Saint James the Great Anglican Church Smiths Station, Alabama

A Mission of the Anglican Province of America

Fr John Klein can be reached at (334) 663-2985 / kleinjw@tigermail.auburn.edu

Newsletter #6 – April 18, 2017

Traditional, orthodox Anglicanism – Catholic and Evangelical – for modern people.

Χριστὸς ἀνέστη! Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη! Greek

Christus resurrexit! Resurrexit vere! Latin

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed. English

Crist is arisen! Arisen he sothe! Middle English

¡Cristo resucitó! ¡En verdad resucitó! Spanish

Христóсъ воскрéсе! Воистину воскресе! Old Church Slavonic

Christus (or: Der Herr) ist auferstanden! Er ist wahrhaft (or: wahrhaftig) auferstanden! German

Kristus är uppstånden! Han är sannerligen uppstånden! Swedish

Христос воскрес! Воистину воскрес! Russian from Alexey Truschechkin our pianist

St. Mark xvi. 1.

WHEN the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the Mother of James, and Salome,

had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him. And very early in the morning

the first day of the week, they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun. And they said

among themselves, Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre? And when

they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away: for it was very great. And entering into

the sepulchre, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment;

and they were affrighted. And he saith unto them, Be not affrighted: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth,

which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him. But go

your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee: there shall ye see

him, as he said unto you.

We have just celebrated the Three Great Days or Paschal Triduum. In this celebration –

in our Baptism and in Holy Communion – we have passed with Jesus Christ: From darkness to light,

From slavery to freedom, And from death to life.

This is what it means to be, as Saint Paul said so many times, “in Christ.” We are in Christ because we are members of the Body of Christ, we as members of the Body receive the Body of Christ in the Eucharist. As The Book of Common Prayer puts it: “The Church is the Body of which Jesus Christ is the Head, and all baptized people are members” AND “The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was ordained for the continual remembrance of the sacrifice of the death of Christ, and of the benefits which we receive thereby.” We know that in remembering the events of Holy Week at the Eucharist, they are re-presented, re-called into our lives right here and now, transcending the limitations of space and time. This is at the core of the Great Paschal Mystery.

O GOD, who for our redemption didst give thine only-begotten Son to the death of the Cross, and by his glorious resurrection hast delivered us from the power of our enemy; Grant us so to die daily from sin, that we may evermore live with him in the joy of his resurrection; through the same thy Son Christ our Lord. Amen.

Father Klein’s Pilgrimage to the Holy Land

January 31 – February 9, 2018

Join me on a journey to Jerusalem and the holy sights of our Lord’s ministry next year.

The package price - including airfare on Delta Airlines, four star hotels, breakfast and

dinner daily, all entrance fees, a trained guide and Father Klein as the spiritual director

of the pilgrimage - is $2945.00 per person. There will also be some airport taxes and

gratuities to the driver. This is a ten day religious pilgrimage in a traditional, orthodox

Anglican manner. We will pray Morning and Evening Prayer daily, celebrate the

Eucharist at major holy sites including the “Sermon on the Mount” site and the Garden

Tomb, and sing sacred hymns in the holiest settings. We will even carry a wooden cross

along the Via Dolorosa as we walk the Way of the Cross. More information will follow,

but for the itinerary at present please copy and paste:

https://www.explority.com/groups/nli/58d7b4ed61061600047b7fff?org=AMI-Travel

“I am trying here to prevent anyone

saying the really foolish thing that

people often say about Him: I’m

ready to accept Jesus as a great moral

teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to

be God. That is the one thing we must

not say. A man who was merely a

man and said the sort of things Jesus

said would not be a great moral

teacher. He would either be a lunatic

— on the level with the man who says

he is a poached egg — or else he

would be the Devil of Hell. You must

make your choice. Either this man

was, and is, the Son of God, or else a

madman or something worse. You

can shut him up for a fool, you can

spit at him and kill him as a demon or

you can fall at his feet and call him

Lord and God, but let us not come

with any patronizing nonsense about

his being a great human teacher. He

has not left that open to us. He did not

intend to.”

― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Birthdays: Catherine Thornburg (May 9th)

Jessica Hughes (June 15th)

Carmen Mosley (June 19th)

St Matthias’ Dothan

Schedule (CT)

Fr. Geddings and Fr. Klein – on behalf of Bishop Chandler Holder Jones, our Suffragan Bishop and Dean, regularly minister to our sister congregation St Matthias, Dothan. This month’s schedule will be released soon. It was thrilling for all of us to be together with Bishop Chad and Fr Geddings on Palm Sunday at St. James’.

ΑΩ

On the Resurrection

“Here the whole world (stars, water, air,

And field, and forest, as they were

Reflected in a single mind)

Like cast off clothes was left behind

In ashes, yet with hopes that she,

Re-born from holy poverty,

In lenten lands, hereafter may

Resume them on her Easter Day."

(Epitaph for Joy Davidman)”

― C.S. Lewis

“He, the Life of all, our Lord and Saviour, did not arrange the manner of his own death

lest He should seem to be afraid of some other kind. No. He accepted and bore upon

the cross a death inflicted by others, and those other His special enemies, a death

which to them was supremely terrible and by no means to be faced; and He did this in

order that, by destroying even this death, He might Himself be believed to be the Life,

and the power of death be recognised as finally annulled. A marvellous and mighty

paradox has thus occurred, for the death which they thought to inflict on Him as

dishonour and disgrace has become the glorious monument to death's defeat.”

― Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation

“Optimism hopes for the best without any guarantee of its arriving and is often no more

than whistling in the dark. Christian hope, by contrast, is faith looking ahead to the

fulfillment of the promises of God, as when the Anglican burial service inters the corpse

'in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus

Christ.' Optimism is a wish without warrant; Christian hope is a certainty, guaranteed

by God himself. Optimism reflects ignorance as to whether good things will ever

actually come. Christian hope expresses knowledge that every day of his life, and every

moment beyond it, the believer can say with truth, on the basis of God's own

commitment, that the best is yet to come.”

― J.I. Packer

“What we have at the moment isn't as the old liturgies used to say, 'the sure and certain

hope of the resurrection of the dead,' but a vague and fuzzy optimism that somehow

things may work out in the end. ”

― N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection,

and the Mission of the Church