Holy Cross and St Margaret’s are embarking on a Carbon Action Project, which we are launching on Sunday 1 March:
9.30am Joint Service – 1st Sunday of Lent;
11am Launch of Carbon Action Project
This is a very significant initiative in the life of both our churches, enabling us all to practice what we preach as stewards of God’s good creation.
See our Carbon Action Project page for more information.
Lent is fast approaching – it’s a season when all of us are called to set aside time (through prayer, fellowship, and study) to draw closer to Jesus. Here are some of the Lent activities that you are welcome to take part in over the coming weeks.
Lent Groups
– We are joining with friends from other local churches to study the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lent book “Saying Yes to Life”, by eco-theologian Ruth Valerio: https://spckpublishing.co.uk/saying-yes-to-life Groups meet on Monday eve, Tuesday eve, and Wednesday lunchtime. Email the Rector if you want to sign up.
– Chris Lockley from St Margaret’s is leading a Lent course looking at Celtic Spirituality, meeting on Thursdays at 1.30pm.
Events and services
Tue 25 Feb, 5.30-7pm: Shrove Tuesday Pancake Party in the Annex
– All welcome, especially families with children!
Wed 26 Feb, 10am and 6pm: Ash Wednesday Eucharist
– A solemn and beautiful service with imposition of ashes, to mark the entry into Lent
Sun 1 Mar, 9.30am and 11am: Joint Service with St Margaret’s and Launch of Carbon Action Project
– A very significant initiative in the life of both our churches, enabling us all to practice what we preach as stewards of God’s good creation.
Tues 10 Mar, 10am-3pm: Lent Quiet Day in the Annex
– Led by Rev Joan Smith
For more information on any of these, please email the Rector.
Holy Cross are proud to partner with Holy Rosary and St Margaret’s to cohost the North Canberra Nativity Festival with over 200 nativity displays and events all weekend.
11-13th Dec – schools and families
14-15th Dec – public exhibition
7pm Saturday 14th – Looking Glass Percussion Concert
6pm Sunday 15th – Community BBQ followed by 7pm Carols by Candlelight.
An evening of fine music with the Canberra Symphony Orchestra and friends to usher in the Christmas Season.
7pm Saturday 14 December, Holy Cross Anglican Church
Join us for the festive season: Advent Sunday 1 Dec;
Nativity Festival & Carols by Candlelight 11-15 Dec;
Blue Christmas 18 Dec;
Kids Nativity; Midnight Mass 24 Dec;
Christmas Service 25 Dec
This week I am exploring the second in an occasional series entitled “The Language of Worship”. At Holy Cross we are blessed with a Christian heritage of words and music written over more than 1000 years. Learning more about the songs we sing helps us to appreciate the diversity of God’s abundant creativity, in which we all share.
“All Creatures Of Our God and King“, based on the 13th century hymn Laudato sia Dio mio Signore by Francis of Assisi (written in Italian at a time when most church worship was in Latin), was written by English Anglican priest William Henry Draper for a children’s Pentecost service in about 1910. The chorale tune was published by German Jesuit Friedrich Spee in 1623, and re-harmonised for the English Hymnal in 1906 by Ralph Vaughan Williams.
“O Thou Who Camest From Above“, a hymn to the Holy Spirit, is one of 6,500(!) hymns written by Charles Wesley (1707-1788), Anglican priest and co-founder of Methodism with his brother John Wesley. The tune “Hereford” was written many years later by his grandson Samuel Sebastian Wesley, an Anglican organist and composer. Charles Wesley had a remarkable gift of putting deep theological truths into memorable poetry, at a time when many Christians were illiterate: Methodists learned theology by singing it.
Geoff Bullock, an ABC cameraman from Sydney, experienced a powerful conversion in 1978 and co-founded Hills Christian Life Centre (later Hillsong) in 1983, where he wrote “The Power of Your Love (I)“. Bullock left Hillsong after burnout and marriage breakdown in the 1990s. He subsequently published “The Power of Your Love (II)“, changing the lyrics to emphasise God’s gracious and unmerited forgiveness, and this is the version we’re singing today.
