St. Michael's Church, Litchfield, CT

Join us for Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper to be held in St. Michael’s community house at 23 South Street, just off the Litchfield Green on Tuesday, February 12th from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.

BRING YOUR PALMS to be burned for our Ash Wednesday ashes. Donations will benefit St. Michael’s Church School. All are welcome!

The three Episcopal churches in Greater Litchfield are partnering to offer three Ash Wednesday services on February 13th.

The Rev. Bevan Stanley will begin with a 9am service with communion and imposition of ashes at St. Michael’s Parish, 25 South Street, just off the Litchfield Green.

Rev. Stanley will then offer a 12pm service with communion and imposition of ashes at Trinity Church at 536 Milton Road in the Milton section of Litchfield.

At 7pm, Rev. Chris Webber will preside over a similar service to be held at St. Paul’s Church at 802 Bantam Road in Bantam. Marguerite Mullée, Music Director at St. Michael’s, will conduct “Drop, Drop Slow Tears” by Orlando Gibbons sung by the combined choirs of St. Paul’s-Bantam and St. Michael’s. Gretchen Gowen, organist at Trinity-Milton, will provide organ support for congregational hymns.

The three Episcopal churches in Greater Litchfield are partnering to offer three Ash Wednesday services on February 13th.

The Rev. Bevan Stanley will begin with a 9am service with communion and imposition of ashes at St. Michael’s Parish.

Rev. Stanley will then offer a 12pm service with communion and imposition of ashes at Trinity Church at 536 Milton Road in the Milton section of Litchfield.

At 7pm, Rev. Chris Webber will preside over a similar service to be held at St. Paul’s Church at 802 Bantam Road in Bantam. Marguerite Mullee, Music Director at St. Michael’s, will conduct “Drop, Drop Slow Tears” by Orlando Gibbons sung by the combined choirs of St. Paul’s & St. Michael’s. Gretchen Gowen, organist at Trinity-Milton, will provide organ support for congregational hymns.

Sermon preached in St. Michael’s by Fr. E. Walton Zelley, Jr.
Good Friday April 6, 2012

Text: The Hymnal, 1982: Hymn 458, vs1. “My song is love unknown, my Savior’s love to me. Love to the loveless shown, that they might lovely be. O who am I that for my sake my Lord should take frail fresh and die . . .”

SING IT!

The scene at Calvary, and the scenes immediately leading up to it, have for centuries arrested the attention of Christian believers, and have captured the imagination of writers, poets, and artists who would in no sense identify with the basic tenets of the Christian Religion. But what does Christ’s death on a cross signify to us who seek to be His faithful followers today in the complex world of the 21st century? What it signifies for us, I believe, comes for the most part from the spiritual spectacles through which we view it; spectacles which have been provided for us by preachers, teachers, parents and other significant people in our lives who have been our guides and companions as we have sought in our own day to walk Christ’s “Way of the Cross” in response to His overwhelming demonstration of divine love.

In my own spiritual pilgrimage, I have been provided by my spiritual guides and companions on the way, with two basically contrasting sets of spiritual spectacles through which I might view Christ’s death on the cross and its meaning for my life. And the different perspectives these two sets of spiritual spectacles provide find expression in the words of two hymns in our Episcopal Hymnal. It’s from the second of these that I have chosen my text this Good Friday evening.

The first set of spiritual spectacles finds expression in the words of Hymn 158 which is often selected for Passiontide liturgies. This is how it begins:

Ah holy Jesus, how has thou offended
That man to judge thee, hath in hate pretended?
By foes derided, by thine own rejected
O most afflicted.
Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee?
Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee.
‘Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee.
I crucified thee.

There are those, some of my earlier spiritual mentors among them, who believe that the heart of Christianity lies in convincing people when they look at the scene on Golgotha they ought to be singing that hymn. As they look at the figures who played significant roles in the Crucifixion Story, they cry out:

SING IT JUDAS! You who were so caught up in your cause that you tried to force Jesus’ hand and get the revolution going by betraying him to the authorities. Sing it, Judas! “Alas my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee.”

