Announcements for Holy Week 2014

HOLY WEEK BEGINS WITH PALM SUNDAY - You are urged to make every effort to attend these most solemn services of the Christian year. These services have a wonderful cathartic effect and will truly make your Easter very joyful and special.

LAST CALL FOR EASTER FLOWER DONATIONS – Simply place your donation in an envelope making certain your donation is clearly marked for “flowers” and drop in the collection basket ~ also everyone is invited to bring flowers to the Altar of Repose anytime during the Watch Before the Altar which in turn will be used to decorate the Church during Easter.

THIS MAUNDY THURSDAY’S SERVICE begins in the Parish Center with a Seder Meal representing the LORD’S Supper, Washing of the Feet, then to the Church with the remainder of the High Mass with the procession to the Altar of Repose and the Stripping of the Altars. Please sign up on the dinner sign-up sheet located on the ushers’ cabinet.

ALTAR OF REPOSE - the schedule for a Watch before the Altar of Repose still has blank spaces. Be sure to sign up to spend some time with Our Lord in prayer and meditation between Holy Thursday and the Good Friday liturgy.

EASTER CONFESSIONS - your preparation for Easter communion should include an examination of conscience and making your confession. This is a traditional and good way to get yourself ready to greet the Resurrection. An introduction and help sheet is available in the rear of the church, and the times of confession are listed within Holy Week Calendar. Please prayerfully consider this excellent spiritual exercise for your life.

BRING AND RING YOUR BELLS - participate in ringing your very own bells throughout the Gloria (along with a great organ fanfare and singing) at the Easter Vigil service.

EASTER VIGIL BREAK-FAST - everyone is invited to break the fast and welcome the newly baptized after the Easter Vigil service in the Parish Center. Special dishes of eggs, fruit, and hot cross buns will be served. Sign-up sheet located on the ushers’ cabinet.

Sunday School will not be held Easter Day.

RISE AND SHINE! Please note that due to the Easter Vigil service, there will no 5:00 PM Mass on the Sunday of the Resurrection: Easter Day. The Parish Offices will be closed on Good Friday and Easter Monday.

BRING A CAN - BECAUSE YOU CAN! The need is especially great so far this month. The pantry is in need of: Mac and Cheese, canned spaghetti products, canned fruit, peanut butter and crackers and tuna fish. Your generosity is greatly appreciated.

THE EASTER ISSUE OF MESSENGER IS AVAILABLE! Click here to download your copy.

Brief Notes from the Parish Office

 

Palm Sunday is this Sunday and the beginning of Holy Week! (See below for the Holy Week and Easter schedule.)

As a reminder:  This Saturday, April 12th from 9-10 AM, will be opportunity for Confession and Reconciliation. Several Priests will be available.

Two of our parishioners have died. Roy Van Note died Wednesday and Lorene Paschal died today. (Their funerals will be in the future, most likely in May.)  

May their Souls and all the Souls of the faithful through the mercy of God rest in peace.  Amen.

Other Announcements:

• Please note ~ there will be no ECW meeting this month. See you on May 21, 2014.

• Knitters and Crocheters will meet Saturday, April 12 at 10AM In the school art room. Just bring your craft and join us!

• Parish Life invites you to “Dine with your Dog” at the Dakota Café on Thursday, April 24th at 6:30 pm. (6541 E. Tanque Verde in Trail Dust Town). Please RSVP by April 20. Reservation sheets in the back of church.

• Lenten Soup Suppers began on Wednesday, March 12th at 6:30 PM at the House of Prayer, preceded by Evening Prayer at the House of Prayer. You are invited for a simple soup supper followed by discussion of the book“Unabashedly Episcopalian” by Bishop Andrew Doyle. All are invited for this special Lenten Study.

Holy Week Schedule 2014

Holy Week Schedule 2014

Mon Apr 14	Monday in Holy Week
7:30 AM	Morning Prayer
5:30 PM	Low Mass (for World Peace)
Tue Apr 15	Tuesday in Holy Week
7:30 AM	Morning Prayer
11:00 AM	A Service of Renewal of Clergy Vows and the Blessing of Holy Oils (Trinity Cathedral, Phoenix)
Wed Apr 16	Wednesday in Holy Week
7:30 AM	Morning Prayer
12:10 PM	Healing Mass with Laying On of Hands and Stations of the Cross
Thu Apr 17	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, and Procession to the Altar of Repose
9:00 PM	Beginning of the Watch
Fri Apr 18	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 ~
Sat Apr 19	Holy Saturday ~ Special Devotion & 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, Holy Baptism and the First High Mass of Easter ~ Lenten Fast Ends. We will break the Fast and celebrate with the Newly Baptized following the Mass.
Sun Apr 20	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 Espanol
	(No 5pm Mass Easter Day)

