We are an Episcopal church community in Tucson, Arizona. We enjoy an Anglican expression in our worship, celebrate mass in two languages, and are committed to be socially involved in our Tucson community, our country, and the world. We are located at the corner of Fifth Street and Wilmot Road.
The Rev. David Benedict Hedges, n/BSG, Rector. Telephone 886-7292.
Contact
St. Michael's School at 722-8478.
With great joy, we announce that the Rev. David Hedges, the current Rector of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Sycamore, IL, has accepted the call from our Bishop Kirk Smith, as requested by our Vestry, to be the next Rector of our spiritual home, St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church. On 14 August, Father Dave will begin his first Sunday at St. Michael’s by officiating the Morning Prayer at 9:00 AM and celebrating the sung Solemn High Mass at 9:30 AM. His wife, Carly Flagg, and their daughter, Zoe, will arrive later, in time for Zoe to begin class at our parish day school on 18 August.
Fr. Dave is a member of the Brotherhood of Saint Gregory, a religious community of men in the Episcopal Church, whose members, lay and ordained, follow a common rule of life and serve the church on parochial, diocesan, and national levels. Their Rule includes prayer, service, stewardship, and individual renewal among other matters. Brothers may be married, partnered, or single, and aim to follow St. Gregory the Great as "servants of the servants of God" whether in church or in society. Dave was thrilled to discover the sign at the back of St. Michael's saying Soli Deo Gloria, the very motto of the Brotherhood! Shortly before coming to St. Michael's, Dave will become a Novice Brother, and will be properly addressed as Brother Dave for short.
 |
| Senior Warden ke Chiang "John" Hsieh makes the announcement as interim rector Fr. Richard Mallory looks on. |
After the Nominating Committee had interviewed all five applicants on Skype, three were given a second in-depth interview, the Committee sent the strongest applicant’s name to the Vestry.
Attention Choir Members: Rehearsal scheduled for 7 pm, October 15th will take place at Christ Methodist Church located at 5th and Craycroft.
As you probably already know, there will be no Sunday services on October 18 due to the termite fumigation. So we are asking everyone to attend one of our sister Episcopal parishes here in Tucson.
The Blessing of the Animals will take place this Sunday, October 4th, during all Masses, and is open to furry, feathery, and scaly pets in all shapes and sizes. Animals are to be on leashes or in carriers. The Blessing of the Animals is celebrated each year in conjunction with the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, patron saint of animals. All are invited to bring either their pet, or a stuffed animal representing their pet, for a special blessing.
Episcopal School Sunday
Fowler Fund Sunday
Sunday, October 11th, 2015
Episcopal School Sunday
Join us Sunday, October 11 and celebrate Episcopal School Sunday. St. Michael’s students will be serving at Mass and offering musical additions to the Mass. There will be only one Mass today, at 9:30 AM. Following the morning Masses, there will be a delicious Pancake Breakfast ~ cooked and served by our Boy Scouts under the direction of Byron Brandon and John Madsen.
Annual Fowler Fund Appeal Sunday
Sunday, October 11, 2015, is also Fowler Fund Sunday. It is the one Sunday each year in which we solicit donations for St. Michael’s Fowler Fund. Your contribution supports mini-grants to help variety of programs and situations in the larger community.
St. Michael's Fowler Fund honors the memory of St. Michael's long-time former rector, Father John Clinton Fowler. It consists of two parts, a permanent endowment and an expendable fund. The expendable fund, along with available interest from the permanent endowment, allows us to provide mini-grants to worthy organizations, primarily in the local Tucson community. Recent grants have provided start-up help to a center for abused women, assisted in the restoration of a fire-damaged church in Phoenix, funded urgent medical care under the auspices of the Guatemala Project, helped make homes handicap accessible for needy elderly individuals, and supported an organization which assists homeless men.
Please plan ahead, and consider making a special donation next week to the Fowler Funds. You will find an insert in next week’s bulletin, which you can place in the white envelope with your contribution, thus directing which portion(s) of the fund you are supporting. Our Fowler Fund Committee thanks all past donors for their significant generosity, and encourages each parishioner to consider providing a contribution to this year’s Fowler Fund appeal.
