From the School Chaplain: Lessons and Carols

Friday, December 11, we will celebrate our 26th "Festival Service of Nine Lessons and Carols" at Saint Edward's School.  Due to the pandemic, this year the service is abbreviated to four lessons and four carols, and it will be recorded and made available on the evening of Wednesday, December 16.  The service has been traditionally celebrated on or near Christmas Eve.  The lessons and carols tell the biblical story of the fall of humanity in Genesis, the foretelling of a Messiah by the prophets and the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem.  Its aim is to tell the story of redemption coming into the world to live among us and to bring comfort and joy to us in our day.  The Lessons and Carols service has been associated with King's College at Cambridge University since 1918 but has its roots at Truro Cathedral in Cornwall in 1880.  This beloved and reverent service is practiced around the world now.  Although we will not be coming to the Waxlax Center as an in-person community for this service, we can nonetheless carry on this tradition in recorded form as a way of remembering this special story.  Lessons will be read and carols will be sung by students under the direction of Dr. Anthony Baron and Father John Barrett.