SING IT PETER! You who had grandiose intentions but couldn’t be counted on in the pinch – whose love for your Lord was so tenuous that when it was clear to you that your fidelity to Jesus might cost you something – perhaps even your life – you were willing to say, when confronted in the courtyard of the High Priest’s Judgment Hall and accused of being a disciple of the man being tried inside, “Never heard of the guy!” Sing it, Peter! “Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee. I crucified thee.”

SING IT, YOU CHIEF PRIESTS AND ELDERS OF THE TEMPLE – who, faced with a threat to your privileged positions and perquisites of power, conspired to put an innocent man to death. Sing it, Chief Priests and Elders! “How hast thou offended that we to judge thee hath in hate pretended.”

SING IT, PONTIUS PILATE! You, for whom law and order were the most important thing in your rule: a concern which, as you saw it, justified your willingness to wash your hands of responsibility for the unjust slaughter of the oppressed in order to maintain the status quo and earn the approval of your superiors. Sing it, Pontius Pilate: “Who was the guilty? I crucified thee.”

SING IT, YOU ROMAN CENTURIONS! You who mocked Jesus, beat him, nailed him to the cross, and joined with the crowds at the foot of the cross in taunting him. Sing it, you Centurions: “By foes derided, by thine own despised, O most afflicted.”

And then finally, of course, I was told, as I am sure many of you were at various times in your religious upbringing, SING IT, WALTON ZELLEY! Have the guts to face up to your own complicity in the death of Jesus. Have the honesty to see the many ways you’ve helped to hammer those nails in. Sing it, Walton Zelley: “I it was denied thee, I crucified thee.”

But if there were any event in my life that I could honestly describe as a conversion experience for me, it was the day that I saw the Gospel of Christ in a radically different light, through the eyes of an understanding priest. It was the day I traded that first set of spiritual spectacles for a new set. And this pair of spiritual spectacles was best described in Hymn 458 which we sang in this church on Palm Sunday and from which I have chosen my text this evening. And this is what two verses of that hymn tell us about the meaning of Jesus’ crucifixion.

My song is love unknown, my savior’s love to me
Love to the loveless shown that they might lovely be
But who am I, that for my sake, my Lord
Should take frail flesh and die?

Here might I stay and sing, no story so divine,
Never was love, dear King, never was grief like thine,
This is my friend, in whose sweet praise
I all my days could gladly spend.

SING IT, JUDAS! Even when you betrayed Jesus, He loved you nonetheless!

SING IT PETER! Even as you denied your Lord, He loved you to the end, and after his resurrection Jesus made you the chief of his apostles.

SING IT, YOU CHIEF PRIESTS AND ELDERS OF THE TEMPLE! Even as you sat in judgment upon Jesus to protect your positions of power, Jesus saw power and position not as something to be grasped, but humbled himself and became obedient to his Heavenly Father even unto death on a cross that you might see placarded before you, the power of God’s unconditional forgiveness and love Jesus came to this earth to reveal.

SING IT, PONTIUS PILATE! Even as you washed your hands of Jesus, He never washed his hands of you. He understood with divine compassion the fear that imprisoned your best instincts and crippled your sense of justice. And He loved you with an everlasting love. Though your name will be forever associated with Jesus’ suffering and death, His name will be forever associated with your redemption. Even as you commanded that Jesus be bound and sent away to die, He unbound you and drew you to himself that you, this day and forever, might find freedom and new life in Him.

SING IT, YOU ROMAN CENTURIONS! You who stood mocking at the foot of the cross. Even as you gloried in your humiliation of Jesus, He gloried only in laying down his life for you and for your salvation. As you shouted out to him words of ridicule, He called out to you words of forgiveness (“Father, forgive them, they know not what they do!”), compassion, and totally unqualified love.

And finally, SING IT, WALTON ZELLEY, AND ALL YOU GATHERED IN THIS SANCTUARY THIS EVENING, who have come to know in the deepest recesses of our hearts the unconditional love and forgiveness of God which the Cross of Christ reveals. Sing out the “Good News” that what we see on Calvary’s Hill is not the inspiration for a colossal guilt trip, or a divine condemnation of us even in our sinfulness. Rather, what we see on Golgotha’s Mount are, in the words of my favorite prayer in our Prayer book, “Jesus’ arms stretched out on the hard wood of the cross that we all might come within the reach of his saving embrace.”

