​ANNOUNCEMENTS - The Week of March 30, 2025
Here’s what’s happening at St. John’s, around the diocese, and in the local community.​

SAVE THE DATES:

• Maundy Thursday - April 17th Light Supper at 6 pm followed by evening prayer at 7 pm.
• Good Friday - April 18th Evening prayer at 7 pm.

There will be no Easter Vigil Service at St. John's.
We are cordially invited to attend St. Peter's in Mountain Lakes on Saturday 19th. 7:30 pm - Great Vigil of Easter beginning with the Paschal Fire & Exultet in church. St. Peter's Episcopal Church, 215 Boulevard, Mountain Lakes, NJ 07046.

• Easter Sunday - April 20th we will have Morning prayer at 10:30 a.m.

PRAYER LIST Let Kathy Cascone (casconek(at)yahoo.com or 973-219-1007) know if you wish to add anyone to the parish prayer list, or if a name is ready to be removed.
 
COMMUNICATION Staying well-informed is important, especially during transitional times. Here are some ways to learn what’s happening and stay involved:

• Alert Sharon Liparini if your email changes, so you can continue to receive parish email announcements.
• Check out our website, Facebook page and other social media. (And let Sandra Lee Schubert know if you’d like to help post photos and events.)
• Subscribe to The VOICE Online, the diocesan newsletter published every other Wednesday with news, events and features from around the diocese. Sign up at https://dioceseofnewark.org/e-news

March 19, 2025 (To read more about what is happening in the diocese click here.)

This is Bishop Hughes in the Diocese of Newark. This past Sunday marked the five-year anniversary of the start of pandemic in our diocese. It was five years ago this Sunday, with about 48 hours’ notice, that all of our churches began to refrain or fast from gathering together to worship on site in their buildings. They had 48 hours to get online, and most of us did not have that equipment. It was a scurried, hurried, frantic start, and people got online any way that they could, whether it was YouTube or Facebook or Zoom – however they did it, our churches were worshiping online that Sunday. I would say that Sunday was not our best moment online. It was certainly bumpy, but we were there. We were together.
That was our first lesson of pandemic: how to change quickly, and how to stay together. Pandemic was hard on us. There were so many losses, many of them tragic, not all of them to COVID, but we were bereft, especially because funerals could only have 10 people attend. So there was not that time for friends and family to gather in an extended way and to remember together the person who left us. We still feel that loss of the year and a half that funerals were that small, even though memorial services waited, we still feel that loss.
I am also aware that when we take the time to look back at those pandemic times, we can see the many ways that we were shaped by God into being the people that we needed to be to get through pandemic, not just for ourselves, but to make sure that our neighbors got through pandemic too. First of all, it was the use of that word – that our neighbors weren’t just the people in our churches or just the people next door to our churches – that that word “neighbor” became very expansive. It became all people. It became all people that belong to God, and that means everybody, because everybody belongs to God. It was important to us that no one go hungry. We did everything we could to make sure that people had food wherever they were in northern New Jersey, that there was no loss that way. We made sure that people had friendship, that they had company, conversations that took place on front porches or through a window; many the phone call or online gatherings. People found ways to stay in touch with people, to get Communion to people, to pray for people. We learned how important that was.
We also learned how to face hard things. It wasn’t just the hardships of COVID we had to face and our own personal losses, but we faced those racial killings. We didn’t try to name them something else. We didn’t ignore them. We faced them as harsh and as shameful and as hard as they were. We looked directly at them, and then we asked ourselves, what is God calling us to do? And we got busy in terms of making sure that people were safe, everywhere that we have churches, and everywhere that we go, that that has been important to us. It’s important for us to remember not only the losses and the people that, whose memories that we hold dear, but to remember how we grew, how we grew as faithful people who could stand on our feet, who could change and change quickly, who could make sure that people felt connected, make sure people had food, make sure people knew that they had company and that they had care and they could face hard things. All of this is important because it prepared us for the moment that we are facing now.
There is trouble in our land, there is trouble in our world, and it is going to take strong people, faithful people, people who can face the truth, people who care about their neighbors and people who see their neighbors as being people all over the whole wide world. It is going to take people like that, people who came through a pandemic, not by their own will or might, but by the grace of God. People who by God’s grace, also grew to be people who are strong enough, who are faithful enough, and who are brave enough to face this present and the future before us. Remember who you are.