Termite Sunday
Sunday, October 18th, 2015
St. Michael’s Church and School will be closed from noon Wednesday, October 14th through Sunday, October 18th, so that the church can be fumigated for dry wood termites. For everyone’s safety, the entire property will be closed off during this time to everyone except the exterminators. On Sunday, October 18th, we encourage everyone to attend another church, and to return to us the following week with your insights and suggestions during this time of transition. The church office will reopen on Monday, October 19th.Certain items will need to be removed from the property before fumigation, including foods not in cans, the Blessed Sacrament etc. We will be forming a work party after the pancake breakfast on Sunday, October 11th to accomplish this. Volunteers welcome!
The governing body of The Episcopal Church, known as the General Convention, is a bicameral legislature that includes the House of Deputies and the House of Bishops. It meets every three years - and this is one of those years.
During its triennial meeting, the Convention's work is carried out by deputies and bishops representing each diocese. They consider a wide range of important issues. For more information on the Convention, as well as videos about the four nominees for Presiding Bishop, check out the General Convention website, articles about Convention on The Episcopal Cafe website. Thanks to Christ Church Cathedral, St. Louis for the info!
 | |
Sunday, March 29th, 2015
Palm Sunday | |
| 7:30 AM | Morning Prayer |
| 7:45 AM | Mass with Homily |
| 9:00 AM | Family Mass |
| 9:00 AM | Adult Education - Womble Library |
10:10 AM
| Godly Play and Journey to Adulthood - Parish Center |
| 10:15 AM | High Mass with Sermon |
| 12:30 PM | Misa en Español |
| 5:00 PM | Mass with Homily |
Monday, March 30th, 2015
Monday in Holy Week | |
7:30 AM
| Morning Prayer |
5:30 PM
| Low Mass (for World Peace) |
Tuesday, March 31st, 2015
Tuesday in Holy Week | |
7:30 AM
| Morning Prayer |
8:10 AM
| Lower School Mass |
11:00 AM
| A Service of Renewal of Clergy Vows and the Blessing of Holy Oils (Trinity Cathedral, Phoenix) |
Wednesday, April 1st, 2015
Wednesday in Holy Week | |
7:30 AM
| Morning Prayer |
12:10 PM
| Healing Mass with laying on of hands and Stations of the Cross |
Thursday, April 2nd, 2015
Maundy Thursday | |
7:30 AM
| Morning Prayer |
7:00 PM
| Parish Center: Seder Meal ~ Liturgy of the Word ~ High Mass of the Institution of the Lord’s Supper with Sermon, Procession to the Altar of Repose |
9:00 PM
| Beginning of the Watch |
Friday, April 3rd, 2015
Good Friday ~ Strict Fast and Abstinence ~ | |
12:00 Noon to 3:00 PM
| Service of Reflection: Christ’s Last Seven Words on the Cross Opportunity for Confession and Reconciliation ~ Priests Available |
7:00 PM
| Solemn Liturgy of Good Friday |
| ~ Fast until after the Vigil ~ | |
Saturday, April 4th, 2015
Holy Saturday ~ Special Devotion and Self-Denial ~ | |
7:00 AM
| Walk to the Cross on the Top of the Hill ~ St. Ann’s Convent on Sabino Canyon |
8:30 AM
| Liturgy of the Day |
| 7:00 PM | The Great Vigil of Easter: The Service of Light and the First High Mass of Easter ~ Lenten Fast Ends. We will break the fast and celebrate with the newly baptized following the Mass. |
Sunday, April 5th, 2015
The Sunday of the Resurrection: Easter Day | |
| 7:45 AM | Mass with Homily |
| 9:00 AM | Family Mass (Easter Egg Hunt Following Mass) |
| 10:15 AM | High Mass with Sermon |
| 12:30 PM | Misa en Español |
| (No 5 PM Mass Easter Day) | |
PARISH OFFICES CLOSED
April 18th ~Good Friday and April 21st ~ Easter Monday | |
Truth
is, I said to my friend, if I faced that trial I probably would
be afraid and even XXXX in my pants, but in that moment of
testing, I hope I could persevere in my faith in Jesus and his
resurrection. I hope that I had, like Romans says today, “Put on
Christ.”
What
strikes me about the translation “wrath of God” (and I mentioned this
before) is that no place in the Greek text is there “of God” (tou Theou).