The Cross of Christ is, in the words of one poet, “Love calling forth love’s reply.” What we see in that solitary figure who hangs upon that shameful cross which represents for all eternity the inhumanity we so easily show to each other, is the divine assurance that even in the midst of the betrayals, the infidelity, the lust for power, the distortion of the call for law and order into a deadening of human compassion, the insecurities, the sarcastic mocking and bullying of the most vulnerable in our society, the oppression and the killing, which we, in our sinfulness continue to exhibit from time to time in our lives, and not only after we have repented and gotten all straightened out, while we were yet in our sins, Christ died for us, proclaiming to each one of us from now to all eternity, You are loved! You are loved! You are loved!

SING IT, MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS IN CHRIST!
“My song is love unknown, my savior’s love to me.
Love to the loveless shown, that they might lovely be!”

And it is because the Cross of Jesus frees us to sing THIS song, we call this Friday . . . Good.

Be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him doth this man stand here before you whole. Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. ~Acts 4:10,12

Sermon preached in St. Michael’s-Litchfield by Fr. E. Walton Zelley, Jr.
Maundy Thursday April 5, 2012

Text: John 13:34 & 35 (Jesus said) “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

In his commentary on the Last Supper narratives, William McFadden tells of a college group who once tried to recapture something of the atmosphere of the Last Supper by celebrating the traditional Jewish Seder service, as many Episcopal Churches will be doing tonight, right before the celebration of the Maundy Thursday Eucharist. This group of students invited a Jewish rabbi to be present to critique it, but they conducted the Seder themselves. The group was properly reverent. They said all of the prayers with great solemnity. Finally, the rabbi could keep silent no longer. “You’re much too stiff and formal,” he said. “You need to remember that those gathered around Jesus at the Passover Seder Table were not a group of solemn liturgists. They were a group of friends.”

The members of the religious tradition in which I was raised are usually referred to by others by their nickname “The Quakers.” But I have always preferred their self-description. They call themselves “The Society of Friends.” In the description of the Last Supper found in the 15th chapter of St. John’s Gospel, Jesus says to his disciples gathered around the Seder Table that night, “My commandment is this: love one another just as I love you. The greatest love a person can have for his friends is to give his life for them. And you are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because a servant does not know what his master is doing. Instead, I call you friends.”

This evening as we gather in the sanctuary of St. Michael’s Church for this Maundy Thursday celebration, we do so as a “Society of Friends.” We are a “Society of Friends,” Jesus teaches us, for two important reasons. First, we are a Society of Friends because we know ourselves to be loved unconditionally by our Heavenly Father, and therefore that we are, in the deepest sense of the words, “God’s Friends.” Second, we are a Society of Friends because we have been called to share God’s love – His friendship with us – with each other.

Let’s see how these two reasons are so. First, we know that we are a Society of Friends because of what Jesus has revealed to us about God’s love for us: how we are, each one of us, God’s beloved friends. “The greatest love a person can have for his friends,” Jesus tell us, “is to give his life for them” as he himself was about to do the very next day.

Second, we know that we are a Society of Friends because of what Jesus has commanded us, mandated us – God’s friends – to do. And what God-in-Christ has mandated us to do is simply this: to share the divine love, the divine friendship we have received from God, as He is revealed to us in Jesus, with each other. “You are my friends,” Jesus tells us as he told the disciples in the Upper Room gathered for a Last Supper with him, “if you do what I command you.” And what does Jesus command us to do? “My commandment is this,” Jesus continues. “Love one another, just as I have loved you.” One of the characteristics of the 1st century Christian Community which most impressed their pagan neighbors was summed up by one pagan observer in one concise sentence. “Behold how these Christians,” he said, “love one another.”

Finally, we are a Society of Friends because we are servants who, in Jesus’ words, “Know what we are doing.” We “know what we are doing” because we saw Jesus serve as a model for what we, as a Christian community, are supposed to be all about. In the Upper Room on this Holy night, before he would lay down his life for his friends, he took a basin and towel and performed the most menial task assigned to any household slave in first century Israel – washing the feet of his disciples as we are about to wash each other’s feet this evening. And the reason Jesus did it, he wanted his disciples then, and we, his disciples now, to understand that “the one who would be greatest must be the servant of all – who as the children of God are our brothers and sisters in Christ, and our beloved friends.

