HOLIDAYS: The Christian calendar builds toward the...
HOLIDAYS: The Christian calendar builds toward the Easter climax next week for Roman Catholic and Protestant churches, starting with Passion Sunday, or Palm Sunday, which recalls gospel accounts of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem.
Easter is celebrated April 19 by Western churches and April 26 by Eastern Orthodox churches.
Auxiliary Bishop Armando X. Ochoa, the San Fernando regional bishop for the Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese, will lead an evening prayer at 3 p.m. Sunday at St. John Baptist de la Salle Church in Granada Hills. The service will follow a concert featuring Theodore Dubois’ “Seven Last Words of Christ.”
Ochoa will also celebrate Mass at 2 p.m. on Good Friday at the San Fernando Mission and travel to Antelope Valley next Saturday for an 8 p.m. Easter vigil service at Blessed Junipero Serra Church in Quartz Hill.
The Passover period will begin Friday evening, coinciding with synagogue services.
Pre-Easter services at churches next week will often note analogies between Jesus’ Last Supper and the Passover ritual.
That point is taken further at some conservative evangelical churches where “Christ in the Passover” services are conducted that imply that the Seder contains elements of Christian doctrine. Jewish-born Christian converts will lead such services at 11 a.m. Sunday at Northridge Community Church of the Nazarene, 10650 Reseda Blvd., and at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at First Baptist Church of Sunland, 10438 Oro Vista Ave.
On the other hand, the relationship between the Last Supper and the Passover Seder will be cast in a metaphysical, spiritualized perspective in a service at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Encino Community Church, 5955 Lindley Ave., by Pastor Margie Ann Nicola.
A more standard Christian commemoration of the Last Supper will be held at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at East Valley Congregational Church, 10919 Oxnard St., North Hollywood. Members of another United Church of Christ congregation, the Faith Bible Church of Los Angeles, will participate.
The Church on the Way in Van Nuys will hold Communion services at noon and 7 p.m.
At North Hollywood’s First Christian Church, 4390 Colfax Ave., John Rutter’s “Requiem” will be presented by choir and orchestra in an 8 p.m. service Friday that features a dramatic reading of “The Passion of Jesus Christ” by the Advent Theatre.
FOODSTUFF: As a part of the United Methodist Church’s work to alleviate food shortages in Moscow, 30 Methodists with the Woodland Hills church packed and shipped 16 boxes of food staples last week.
Church members collected 540 pounds of flour, sugar, pasta, rice, canned meat, shortening, chocolate bars, fruit juice and dehydrated milk for shipping by the United Methodist Committee on Relief, which is working with the Russian Orthodox Church and the Soviet Peace Fund.
PUBLICITY: Van Nuys resident Chuck Jones, executive director of the Southern California Ecumenical Council, will be installed Tuesday in Hollywood as president of the Southern California chapter of the Religious Public Relations Council.
“Some faith groups have yet to realize the value of getting their message out and their name before the public,” Jones said. The exceptions, he said, include the Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese and the Mormon Church.
CONCERT: The 80-voice Collegiate Singers and Orchestra of the Master’s College in Newhall will perform portions of George Frideric Handel’s “Messiah” in Glendale Thursday night at Forest Lawn Memorial-Park’s Hall of the Crucifixion-Resurrection.
The performance, conducted by Paul T. Plew, will be the college’s seventh renewal of the program, which integrates scenes on the hall’s 45-by-195-foot mural with the music. The concert is free, but reservations are recommended. Call the college’s music department at (805) 259-3540.
MYTH: Jonathan Young, curator for the archives of the late author-lecturer Joseph Campbell at Pacifica University in Santa Barbara, will speak on “Mythic Stories to Live By” at 8 p.m. Friday at the Sepulveda Unitarian-Universalist Society, 9550 Haskell Ave. Tickets are $5. For information on a seminar on “The Wisdom of Joseph Campbell” led by Young next Saturday, call (818) 893-1171.
News and announcements for this column can be sent to Religion Desk, Los Angeles Times, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth 91311.