Saints of the Season
Advent has begun again—that season of expectation when we anticipate the arrival of “God-with-skin-on,” the Christ child lying in a manger, asleep on the hay. Everything is about the big countdown—in church, we count the weeks: 1st week of Advent, 2nd
Interfaith Prayer Service
Commemorating the Anniversary of the Lewiston Mass Shooting
Tuesday, October 1, 10am, in Augusta
MCC’s Spring 2024 Newsletter
MCC’s Spring 2024 Newsletter
Whether you read the print edition that arrives in your mailbox, or the digital version available through the link, you’ll see that we let our work speak for itself through our newsletter.
You can’t get to Easter without walking through a graveyard
Though some say that Christians treat death as if it were just a simple freeing of the soul from the prison of the body, a quick transition to blissful immortality, because they believe Easter gives them some kind of cosmic “get out of jail free” card that spares true believers from the sting of death, nothing could be further from the truth.
Lent: a season for compass adjustment
I wonder: without checking your smartphone, can you point toward the north right now? I’ll confess, I couldn’t do it without using my phone or the compass built into my car.
BURYING ALLELUIA
A Lenten Spiritual Practice
We get a lot of other things about Lent from the church of the Middle Ages, too. One of the more interesting traditions is the “depositio” of alleluias, the discontinuing or refraining from use of the word “Alleluia” in worship and song during the 40 days of Lent. You’ve heard of “giving up something for Lent.” Well, the church gives up its Alleluias for Lent.
Read more about this special ritual…
GOD IS THE BIGGER ELVIS
2nd Week of Lent 2024
This Hollywood star kissed Elvis Presley before becoming…a Benedictine nun!
continue reading…
A VALENTINE AMONG THE ASHES
This year, Ash Wednesday falls on Valentine’s Day, one of only three times this century it lands on February 14: 2018, 2024, and 2029. A quick Google search reveals that this poses a serious dilemma for Roman Catholics—what to do when February 14 is both a feast day and a day of holy obligation when one is supposed to fast? Answer:
Advent 3
O Holy Night
And so, the story of “O Holy Night” is a story of outsiders, outcasts, misfits and broken people: a disabled socialist poet, a bankrupt Jewish vaudevillian, an agoraphobic abolitionist, and a ridiculed crackpot inventor playing his violin into a microphone that might—or might not—be transmitting his song to anyone.