Today, in the Church’s Calendar, is Maundy Thursday – the Thursday on which the ‘New Law,’ the ‘New Mandate’ (from which we get the word Maundy) – was given. This evening we gather around the Lord’s Table to recall how Jesus had gathered around the table in the Upper Room for a Last Supper with his friends. We recall also how Jesus, at that Seder Meal, took the Matzoh in his hands as devout Jews had done for centuries, but departed from the Seder Hagaddah by assigning a new meaning to the blessed bread saying, “This My Body, broken for you,” as he was later to give new meaning to the cup of wine, saying, “This is My Blood shed for you.”

“This is my life and this is my death,” Jesus proclaimed in what was to be the first Christian Eucharist. “This is the Cross, and this is the Resurrection.” This is the beginning, and this is the completion – the supreme manifestation of God’s unconditional love for us, as Jesus lay down his life for his friends.

And once again in this sanctuary this evening, we gather as a Society of Friends to take the bread and take the cup of wine; hear those sacred words repeated once again, “This is my Body Broken for you, this is my blood shed for you” and in Holy Communion welcome the One who gave up his life for his friends who became filled with his Divine Love that “will not let us go.” And once again, we will go forth from this Sacred Place out into the world to live out Christ’s commandment, his “New Mandate,” to wash the feet of our hurting brothers and sisters in the world, remembering Jesus’ words as he washed his disciples’ feet that first Maundy Thursday: “The one who would be greatest must be the servant of all,” and to feed others as we, in this Eucharistic love feast, are about to be fed.

The Eucharist we are celebrating this evening is, as was the Jewish Passover Seder which gave it birth, still a family meal and a joyful celebration of deliverance and new life. But the most important thing Jesus wants us to remember on this Holy Evening, as we gather around His Table once again, is that we do so first, foremost and always, as a Society of Friends.

One of St. Michael's most beloved windows: Jesus and the Children.

As I was reading the parable about Jesus the Good Shepherd, I was drawn to this verse: “When he (Jesus) has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.” (John 10:4). I am the parent of a two-year-old, and I have been fascinated with how my son has learned about language through his sense of hearing. Just as a baby learns to listen to and follow his parent’s voice as he grows, we should learn to listen to and follow Jesus’ voice as we grow in our faith.

At four months, an infant will turn in the direction of his parent’s voice. Even when my son, J.P., was busily playing on the floor with his toys, he would still stop to turn toward the sound of my voice. Similarly, in the “infancy” of my faith, I simply turned in the direction of Jesus’ voice by stopping what I was doing to read my daily devotions or to attend church.

At eight months, an infant starts to understand the word “no,” but that does not necessarily mean that he will obey it! For instance, J.P. was fascinated with electrical outlets at this age, and we would have to constantly tell him, “No!” Since we said it often enough, we were certain that he knew what it meant, but he still had trouble obeying us. Likewise, as I began to grow in my faith, I started to understand Jesus’ voice, and I realized that he wanted me to become more involved at my church. I also had trouble obeying; after all, I was busy taking care of a baby!

Finally, at twelve months, a baby can respond to a one-step command. J.P. learned to do this when he would playfully grab the pens out of my husband’s pocket when he came home from work. We would say to him, “Please give the pens back,” and to our surprise, he usually would! This is similar to how I learned to respond to Jesus’ voice in my own actions as I continued to grow in my faith when I decided to get more involved in the church by becoming the Nursery Coordinator.

Hopefully we can all learn to follow the children’s example and become like the sheep in the parable who follow Jesus “because they know his voice.”

~Becky Tartline, Journey to Easter Daily Lenten Meditations by members of The Cathedral Church of St. Stephen

Sermon preached in St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, Litchfield, CT by Fr. E. Walton Zelley, Jr.
Lent 5    March 25, 2012

Text: (Jeremiah 31:33) “But this is the covenant that I will make with the House of Israel after those days,” says the Lord. “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”
(John 12:32) ”. . . and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

Whenever my father was about to assert his parental authority, and lay down the law to his sons, my brothers and I would know that this was going to happen because my father would signal his ultimatum to us with these words, “Now just get this into your head, young man!” You may have heard similar words issuing forth from your own parental authority figures as you were growing up. “Now just get this into your head!” The clear implication, of course, was that the particular section of the “Law according to Ed Zelley, Sr.” which he was just about to lay on me, had not yet taken up occupancy in my brain. And thus my father felt it was his bounden duty as a parent to move it in, and see that it took up permanent residence.