  

Parish Offices closed April 18th ~Good Friday

and April 21st ~ Easter Monday

Introducing the A F Schultz Organ Fund

March 25, 2014
Feast of the Annunciation to Our Lady

Dear Friends:

Two Sundays ago I was so happy to announce that the final loan payment for St. Michael’s Aeolian Skinner Organ was made. This effort to provide the church with a fine instrument for worship took over 20 years and the dedication of many people to accomplish! The acquisition, transport, refurbishment, architectural accommodation and installation cost over $1.2 million dollars! Solo Deo Gratia!

I am so happy to announce that the Vestry, upon completion of this goal, and the recommendation of many, has decided to dedicate the parish organ to Alan F. Schultz. Alan is such a worthy person to associate with this wonderful instrument which enhances, like nothing else, our worship of God! As a loved and respected teacher of English at St. Michael’s School for over 30 years who has trained students in writing, declamation, and public speaking and provided music for our school masses until this day, Alan has enriched the lives of thousands of students and their teachers over the years. Alan has served our parish as its organist for many years and composed Masses and other pieces for special occasions. Alan has shared his talent of musical composition and performance with the wider community through the Southern Arizona Community Orchestra, where he remains Conductor Emeritus, and the Tucson Masterworks Chorale. Alan also had an important role in bringing the Aeolian Skinner organ to St. Michael and All Angels over 20 years ago. May our instrument be called “The Schultz Organ!”

We want to insure the proper upkeep and maintenance of this fine instrument for generations of worshippers to come. To this end, we will establish “The Alan F. Schultz Endowment for the Organ.” Our initial goal will be $120,000. Quietly, we already have received over $14,000 in cash and over $30,000 in pledges toward the goal. We have $76,000 to reach our goal.

With joy and thanksgiving will you help with a pledge or gift to this special endowment in Alan Schultz’s honor? Pledges can be paid over four years. Reminders will be sent out early September in time for the annual Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, September 29th. All pledges and/or gifts will receive special recognition. All Book of Pipes contributions, once placed on the principal of the loans, will now be placed in the endowment. Once the corpus of the Schultz endowment is established, the earnings will accrue to be used to maintain the organ, providing good stewardship for the care of this instrument for years to come!

Thank you for your generous response. Please see our Music page or our new Schultz Organ page for info on how you can help us with this effort. You can also donate now using the PayPal button below.

On April 26th at 2:30pm will have a special Concert of Thanksgiving by Trumpeter Mary Elizabeth Bowden and our own Douglas Leightenheimer! We will announce the totals at the concert! Thank you for taking part in this effort to thank God for so many blessings!

Sincerely in Our Lord,
John R. Smith, Priest and Rector

Thanks and Update from the Poz Café

Hi everyone,

We’d like to share the following information with you about last Thursday’s Poz Café event. Since not all the volunteers from the sponsoring congregations have email, please share this report with the volunteers from your group. You might want to consider including a report in your congregation’s bulletin or newsletter.

We have included some photos from the event. If you would like more, please let me know.

Thank you all for your participation in making our March Poz Café luncheon a success! Caring congregations and organizations putting their faith in action and sharing love and great food!

Our Mother of Sorrows Catholic Church

St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church

St. Philip’s in the Hills Episcopal Church

With support from March’s fantastic sponsoring congregations, we were able to serve 131 people at this month’s event!  That’s a 13% increase over last year’s March Poz Café.  This number includes people living with HIV, their guests, congregational volunteers, and TIHAN volunteers and staff.  The March lunch buffet featured Salisbury steak, buttered noodles, sautéed zucchini and squash, tossed garden greens, dinner rolls with butter, and homemade chocolate devil’s food cake.  We celebrated with a St. Patrick’s Day theme, with many volunteers dressed for the occasion.

Some highlights from this month:

With assistance from our partner agencies Lutheran Social Services of the Southwest and COPE Community Services, we provided transportation to over 6 CarePartners and guests who otherwise may not have been able to attend.

We distributed 75 Care Packages, decorated bags filled with toiletry items, to our CarePartners living with HIV/AIDS.  The sponsoring congregations donated all of the products to use in stuffing these bags.  Thanks to Our Mother of Sorrows for the festive decorated bags they contributed.

The St. Patrick’s Day theme was complete with Our Mother of Sorrows’ fabulous table centerpieces.

