FOR THE LOVE OF MIKE Volume 68 Number 2
ANNUAL PARISH MEETING FEBRUARY 4th 11:30AM
ANNUAL PARISH MEETING FEBRUARY 4th 11:30AM
FEBRUARY 2018
The Episcopal Church of Saint Michael and All Angels Pacific View Drive at Marguerite
Corona del Mar
California 92625
FROM THE INTERIM RECTOR
Lent – A Season For Freedom Some years ago, a few weeks before Ash Wednesday, I received an email from a sometimes irreverent Episcopalian friend. The “subject” of the email was “Oh God, not again!” and the first few lines were, “What misbegotten bunch of masochists cooked up the observance of Lent! Just what we need in the dead of winter, a six-week-long concerted effort to be grim! It begins in all its ghastliness on Ash Wednesday. How are you, aside from that?” I’m certain that my friend had his tongue firmly planted in his cheek when he sent me this email. He knows perfectly well that his description of Lent is a caricature, not an accurate and thoughtful understanding of what the holy season of Lent is and means. Nonetheless, I’ve been thinking about it ever since. As uncomfortable as it is to admit, his masochistic caricature of Lent all too closely resembles my own fraught relationship with this season - and with its central theme of repentance. It’s a recipe for self-punishment to expect the impossible of ourselves – and worse, to believe that God expects the impossible of us. But it’s frighteningly easy for me to hear the Church’s call to observe Lent as an obligation, a strict duty, to do just that – to expect the impossible of myself. The Church calls me to observe Lent in a spirit of humility and self-discipline. Yet all too often what I hear is “You should be a much, much better man – starting now. So get going.” My vices and sins loom up in front of me in all their dreary enormity. “I must do something about this,” I think to myself. “God expects me to do something about this. Shouldn’t I be DOING SOMETHING ABOUT THIS?” And before I even realize it, humility and self-discipline have given way to prideful, undisciplined, self-punishing expectations of how I “should” be able to fix my life in 40 days. God doesn’t expect the impossible of me, and I shouldn’t expect it of myself, either. To believe myself capable of the impossible is to fall into the sin of pride – surely the definitive anti-Lent state of mind! The unpleasant truth is that I will not be able to fix my life in the next 40 days. I will not be able to lose 10 pounds, and not swear, speed or drink coffee, and read Scripture every day, and pet the cat more often, and call Dad every weekend. To believe otherwise is to succumb to the sin of pride, to (mis) place my trust in my own ability to manage my sins and my insecurities, and to set myself up for a masochistic fall. So the first (and perhaps the only) thing I’m going to give up this Lent is the delusion that I can and should fix my life so that I can make God happy with me. It’s a delusion both because I can’t fix my life – only God’s power acting in my life can – and because God is already happy with me. Lent’s Good News to me isn’t “fix your life.” Lent’s Good News is “put your trust in God who already loves you more than you can imagine, and you’ll see that your sins don’t really deserve the prideful and obsessive attention you pay them!” That’s not a recipe for masochism. That’s a recipe for freedom. And if in 40 days I’m still drinking coffee, but I’m a little less focused on my own sinfulness and a little more focused on the depth and power of God’s love for me, I’ll have had a good and holy Lent– and perhaps even a transformative one.
--The Rev. Michael Seiler
949.644.0463
stmikescdm.ladiocese.org
LENT 2018 Ash Wednesday February 14 First Day of Lent Worship 7 am, 12 noon, 7:30 pm Sunday February 18 First Sunday in Lent “The Great Litany” Worship at 8 & 10 am Wednesday February 21 5:30 pm Evening Prayer, Sanctuary Lenten Suppers Begin Michael’s Room 6:00 pm Simple Supper, 6:30 pm Fr. Michael holds five weekly programs on the Resurrection 7:20 pm Compline
SUSAN BEECHNER IS RETIRING! CELEBRATE HER TIME AT ST. MIKES ON FEBRUARY 11 FOLLOWING 10AM WORSHIP
BUILDING OUR F OVING CHRIST AND SER VING OUR COMMUNITY FAITH: LO SERVING AITH: L