• Services this week
• From Allen’s Desk: Easter thanks and Resurrection series
• Guest preacher next week - Rev. Matt Humphrey
• Faith Tides: April 2024 Issue
• Anglican Journal - April edition
• Spring Oak Bay Artists' Studio Tour
• We Together - registration extended
• Easter photo
• St Luke’s: Reflections service with Cellist Elena Antontceva
• This week in prayer
• Useful links

7 April Easter 2 

• 8am Holy Communion
• 9am Community Prayers in the Youth Room 
• 9.30am Family Eucharist, in-person and live streamed [LINK] 

Prayer team is available during Communion at the 9.30 Sunday service, and please join us for fellowship and coffee after.

9 April Tuesday 10.30am Contemplative Prayer

11 April Thursday - no service this week

Thank you St. Philip for a very meaningful Holy Week and a great celebration Easter Sunday!  In no particular order:

• Thanks to all the cooks, setup and cleanup crews for our Maundy Thursday Agape Meal!
• Thanks to those who brought "stations" and participated in our Good Friday Stations of the Cross Service.  As experiments go, I think it went well.  Part of the credit for that goes to Dave for choosing appropriate music which helped capture the mood of the meditations.
• Thanks to all of you for the wonderful flower arrangements and wonderful brunch dishes for our Easter celebration.  A special thanks to Shannon and helpers for hanging the lanterns!
• And thanks to Anna for putting together the liturgies and doing the extra work that Holy Week calls for.

I hope all of you had a wonderful Easter weekend celebrating with friends, family or both and if you weren't able to, I pray that you know that the Risen Christ is alive in you, leading you into "your Galilee," wherever and with whomever that is! 

But of course, Easter is not a solitary day but a seven-week feast!  Just as we explored the meaning of the cross throughout this past Lenten season, we'll be exploring the nature of "the new resurrection order" throughout the coming weeks.  This will include our Sunday gatherings as well as our Thursday study group. 

The Resurrection is not merely an event but can be likened to a "worldview," so it's entirely appropriate to ask, "How does God's 'new order' affect __________ (fill in the blank)?"

If you have a topic you'd like to discuss or would like addressed as part of our Sunday gatherings or for our Thursday group, please drop me a line and I'll see what's possible.

Peace,

Allen+

On Sunday 14 April, we will welcome the Rev'd. Matthew Humphrey as the visiting celebrant and preacher at the 8am and 9.30 services, while Allen and Denise are having a well-deserved (working!) post-Easter break.

Matt is a writer, priest and educator who lives, works, and plays on Songhees territory, in the Cecelia Creek watershed, (Victoria, BC).  In addition to serving as Priest for the Emmaus Community and AbbeyChurch, he is currently a proud partner of the Local General Store. He is an ordained priest in The Anglican Church of Canada.  Matt has taught University courses, worked for A Rocha Canada, a faith-based environmental organization, and currently shepherds three young children, a cat named Wendell, too many books (too little time), a fondness for wild landscapes and an endless fascination with God’s grace as the bedrock of our gifted existence.  He would love to have coffee and discuss.

In this issue: "Children of God" by Bishop Anna; Sorrowful Saturday; a We Together preview; parish news, and more. Read it here!

The April issue of the Anglican Journal is available to read online or download, here

Highlights:

• Eternity’s light and the door of forgiveness - by Joy Kogawa
• ‘This is one of the most emotionally charged times I have known’ - Rising tension and polarization in Israel amid Gaza war, Jerusalem priest says
• No clear down trend in conversions: study - The most surprising thing about his recent study on faith formation among Canadians is that conversions don’t seem to be significantly on the decline
• Next up: a female Archbishop of Canterbury? - It’s now ‘entirely thinkable,’ conference hears 

Saturday, April 6, 2024 - 10:00am to Sunday, April 7, 2024 - 4:00pm. Open to the public, free to attend.

The Oak Bay Artists’ Studio Tour is an opportunity to view and purchase visual art by Oak Bay artists, and to visit some of their home studios. Many of Oak Bay's established and emerging artists use their homes and studios as backdrops to display original watercolour, acrylic, and oil paintings, photography, woodcuts, as well as fibre, glass, and pottery creations.

The deadline to register for We Together, the diocesan conference on 12-13 April,  has been extended by one week to April 8, 2024. To register you can visit the website HERE.

Some of the 198-strong congregation at the 9.30 service on Easter Sunday. Thanks to Barb Evans-Ehricht for the photo.

+ + +

Easter celebration from the Taizé Community: click here

This month's Reflections, our Sunday service in the late afternoon, will feature cellist, Elena Antontceva, along with poems and prayers. Enjoy cello music in the beautiful ambiance of St. Luke's in the late afternoon. The readings, prayers, and music of this special Reflection Time will calm your spirit and soothe your soul.

About This Service
Offering a combination of inspirational poems, thoughtful prose passages, untraditional prayers, interspersed with complementary music, St. Luke's Reflections Service focuses on spirituality. Drawing on the tradition of evensong, the service recognizes our need for stillness and connection to the soul at the end of the day.

Readings and prayers for Sunday 7 April and the following week:  click here

• Live Streams: via the parish website or direct from YouTube at  https://www.youtube.com/@st.philipchurchvictoria1351/live
• Service outline: for those viewing the live stream, the coming Sunday's 9.30 service outline is online here
• Service recording & sermon transcript: choose any past Sunday here (listed most recent first)
• More news & events from our church neighbours and wider community: click here
• Previous parish newsletters: click here
• Parish Council minutes: click here , see under Downloads
• Staff contacts: via the parish website
• Liturgy for the Islands and Inlets: click here for full text
• Salal + Cedar (Diocese of New Westminster): click here
• Book of Alternative Services: click here
• Anglican Church of Canada lectionary: click here
• Revised Common Lectionary: click here
• Diocesan Comings & Goings: read latest
• Inclusive Christians at UVic: read latest
• Faith Tides: click here for latest issue
• Contemplative Society: latest news
• L'Abri Canada: read latest
• Sorrento Centre news: click here
• PWRDF updates: read latest
• KAIROS Canada: read latest
• Anglican Church of Canada news: click here
• Anglican Journal: click here for latest articles

The Welcome pew leaflet, weekly parish news, current Anglican Journal, & Faith Tides, recent Parish Council minutes and more are all available in print in the narthex. Please let Anna know if more print copies are needed, on Sundays or for sharing with those who don't use email.

Candles: S. Hermann & F. Richter, NoName_13 on Pixabay
Footer painting: Caitlin Ambery, 2007