Worship

At St. Augustine’s Church our Sunday morning worship centers around the Holy Eucharist. There are two parts to the Eucharist.

First, we listen to God’s Word in the readings from the Bible and we reaffirm our faith in the words of the creed. We share our lives with each other in the prayers and in the exchange of the peace.

Second, we encounter Jesus in the bread and the wine of the Eucharist. The bread and the wine become the body and blood of Jesus. We do not try to explain how that happens, but we rejoice that Jesus is alive and present with us in that way.

 All baptized persons are invited to receive Communion.

Receiving Communion

We receive the consecrated bread, the body of Christ, by holding out our hands. The priest puts it on the palm of one hand which we raise to our mouths to eat the bread.

We drink a sip of the consecrated wine, the blood of Christ, when the chalice, the cup, is held out. Some people prefer to let the chalice bearer dip the bread in the wine and then place it on the tongue.

Book, Books, Books!

We use three books in our worship. The red book is The Book of Common Prayer. It has most of the texts that we read. The blue book is The Hymnal 1982, and the green one is Wonder, Love and Praise. They have the songs that we sing. We also read the Bible. The parts we read are printed on a separate sheet in the bulletin.

For Sundays, and special liturgies like weddings, funerals, or Holy Week we used booklets so that no one needs to worry about juggling all those books

Up and Down

In the Episcopal Church we move around as we worship. Generally, we stand to praise God; we sit to listen and to learn; we kneel to pray. There is no right or wrong way. Each of us does these things a little bit differently. Visitors can watch and join in ways that are comfortable.

Signs and Wonders

You may wonder about some other things. Some people make the sign of the cross. This is a reminder that Jesus lived and died to reunite us with God and that this happens to us in Baptism. That is also why we have holy water at the doors of the church.

Some of us bow at the name of Jesus because he is the son of God and because we become part of God’s family through Jesus. We also bow at the name of the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, because the Trinity is the way we experience God in our lives.

Some of us genuflect, or kneel briefly on one knee, and some of us bow toward the altar, when we enter or leave our seats. This is to show reverence to the Blessed Sacrament, the Body and Blood of Jesus.

Sometimes we use incense and every Sunday we light candles on the altar. All these things are customs. None of them are bad, and none of them are terribly important. God has given us all kinds of gifts like sight, taste, smell, hearing and we try to use all of them to worship God.