Request

Received another missive from Fr. Davis to the parish today. Many things in it, including:

This Sunday is the Fourth Sunday in Lent or "Rose Sunday."  It is also sometimes called "Refreshment Sunday"  and even "Laetare (Joy) Sunday" after the ancient Introit sung on the day.  Whatever you want to call it, it's intended to be just a bit of "a foretaste of glory divine" in the middle of the Lenten season, a time to take a breather before pressing on through Passiontide and the most important week of the Church year.  There will still be no Gloria or any mention of "the forbidden word," but you will see flowers adorning the Altar and hopefully notice a little lighter mood, both in the choice of hymns and particularly in what the Prayer Book has in store for us in its appointed Collect, Epistle and Gospel for the day. 

and

Again, regularly lift up one another to our Lord in prayer.  Several amongst us are traveling, a few have been battling various illnesses & ailments, and a number of you are reporting that you're enduring intense bouts of spiritual warfare.  This is but par for the course during this season of especially striving to recover the character and likeness of the One in whose image we are made.  (You are all striving, aren't you?)  Most Christians will tell you that though spiritual warfare may be unseen, it is nevertheless very real.  Holy Scripture refers to as much often but perhaps most directly in Ephesians 6:12 where St. Paul speaks of putting on the full armor of God:

As one of those traveling AND battling illness, I bid your prayers.