For your safety, the church building is closed during the pandemic. Services are online at St. Mary’s Facebook page (you do not need a Facebook account to participate).

The current Book of Common Prayer is the first to include liturgies for Holy Week that rediscover ancient practices. Some are left open to interpretation, but others, like The Great Vigil of Easter, are more prescribed. The liturgy is intended as the first (and arguably, the primary) celebration of Easter. The service begins in darkness, sometime between sunset on Holy Saturday and sunrise on Easter, and consists of four parts: The Service of Light (kindling of new fire, lighting the Paschal candle, the Exsultet); The Service of Lessons (readings from the Hebrew Scriptures interspersed with psalms, canticles, and prayers); Christian Initiation; and the Eucharist. Believers would gather in the hours of darkness ending at dawn on Easter to hear scripture and offer prayer. This night-long service of prayerful watching anticipated the baptisms that would come at first light and the Easter Eucharist.