With assistance from the staff at St. Francis in the Foothills, we were able to project a slideshow continuously throughout the event that depicted a 2013 TIHAN year-in-review.  Additionally, during our announcements we recognized the outstanding Poz Café volunteers, educational speakers, Excellence in Caring volunteer nominees, and Models of Empowerment nominees who received certificates and recognition at our recent Annual Meeting.  The CarePartners and guests in attendance at this month’s Poz Café, many of whom helped nominate these individuals, got to see the faces behind TIHAN’s Care and Support programs and applaud these fantastic volunteers.

Finally, many CarePartners received generously donated gift prizes by winning BINGO or the raffle.

And of course we can’t forget the great meal and the hugs and the “safe space” that you help create at Poz Café every month, enabling our CarePartners to meet others living with HIV, increase their social support, and know that there are caring people from faith communities who welcome them and are working to end the stigma that still exists.

Our sponsoring congregations brought 15 congregational volunteers to help this month, at least 3 of whom were joining us for the first time.  Thank you all for your willingness to help!  Our regular TIHAN volunteers did a great job of helping the congregational volunteers have an experience of learning and serving.

 

Each month, we survey the congregational volunteers, and the March responses are below.  (10 of the 15 congregational volunteers completed all or part of the survey this month.)  The survey results were positive and will assist us in future events.

We would also like to share a few comments from congregational volunteers that really speak to the atmosphere of the event:
 
The best part of Poz Café was:

“All the great people I met”“Very well organized”

“Everything!”

       
Special Mention

We want to thank our Poz Café 101 Educational Hour speakers for their volunteer time: Linda relayed the history of TIHAN and the story of the Poz Café monthly event, and taught basic information about HIV and AIDS so that all of our congregational volunteers were prepared to serve with a common level of knowledge about these issues. Jeffrey shared his personal story of living with HIV and becoming part of the TIHAN community, placing Linda’s educational facts into a real-life context. Our Poz Café 101 team hopes you enjoyed the educational hour and feel well-informed to outreach within your communities and continue the mission of decreasing the stigma of those living with HIV/AIDS. The congregational volunteers arrived en masse and were ready to prepare the meal and hall for a fabulous lunch and afternoon of compassion and connecting with people living with HIV.  We appreciate the energy that was generated and all the fellowship that our volunteers provided to our CarePartners. Special thanks go to congregational coordinators Beverly Mahl, Laura Stehle, Consuelo Lucero, Deacon Ralph Taylor, Dianne Gundersen, and Father John Smith for all their efforts in planning, shopping for food, collecting Care Package and raffle/BINGO prize items, and organizing the congregational volunteers.  A special thank-you also goes to out to the clergy in attendance, in addition to those who served as coordinators: Reverend Vicki Hesse and Monsignor Thomas Cahalane volunteered with their congregations.  Thanks so much for joining us!

   

       
We hope you had a great time, and if you’d like to volunteer with Poz Café more than the once a year that your congregation sponsors the event, please contact us at 299-6647!

Having started with just a handful of people at those first luncheons so many years ago, Poz Café is now the largest regular gathering place for people living with HIV in Southern Arizona!  TIHAN is 100% privately funded and counts on people like you to continue this program, and all of our work.

If you or someone you know would like to make a financial donation to help support Poz Café and keep this program operating, your contribution is greatly needed, and appreciated!  Make a donation now and write in the “memo line” of your check that it is for Poz Café (or CLICK HERE TO DONATE to make a secure online donation.)  And please encourage your faith community to make a contribution to keep TIHAN operating.  The economy has affected all of our faith communities, our CarePartners, and TIHAN; but we have faith that you can help us sustain our programs.  We cannot continue this work without the financial support of our faith communities and volunteers.  Please help advocate for funding for TIHAN in your congregation and in any way that you can do so. 
 

Thanks again for your support of Poz Café, and for making so much possible through TIHAN!

Poz Café is made possible in part by donations from compassionate congregations and individuals of TIHAN, along with funding from Rincon Congregational United Church of Christ, St. Francis in the Foothills United Methodist Church, and the Sundt Foundation.  Support for transportation is provided by Lutheran Social Services of the Southwest and COPE Community Services.
    

Deirdre Demers
Program Manager
Tucson Interfaith HIV/AIDS Network (TIHAN)
2660 N. 1^st  Avenue
Tucson, Arizona 85719
(520) 299-6647
www.tihan.org
Join us on Facebook 

Most of the CarePartners living with HIV/AIDS who receive support services from TIHAN are people whose household income is less than 150% of the federal poverty level.  Because of this, the State of Arizona now allows TIHAN donors to take advantage of the working poor tax credit.  Your donation to TIHAN could reduce personal income taxes owed to the state of Arizona by up to $200 for individuals and $400 for those filing jointly (if you itemize).  In essence, a donation to TIHAN of up to $200 (or $400 for married couples) may have no cost to you the donor, since you might pay that much less in taxes if you are eligible for this state tax credit. 