Melbourne vicar Elizabeth J. Smith (b.1956) is known for her modern hymns with inclusive language. She says she wrote “God gives us a future” as a curate, partly out of frustration at congregation members who were reluctant to learn new songs! The jaunty tune “Camberwell” is by English Anglican priest John Brierley, a member of the “20th Century Church Light Music Group” in the 1950s (along with Patrick Appleford, the author of “Living Lord”).
Come along to Holy Cross Fete for a great day of music, food, stalls, activities, fun and friendship! Saturday 16 November 9am-2pm.
Join Good Faith Choir and Queanbeyan’s Kaleidoscope for a concert of sacred and secular music.
2pm Sun 10 Nov at Holy Cross & St Margaret’s. (Reprised 2pm Sun 24 Nov at Queanbeyan Uniting Church).
A post from a young parishioner:
On Sunday at church we talked about how God is behind creation and all living things. Rachel did an amazing talk on how our beautiful planet is heating up, increasing the number of species of animals that are extinct, and how we can learn from Aboriginal people to care for the earth. It got us all thinking. Will we have a planet to live on in a decade or two?
Will my children be able to survive in such an environment? How can we save what God has given us before it’s too late?
I myself have been thinking about these things already but this got me thinking deeper, because if governments are not going to do anything then it’s up to us too.
Global warming is a BIG problem! We need to start acting. There are little things to do to make a difference to stop our planet heating up more:
We can eat less meat. Even though meat is good for you (in most cases) it is adding to the pollution of our environment. I am a flexitarian which means I eat meat only sometimes. When I am older I want to be a full vegetarian, but for now, as I am growing, I need protein. Livestock farming is crashing our environment because cows and other non-native animals are contributing to severe drought which at this rate we’ll see a lot more of across the world!
We can walk places. I walk home from school about three day a week. I’m not perfect because I do get dropped off places quite a lot, but I’m trying to improve every day. Walking or bike riding helps the environment because when you use a car that uses fossil fuel petrol it adds to pollution in the air and global warming. It adds to the invisible bubble surrounding the earth. This bubble lets heat in but DOESN’T easily let it back out again. Electric cars are better.
When I’m older I’m 110% going to own an electric car. My family has a hybrid car which is pretty good. If we want to get out of this climate mess than we should have an electric (or solar) car (if we are going to have a car at all) or take public transport!
On that morning of Creation Sunday, we made craft using natural materials to celebrate nature and we wrote a letter to Prime Minister Scott Morrison letting him know that he is not doing enough about climate change and that it’s NOT ok. Whether he listens or not is up to him but honestly I think that deep down everyone, including him, is scared. We all just have different ways of showing it. But if are going to get out of this mess we all need to decide to stand up, fight back for the planet and not let climate change ruin something that was never ours alone to ruin.
Today I’m beginning an occasional series: “The Language of Worship”. At Holy Cross, we come from diverse backgrounds – and often have strong views about words and music! So the hymns and songs we use in worship reflect not just our diversity, but the diversity of the Kingdom of Heaven with its “treasures old and new” (Matthew 13.52). By finding out more about who actually wrote the songs we sing, and why, we learn more about the wonderful variety of the body of Christ – and more about the God we worship. “I will sing with the Spirit, but I will also sing with my understanding.” (1 Cor 14.15)
“All my hope on God is founded” was written by the great German Calvinist hymnwriter Joachim Leander in 1680, and translated into English in 1899 by Robert Bridges, an Anglican choirmaster and future Poet Laureate. Today we’re using the modernised version from the Australian hymn book Together in Song. The tune Michael was written (over breakfast!) by Herbert Howells in 1930, and named for his son who died tragically young.
“I heard the voice of Jesus say” is a 19th century hymn by Scottish Free Church minister Horatius Bonar, set to an old English folk song, Dives and Lazarus, which Ralph Vaughan Williams heard in a pub in the village of Kingsfold in Sussex, and published as a hymn tune in the 1906 English Hymnal.
“Give thanks” is the only published song by Henry Smith, written for a church in Williamsburg, Virginia in 1978 as a response to having become blind: “let the weak say I am strong, let the poor say I am rich …”.
Karen Lafferty was a nightclub entertainer who wrote “Seek ye first” in 1971 after attending a church bible study on Matthew 6.33, and now runs Musicians for Mission, an international ministry of Youth With A Mission based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
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