Welcome to the website of the Anglican Parish of Prince William, Dumfries, Queensbury, and Southampton. Thank you for taking the time to visit with us and discovering a little bit about our parish. The Parish of Prince William follows the Safe Church polices as outlined by the Dioceses. Father David Mercer, Priest in Charge 454-9998 dmercer98@bellaliant.net
To find out more about us, please click on the About us link. News & EventsChurch is open once again now that we are back to the Orange stage of Covid recovery. Service of Holy Eucharist Sundays St Clements Church, Prince William 11 AM Masks are mandatory Household bubbles or 6 feet distancing Music is instrumental only No singing All Are welcome! Stations of the Cross, Fridays in Lent 7 PM St Clements Church Annual Parish Meeting: February 28 immediately following the church service. Please make every effort to attend The First Sunday in Lent The Season of Lent is a time of renewal, a time to turn our backs on the life that we have lived in the last year. This does not mean that everything that we did caused us to drift away from God, but it is important to remember that the repentance that we are engaged in this Lent prepares us for the celebration of our Lord’s resurrection. Sin is habitual and the more we think about our life’s the clearer this becomes. There are good habits and bad habits as well. It seems that over and over again we do the same things and even when we promise ourselves that we will change, we often find that we slip back into the old patterns. There must be a real break with the past, a new beginning. That is the point of Lent, if it is only about sorrow for the errors committed in the past, then the future must be very dark indeed, but if it is about new habits that point in a new direction, then there is hope. If we find ourselves in the situation where the wrong pattern was followed, the no matter of effort can change us, however if we change the situation, then the task of reform and transformation gains the element of hope. A friend of mine was a smoker who decided that he wanted to stop, he had a most difficult time with coffee in the morning because he always smoked with the cup, however when he changed the pattern, he found it much easier to break the habit. We need God in our lives, whether we believe it or not. If we break the habit of prayer or coming to receive the Body and Blood of our Lord at the Altar on Sunday, the longer we stay away, the less important God becomes in our lives. In one way religion is, I suppose, a personal matter in that it involves my soul. But Saint Paul makes it very clear that we are the Body of Christ and as a body we need to gather together, because a body does not function at all if the parts are separated. The story is told that Blessed John Keble visited an old man who lived in a cottage one day. The old man was sitting by the fire, Fr Keble said not a word but took the tongs and putted a live coal out of the fire. They sat and watched the coal loose its fire and glow. Then he put it back into the fire again and it came back to life. The old man had not been to Church for a long time, he turned to Fr Keble and said, “I will be in Church on Sunday. When I was in the Parish of Derby and Blackville I once visited a man who for some reason or other had not been to Church for a while. He met me at his door and before I had a chance to say a word, he said “I know that not going to Church is just a dirty habit, I will be there on Sunday, and he was. We are all called to bare witness to Christ in this world, we need to work harder at our witness. God depends on us to do just this in our everyday lives and the grace to do this comes from God as we meet him at the Altar. I realize that we live in difficult times, but there are times in our lives that provide us with opportunity to show forth his love, do not pass up that opportunity. The Service of the Stations of the Cross is held every Friday in Lent at 7:00 PM. It is an opportunity to meditate on the fact that God loves us and at great cost to himself went to the Cross for us. In the Service we walk the “Way of Sorrows” and remember the depth of the Father’s love for us. The Son of God was under no obligation when he went to the Cross to die, except he knew that if he the innocent had not done so for us the guilty, there would be no hope for us. He acted out of love in order that we might love, he acted that we might be free from the pain and darkness of sin, he acted that we might be free. Father David Mercer, Priest in Charge 454 9998 dmercer98@bellaliant.net Anglican Parish of Prince William |
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