This being Year C of our three year lectionary cycle, the gospel readings are usually from St Luke. Luke gives us the life and ministry of Jesus from a distinctly Gentile perspective. More than any of the other three evangelists, Luke accentuates Jesus’ compassion for all who suffer, especially his desire to heal the sick. The Holy Spirit also figures more prominently in Luke’s gospel, which serves to cement its connection with volume two of the series—the Acts of the Apostles.

We are working our way through the season “after the Epiphany.” It is something of a hybrid. Technically (since the preposition is after, and not either of or in), we are in Ordinary Time—i.e. no particular season, no unifying thematic focus, neither feast nor fast. Hence, the liturgical color is green. At the same time, one can discern implications in the readings that speak of ministry and mission—carrying the gospel to all people, and these notions can be connected with the Epiphany theme of the “manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles.” Moreover, on the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, we always find the gospel account of our Lord’s transfiguration—a great sign of light that hearkens back to the Star of Bethlehem leading the Wise Men to the infant Jesus. So there is some thread of continuity—not as strong as in Advent, Lent, or Easter, but stronger than in the long season “after Pentecost.” At the principal Mass, we mark this continuity by continuing to use Eucharistic Prayer ‘B’, which emphasizes the mystery of the Incarnation, and the same service music that we have been singing since the beginning of Advent.

Tuesday is a major Holy Day, the feast of the Presentation of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple. The incident that lies at the root of this feast is recorded in St Luke’s gospel: When Jesus was approximately forty days old, his parents, being faithful observant Jews, took him to the temple in Jerusalem and “presented” him there. Two elderly prophets, Simeon and Anna, blessed the child and proclaimed his identity as the Messiah of God, the savior not only of Israel, but of all the nations. An alternative title for this feast day is Candlemas, noting that February 2 is a traditional day for the blessing of candles. Mass will be celebrated at 5:30 PM.

The following three lesser feasts also appear on the Prayer Book calendar this week:
• Wednesday—St Anskar was a ninth century native Frenchman who served more than four decades as a missionary to Denmark. He is considered the Apostle to the Scandinavians, even though the fruit of his labor—the conversion of the Vikings—did not appear until two generations after his death.
• Thursday—Cornelius the Centurion was the first Gentile convert to faith in Jesus as the Christ. We read about his conversion in chapter 11 of the Acts of the Apostles. According to tradition, he became the first bishop of Caesarea.
• Friday—The Martyrs of Japan—The evangelistic effort of Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries in Japan in the sixteenth century met with such success that there were some 300,000 Japanese Christians, mostly in the Nagasaki area, by the end of the century. An unfortunate turn of events led the shoguns to turn against the Church, and on February 5, 1597, six Franciscans and thirty of their converts were crucified, and the Church driven underground for 250 years.

However, the 2009 General Convention approved for trial use a revision of the calendar that pushes these three observance ahead a day in order to accommodate the proposed commemoration on Wednesday the 3rd of The Dorchester Chaplains, four chaplains in the U.S. Army—one Methodist, one Dutch Reformed, one Roman Catholic, and one Jewish—who perished on February 3, 1943 when the troop transport Dorchester was torpedoed by a German submarine. The four were remembered for a high degree of ecumenical and interfaith cooperation about the ship, and for their heroism in giving up their life jackets to others and staying with the ship until it went down. By way of cooperating with the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music’s request for feedback on trial use proposed calendar commemorations, we will use the propers appointed for this feast at the regular Wednesday 5:30pm Eucharist.