(Modified 2021-05-16: Added recorded sermon audio)
St. Mary’s Anglican Church, Sunday after Ascension, May 16, 2021 Canon Claude Schroeder
So today we have come to The Sunday after Ascension in our church calendar where we are remembering the time in-between Ascension, which we celebrated on Thursday, and Pentecost, which we will celebrate next Sunday. It’s an odd moment for us, because we really aren’t going anywhere, or moving forward on anything, or have anything particularly to celebrate. It’s a time of patient waiting and of praying. Sounds a bit like COVID, doesn’t it?
Our Collect for today is doubly appropriate.” We beseech thee, leave us not comfortless, but send to us thine Holy Ghost, to comfort us and exalt us to same place where our Savior Christ is gone before.” That word comfort means to strengthen. We are praying today for God send his Holy Spirit to strengthen us, and lift us up. I think we could use a little bit of lifting up. But this lifting up is not an emotional boost, but a spiritual one. When the Holy Ghost exalts us, lifts us UP, we find ourselves, reigning and ruling over the chaos and madness of our world, it’s sin and its sadness. This precisely what is given to us to experience in the Holy Communion. It’s our Ascension to be with Christ in the heavenly places.
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