Please get to church tonight. If you cannot, please try to find yourself a way to worship live-stream. This is much too beautiful to miss – my favorite service of the year. Is this a funeral service? Is this a resurrection service? The answers are: Yes! We stand before the bier on which […]

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589. Holy Wednesday Morning Divine Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts

In case you’ve tuned in late to this series: These posts are “repeats” (with a little reworking each year) of my Holy Week posts from past years – which are based on talks I gave for about twenty years  at Holy Week services when I was pastor at Saint Nicholas Church, Cedarburg, Wisconsin. Why do […]

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584. Palm Sunday Night: Bridegroom Matins (Orthros) of Holy Monday Morning

Matins in the evening?  In our parish churches, Matins/Orthros is normally sung in the morning. So why, you may ask, are we now suddenly having it in the evening? Also and equally odd, why during Holy Week do we have Vesperal Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts (obviously an evening service) in the morning? I’m really […]

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