There were many rules in my father’s extensive codex of parental regulations, governing all sorts of situations which might come up in the lives of children and teens. There was the rule, for example, that I always had to be home by 11pm on a Friday or Saturday evening even though, as I patiently tried to explain to him, every other kid I hung around with did not have to be home before midnight.

If my father’s attempts to get his laws firmly ensconced in the chambers of my brain met with dismal failure, as they so often did; facing, as they did, a revolving door at my cerebral front door, and with a sign affixed to it, like the one I used to have posted in my office in Metuchen, which read “I’d like to help you out – which way did you come in?” it was not because there was no room available in my brain to house them. It was because these rules remained Dad’s, not mine. I had not welcomed them into my mental co-op. I did not own them for myself.

In the Exodus story, Moses tried to get a set of ten laws which, in his mind at least, had the authority of divine origin to authenticate them, into the minds of his often rebellious flock when he was leading from slavery in Egypt into the promised land of God. Now these were pretty basic laws, really. It would have been difficult to take exception to any one of them. And they were set forth in pretty simple language, that it should not have been all that difficult to understand, tempting God to say, as we as parents have been tempted to say to our children, “What part of ‘be home by 11’ don’t you understand?”

These ten laws or Ten Commandments as they are better known, rather simply and straightforwardly, described the kind of behavior the Israelites would be required to engage in, if the society they were about to establish in the Promised Land were to be governed by something other than the proverbial “Law of the Jungle.”

It is, after all, even though we, twenty-one centuries later, don’t always seem to have gotten it yet, rather difficult to maintain a cohesive community of people committed to the common good, when people are still randomly killing each other off, stealing anything that’s not nailed down, sleeping with each other’s wives or husbands, failing to make room for a Sabbath rest in our overly-scheduled lives; replacing the One True God in our devotions and loyalties with lesser gods of money, possessions, power trips, popularity, and bodies beautiful while the people whose lives touch ours are too easily dismissed as disposable consumer items, who exist only to meet our own perceived needs, and the furtherance of our own agenda.

Yet the Israelites’ response to Moses’ attempt to get God’s Ten Laws moved into their heads was to construct an idol of a golden calf which more accurately symbolized, whether they were conscious of it or not, their own loyalties and their own priorities at the time. (It might, by the way, be an interesting exercise to ask ourselves the question: If I were to construct an idol which most accurately symbolized the primary priorities and loyalties of my life at this moment, what would it look like? This would be a good exercise in Lenten self-examination today!)

Now my guess is that the Israelites had, for the most part, let God’s law take up residence in their heads. I am sure that they could have said of God’s Ten Laws, what Mark Twain is reputed to have said about the Bible: “It’s not the parts of the Bible that I don’t understand that bother me. It’s the parts I understand only too well!” It wasn’t that they didn’t understand God’s laws – that they had crowded them out of their heads. The problem was their failure to act as if these laws had, in fact, taken up residence within them. To put it another way, the problem was that, even though the laws might have taken up residence in their heads, there was still a DO NOT DISTURB sign posted at the doorways of their hearts. Their problem was not an ignorance of the good. It was a paralysis of the will, and an atrophy of the heart. A priest I know was once asked whether he thought an atheist could ever get into heaven. His response was that he would rather place his money on someone who declared that he did not believe there was a God, but who acted as if he did, than on someone who professed that he believed in God, but acted as if he didn’t. The Israelites might have had God’s Law firmly ensconced in their heads, but their hearts just weren’t in it.

So, in today’s reading from Hebrew Scriptures, we hear God speaking through the mouth of his prophet Jeremiah, and saying, “But this is the covenant that I will make the House of Israel after those days. I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God and they will be my people.” No longer would it be a matter of God’s attempting to shove his laws into the Israelites’ heads. Now it would be God’s writing his Laws on their hearts.

