Thursday, November 17, 2011

A Liturgical Year In Review

So, here we find ourselves coming to the end of the church’s year (Year A of the three year cycle) and at the beginning of Advent and a new year, Year B. It’s a good time both to reflect and look forward.

This has been an extremely busy year for the choir and I think that one of the key features of the choir’s work during this time has been its outreach to the wider community. The choir is doing a great deal to connect with Anglicans who call Huron their home and St Paul’s “their” cathedral. The last 12 months have seen the choir visit 17 parishes of the Diocese to sing evensong or a carol service and everywhere we go, apart from being very well fed indeed, the constant comment is how proud the parishes are to host their cathedral choir.

This is an outreach project to which we at St Paul's are passionately committed, particularly given the far flung nature of our diocese. The delight (and sometimes, relief) of those who attend the services we sing around the diocese, when they realise that the BCP is alive and flourishing despite what they may have been led to believe, is often quite palpable.

Here, at home, we have been equally busy and, although somewhat smaller in number than in previous years, we have kept up a challenging selection of repertoire, much of it new to the choir and St Paul’s, with very little repetition year to year. This is a happy and healthy position to be in and the commitment of the members of the choir to our mission is to be applauded.

We are particularly heartened by the way the choir have adapted to (and adopted?) the new musical requirements and challenges of our liturgy as we move forward, ever developing what it means, at least to us, to be an authentic Canadian Anglican cathedral as opposed to one that merely imitates an English model. We are, I believe, amongst a very small number of cathedrals seriously reflecting on where we should be going, and I know that we are working hand-in-hand with the Dean's vision for the future of St Paul’s.

As we come to the Last Sunday after Pentecost: the Reign of Christ (or The Sunday Next Before Advent), next week, Sunday, November 27th, sees our annual Procession with Carols and Lessons for Advent at 4:00 p.m. with music from the mid-1500s to the mid-1800s and 2011.

On Sunday, December 18th also at 4:00 p.m. we will have the well-loved Service of Nine Lessons and Carols with the now traditional mix of seasonal hymns, new arrangements of familiar carols and some newly-published music for Christmas.

So put these in your calendars and come and join us as we journey through Advent to Christmas and beyond.

In closing, on behalf of all the cathedral musicians, I would like to thank the family here at St Paul’s for the encouragement that we receive on an ongoing basis from the community we are privileged to serve.

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