It’s not there, nor is it implied in any way. In other words
“wrath” is what human beings do to other human beings, not brought about
by God at all. The weight behind this translation probably stems
from reading the Hebrew Bible where “vengeance” from God was called down
upon Israel’s enemies. Sometimes we blame the violence in the
world on God as necessary to bring protection and peace. We feel
better when we think in terms of “Sacred Violence,” violence that God
sanctions against those we judge as evil, but God is not for anything
that disregards the sacredness of life. If we are going to
continue with our notion of Sacred Violence, hurting others in God’s
Name, thinking we’re doing God’s will, God lets us, and the “wrath” that
ensues is wrath that we humans bring upon ourselves is our own doing.
1.
The first I heard about the news out of Ferguson was from a cryptic
remark on Facebook made by Mike Kinman, dean of Christ Cathedral in St.
Louis, Mo on August 10. It said, “Sometimes events happen that compel
you to tear up your sermon and start over. Yesterday’s shooting of
Michael Brown in Ferguson is one of those events.”
At
first the fear simply led to enslavement. Pharaoh needed builders
and the Hebrew slaves built, first Pithom and then Ramses. They
became more numerous. Pharaoh’s fear grew and so he instructed the
midwives Shiphrah and Puah: “When you act as midwives to the Hebrew
women, and see them on the birthstool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if
it is a girl, she shall live.”
impetuous Peter, the
one who would deny the Lord 3 times, recognizes that it’s Jesus, and
asks Jesus to command him to walk to him on the water. Jesus says: Come!
So Peter, jumps out of the boat, starts walking toward Jesus, but then
looks down at the turbulent waves! The moment he takes his eyes off of
Jesus he falters and begins to sink crying out: Lord, save me!
Matthew’s
Gospel said that that Jesus had compassion on the crowd.
“Compassion” in English is a rather soft word, in the Greek the word
connotes a much stronger response—and a better sense might be a
translation that says “When Jesus saw the crowd, he was
heartsick.” “The Sheldons were a large family in severe financial distress after a series of misfortunes. The help they received was not adequate, yet they managed their meager income with ingenuity – and without complaint.
“One fall day I visited the Sheldons in their ramshackle rented house where they lived at the edge of the woods. Despite a painful physical handicap, Mr. Sheldon had shot and butchered a bear that strayed into their yard once too often. The meat had been processed into all the big canning jars they could find or swap for. There would be meat in their diet even during the worst of the winter when their fuel costs were high.
“Mr Sheldon offered a jar of bear meat to me. I hesitated to accept it, but the giver met my unspoken resistance firmly. “Now you just have to take
this. We want you to have it. We don’t have much, that’s a fact; but we ain’t
poor!”
“I couldn’t resist asking, “What’s the difference?”
His answer proved unforgettable.
“”When you can give something away, even when you don’t have much, then you
ain’t poor. When you don’t feel easy giving something away even if you got
more’n you need, then you’re poor, whether you know it or not.”
“No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest.”The word for “let” in the Greek text is aphiemi which can mean “permit”, “let”, or “allow.” It’s in the command “do this” form. But the greatest thing for me is that the word aphiemi is the word in Greek for forgiveness, in the sense of “let off the hook!”
All this said, we still have to deal with Jesus’
words about collecting the weeds at harvest and throwing them into the
furnace of fire where there will be “weeping and gnashing of
teeth.” Doesn’t sound much like forgiveness, does it? We can
go in a couple of directions on this: Jesus could be saying “Leave
all Judgment and punishment to me and my Father. Wait till we get
our hands on the evildoers,” (Jesus’ listeners might like this best
because it gives a nod to the conventional wisdom to eliminate the bad
guys) or, Jesus is saying that the Kingdom he and the Angels are trying
to bring about on the earth will be unsuccessfully up-rooted like weeds
by those looking to get rid of them by putting Jesus (The Weed) to death
on the Cross. Jesus himself will suffer the furnace of fire in
his passion and death. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. were
modern day examples of persons willing to suffer violence themselves
before they would afflict others with violence.We, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.This is the experience of the follower of Jesus in the world: groaning for the Kingdom of peace and justice while being joyful in hope that “Thy Kingdom come” will be a reality in this world.