​March 5, 2025 (To read more about what is happening in the diocese click here.)

On Ash Wednesday, Bishop Hughes reminds us that making a bold statement about our faith is especially important in the world that we’re in right now. Our piety, prayer, fasting, giving – all of that can remain private, but our faith needs to be something that people can see. (Time: 5:29.)
This is Bishop Hughes in the Diocese of Newark. It is Ash Wednesday, and the first day of Lent. Most Episcopalians will observe that by attending a service at some point during the day. Some of you probably already have, some of you might have it at noon today or sometime this evening, and during that service, there are two specific things that you’re going to hear. There are things you’ll do, but there are things that you’re going to hear.
One of those is an invitation to a holy Lent. I want to read you a part of it.
I invite you, therefore, in the name of the church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self examination and repentance, by prayer, fasting and self denial, and by reading and meditating on God’s Holy Word.
And we do all those things, not just to prove that we are faithful, but we do those things so that we turn ourselves to God. That word repentance that is in there, repentance means turning back, turning away from something else and turning back over to God.
You’ll also hear from the sixth chapter of Matthew – and Matthew talks very specifically about these same things that you’ll hear in the invitation to a holy Lent – talks about the way that we pray, the way we give to others, the way we stay in relationship with God, the way we fast. And he says in that particular piece of the gospel that when we do those things, we don’t do them to make a fuss about ourselves or to humble brag about our faith. No, we do it in secret, that our piety, our way of practicing the faith, is done in secret so that God can work with us, and it is not about what we’re doing in front of other people, but is about our being in relationship with God. And that piety is private. That’s something that’s very important to Episcopalians. We like a private piety.
I want to add a third thing, because one of the things that we do on Ash Wednesday is to receive ashes, and those ashes are a very bold statement. It really is literally burned up ashes. Ashes are used to mark the sign of a cross on our forehead, as a symbol of who we belong to, as a symbol of our mortality, and as a symbol of what we believe in – that one day we will be raised again the same way that Jesus was raised. There is something about those ashes walking around on us that defies everything that we hear in that service, which is to be quiet about your piety, but still make a bold statement – that your faith makes a bold statement.
And I want to say, this third piece of making a bold statement is especially important in the world that we’re in right now. That your piety, your prayer, your fasting, your giving, all of that can remain private, but your faith, your faith needs to be public. It needs to be as public as those ashes that are on your face. Your faith needs to be something that people can see.
I keep remembering all that we heard about Jimmy Carter, about President Carter and his death. How many stories people talked about him saying, I have to make this decision, because my faith tells me I must make a decision. I need to help people get into a home – my faith tells me I must do that. That he was open in talking about his faith, and he was open in making faithful decisions. We’re going to have to make those decisions going forward, and it is our faith that makes those decisions.
I’ve been struck by the number of people who have told me that the whole notion of keeping people safe in church sounds like I am telling them to break the law. There is no law that tells us we cannot be kind to our neighbor. There is no law that tells us we cannot see to the safety of those who are endangered. As a matter of fact, our laws actually protect safety. They actually tell us how to do that, and the law for us as Christians that really guides how our faith happens in the world is the one that says, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul, and love your neighbor as you love yourself.
I want to invite you along as a part of that invitation to a holy Lent, to look for the ways that you can make someone feel welcome, to look for the ways that you can make someone feel safe, to look for the ways that you can assure those who are afraid and those who have been targeted for cruelty – there is nothing else to call it but targeted for cruelty – that you look for the ways that you can help and assist them. That can be lawfully done in the United States, and it can also be done as a faithful Christian in a way that upholds not only the greatest commandment – that would mean the greatest law that Jesus gave us – but would uphold every vow in the Baptismal Covenant that has been given to us.
Do your prayers in secret, but do your faith in public.