April 9th: Easter Homecoming

St. Matthias’ was officially founded as a mission of St. George’s, Place du Canada, in 1873, which means our community is 150 this year! For the next 12 months, we’ll be diving into the archives to shine the spotlight on particularly interesting parts of our history.

Advertisements for Holy Week and Easter services from the 1980s and 1990s when the Rev. Paul James was rector.

On April 12th, 2020, 78 separate devices (phones, computers, and tablets) logged on to St. Matthias’ Easter Morning Zoom service, a month after the only pandemic service that St. Matthias’ cancelled. Those 78 connections represented almost 100 members of our community, finding home in each other and in the Morning Prayer liturgy that would be our constant companion for almost two years.

Easter has always been an occasion for people to come home to St. Matthias’ – the 482 cumulative attendees of 1973’s Easter services were double in number the usual attendance for that year, and the 660 cumulative communicants of 1913’s Easter services (the first in the new building) were likewise more numerous than St. Matthias’ average Sunday in the 1910s.

Whether our home is in the embrace of stone and glass, in the soaring heights of music, in the beautiful mystery of the Eucharist, or in the warmth of the bodies surrounding ours in our pews, every year at this time of resurrection, we have found it together.