Advent Festival of Lessons & Carols at St. Barnabas

St Barnabas’s Church in Bellville will resume its annual Advent Festival of Lessons & Carols on Sunday afternoon at 3 p.m., Dec.12. The greater community of Austin, Colorado, Fayette, Washington and Waller Counties is invited to join the communicants of St. Barnabas’s Anglican Church, located at 237 West Austin St. in Bellville, for the resumption of the parish’s annual tradition of the celebration of the Festival of Advent Lessons & Carols, an adaptation of a service of nine lessons and carols created in 1880 by Bishop Benson of Truro in the county of Cornwall, England, originally to be used on Christmas Eve.

In the busy commercial preparations for Christmas, the beautiful season of Advent often gets overlooked, during which the focus is on preparation for celebrating the First Coming of the Lord Jesus, in fulfillment of the Old Testament, and on the anticipation of His Second Coming (advent--from ad [“to”] plus venire [“to come”] hence, “to come to” or “to arrive”). At last, on Christmas Day itself (not before) begin the traditional Twelve Days of Christmas, the last, twelfth night, being Jan. 5, the Season thus having ended the night before the following day, the Feast of the Epiphany, January 6, the beginning of a new season, celebrating Christ’s manifestation to those whom He came to save.

Enjoy all of the preparations, and join with St. Barnabas’s Church in being reminded of the reason for the season as all hear the story of our Salvation through the Old and New Testaments, the readings interspersed with hymns and carols for Advent and Christmas.

Visit the website of St Barnabas’s at https://www.stbarnabasrec.org. There learn more about the Anglican Church in North America and about the Reformed Episcopal Church, a founding constituent jurisdiction of the ACNA.

Follow the parish on Facebook at https://facebook.com/ StBarnabasBellville

Worship every Lord’s Day begins at 10 a.m. Evening Prayer begins every Wednesday at 4:30 p.m.