x

The Annunciation of

our Lord Jesus Christ to the Blessed Virgin Mary

Thursday, 25 March, 2004, 6:30 p.m.

You are warmly invited to join us for the liturgy and for a reception afterwards.  Light food and refreshment will be provided in our beautiful common room overlooking St. Benedict's courtyard.

The Annunciation is one of four holy days of the Blessed Virgin Mary kept by the Episcopal Church.  The others are the Purification, which is now called the Presentation in the Temple making it more of a feast of our Lord; the Visitation, commemorating Elizabeth and Mary's visit when they were both astonished and pregnant; and the Feast of St. Mary the Virgin.

Annunciation is kept on 25 March, which is cleverly positioned exactly nine months before the Nativity of our Lord at Christmas.  Annunciation is, in a way, the beginning of the cycle of feasts and seasons preparing us for the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ.  As such, it serves to remind the church of its perennial vocation to be a bearer of Christ to a needy and hungry world, just as the Blessed Virgin was the bearer of Christ. 
 
The liturgy will be at 6:30 p.m., and at this liturgy the preacher will be the Reverend Deacon R. Anne Auchincloss, parish deacon at St. John's in the Village. 

Deacon Anne's ministry here has been precisely in the theological realm of the Annunciation.  In seeking to bear Christ to a needy world, Deacon Anne is the organizer of our Street Youth Arts Program which provides meals and some theatre training to generally homeless and neglected young people. She is also in charge, along with Deacon Luigi Licari, of the parish church school and coordinates the ministry to St. Vincent 's Hospital. 

Deacons usually preach about some aspect of their servant ministry and we eagerly await Anne's words about her work here and the challenge we face as a parish seeking to bring Christ to a needy world.
 
St. John's continues its ministry of eclectic, first rate music.

At the Annunciation Eucharist, the St. John's Choir will sing a contemporary American anthem written for the Annunciation by Frank Ferko.  Never a group to get stuck in any one century, the choir will also sing a medieval anthem, Sancte Maria, by John Dunstable, and the organist will perform four antiphons on the Ave Maria by Marcel Dupre.