Announcements Through March 30th, 2014

*The ECW will have a Casserole/Bake Sale TODAY Sunday, March 23 after the morning Masses. Book Sale also included today.

**TODAY ~ Sunday, March 23, Social Action regular committee meeting follows 10:15 am Mass, Womble Library. Everyone is welcome as we explore a few small practicalities of living the Lenten fast [noting that Isaiah recommends letting the oppressed go free, breaking every yoke, sharing bread with the hungry, bringing the homeless poor into your house, and covering the naked – [Isaiah 58: 6-9.] Agenda items to Peggy Van Norman, htfqueen@aol.com.

**Sunday, March 30, following Morning Masses, we’ll assemble food packs for Tucson Samaritans to give migrants in distress in the desert. What can you bring? Gallon jugs of water, March 23 and 30^th only. Just put them in the gold chest in the back of church. You don’t have to have a final opinion on all the nuance of immigration to give food to the hungry and a lifesaving cup of water to the thirsty.

** St. Michael’s Guatemala Project’s small summer teams are filling fast, and we would like another parishioner or two if possible. Team 1 (June 3-20) is full, primarily with U of A medical students and their MD advisor. Team 2 (June 24-July17) has two slots available. We are very happy to add UA student Taylor Nash, grand-daughter of the Parish , to this team. Team 3 (July 21-August 6) has space available and will be somewhat less physically demanding than th*e others. Interested? Ask Coordinator Ila Abernathy for details, 623-3063, ilaa@mindspring.com.

 

Lenten Soup Suppers began on Wednesday, March 12th at 6:30 PM at the House of Prayer, preceded by Evening Prayer at the House of Prayer. You are invited for a simple soup supper followed by discussion of the book “Unabashedly Episcopalian” by Bishop Andrew Doyle. The books are available for purchase ($10) on the Usher’s table or on Wednesday at the House of Prayer. All are invited for this special Lenten Study.

 TAIZE 4th YEAR CELEBRATION  -  APRIL 1^st

Please come and join us for a reception following the

Taize service April 1st at 6:45 pm.

We are celebrating now, well into our 4th year of continuous Taize services held the 1st and 3rd Tuesday of each month  Taize is a service of Prayers, Songs, Readings, Silence, and Music. This quiet, meditative service is also a great way to observe Lent.

Any other suggestions you may have of other ways we could promote this would be appreciated.

Thanks for all your support and perseverance in everything you do.

Announcements For Week Ending March 23, 2014 (and beyond)

 

**ECW will meet on Wed. March 19. We will gather in the Parish Center at 10:30 am. Ladies of the Parish, please join us. The ECW Southern Area Gathering is on April 5 at Grace St. Paul’s here in Tucson. Transportation can be provided. A sign-up sheet is in the back of church. A $15 payment is due in advance. Please give your checks to Jody Snider.

**The ECW will have a Casserole/Bake Sale on Sunday, March 23. Please support this project and bring in baked goods and casseroles next Sunday. Bring your items to the parish kitchen before Masses Thank you for participating.

**Sunday, March 23, Social Action regular committee meeting follows 10:15 am Mass, Womble Library. Everyone is welcome as we explore a few small practicalities of living the Lenten fast [noting that Isaiah recommends letting the oppressed go free, breaking every yoke, sharing bread with the hungry, bringing the homeless poor into your house, and covering the naked – [Isaiah 58: 6-9.] Agenda items to Peggy Van Norman, htfqueen@aol.com. 721-8559.

**Sunday, March 30, following Morning Masses, we’ll assemble food packs for Tucson Samaritians to give migrants in distress in the desert. What can you bring? Gallon jugs of water, March 23 and 30^th only. Just put them in the gold chest in the back of church. You don’t have to have a final opinion on all the nuance of immigration to give food to the hungry and a lifesaving cup of water to the thirsty.

  

** St. Michael’s Guatemala Project’s small summer teams are filling fast, and we would like another parishioner or two if possible. Team 1 (June 3-20) is full, primarily with U of A medical students and their MD advisor. Team 2 (June 24-July17) has two lots available. We are very happy to add UA student Taylor Nash, grand-daughter of the Parish , to this team. Team 3 (July 21-August 6) has space available and will be somewhat less physically demanding than the others. Interested? Ask Coordinator Ila Abernathy for details, 623-3063, ilaa@mindspring.com.