Getting back to the example of my father and his law-giving techniques, honesty compels me to say that my father did not always confine himself to trying to drill his laws into my head, saying, “Get this into your head, young man!” There were times Dad did try to get a law like his 11pm Curfew Law written on my heart by first saying to me, “Walton, sit down here with me for a minute. I want to have a heart-to-heart talk with you.” The subject might still be “getting in by eleven” that Friday night, but the dynamics between us would have been radically different. A dialogue would have been set in motion, not a dispute. Compassion would have been displayed, not mutual control games. He would try to explain to me the difficulty he and my mother had getting to sleep until I returned home safe and sound. He empathized with my desire not to be seen as a little “Momma’s boy” by friends who did not have the same restrictions. And before you knew it, my father and I had negotiated a solution that would address both our concerns. Eleven would still be the expected hour of return, but if things will still going on and all my friends were still there, I would call my parents telling them where I was and what time they could realistically expect me to return.

The next thing I knew, I was beginning to have very different feelings about my father and his rules. I found myself saying, “You know, this guy really cares about me. He’s trying to understand me and my needs as a teenager, and is simply asking me to return the favor. I almost found myself wanting to get home by 11 so that poor guy and my mother could get some sleep.

Have you ever thought about what our Christian religion would have looked like if Jesus had never died on a cross in a compelling demonstration of just how much our Heavenly Father loves us? If, in the words of the wonderful Passiontide hymn, we had never had the experience of coming to know, and have written on our hearts, the great truth that “He who came to show us God chose to hang upon the tree, and the nails and crown of thorns showed us what God’s love must be?” What would have happed if Jesus had come to this earth, seeing it as his primary mission to drive a bunch of divine rules and regulations into our heads? What if he had done nothing during his earthly ministry but teach, preach and lay down the law, and then had died peacefully at a ripe old age? The most we would have been left with, I am certain, would have been the “Jesus Christ Memorial Society,” the members of which would have soon begun to act as if they hadn’t remembered much at all.

When Jesus says in my second text this morning, “And I, when I am lifted up, will draw all people to myself,” he is saying that God’s will for creation will no longer be seen as a distant head trip out there somewhere which has little effect on our lives, and leaves us with a set of laws that never become active in loving lives. When Jesus says, “I, when I am lifted up with draw all people to myself,” he is saying that his supreme act of love – his dying on that cross for us and for our salvation – will now become for us an affair of the heart, a response to a powerful demonstration of just ‘what God’s love for us must be,’ as we are drawn to Him and to his unconditional act of love for us and then are sent out into the world to share that love with others.

True religion issues forth from the experience of having God’s laws written on our hearts, not simply implanted in our heads. Changed lives result when we come to know deep within our hearts how much we are loved by our God, as we are drawn to the One who allowed himself to be ‘lifted up’ on the Cross, and in the words of my favorite Prayerbook prayer, ‘stretched out his arms on the hard wood of that cross that all the world might come within the reach of his saving embrace.’

“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself,” says Jesus. The cross of Christ is God’s heart-to-heart talk with us. May this final week of Lent, and the week of the Passion which follows, be a time when all of us, in a very special way, open our hearts to God and allow Him to transcribe his will for our lives on our hearts so that our lives, in the words of the familiar hymn, ‘might be all thanksgiving for the goodness of the Lord,’ as we come to share as loved lovers in the world, the Easter gift of new resurrection life.

Father Zelley welcomed, entertained, and inspired the large crowd at the Lenten Soup Supper.

This is only part of the crew who made the Lenten Soup Supper a great success. We are grateful also to the Dragon Ladies who set the stage!

The Ecumenical Soup Supper was a wonderful success! We welcomed visitors from the other Litchfield churches and many of our own parishioners for a total crowd of 96. Thirteen delicious homemade soups ranging from Pasta Fagioli to Lenten Lentil made a hearty meal, and David Smith’s lovely vibernum and forsythia added color and scent to the tables.

Father Zelley opened with a joke, made many new friends, and provided a wonderful program. Thanks & Praise to all who helped to make the community house beautiful, donated food, served and helped to strike the set.