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Sunday Service Schedule Our 8:00 AM Holy Eucharist on Sunday mornings is a quiet, traditional language liturgy with no music. It meets in the Lady Chapel. Our 10:00 AM Holy Eucharist is Christ Church at its most splendid and most lively. This service is characterized by extraordinary music from our many choirs, active congregational singing, the presence of every generation, the very beautiful Sarum Rite as it is expressed in Bronxville, and a wonderful intergenerational family feel. Our 5:00 PM service is a Holy Eucharist set in the tradition of the Taizé Monastery. It is a quiet service with repetitive, simple music and an informal and intimate feeling as we gather around the altar. |
Our Worship Style
There are many different styles in which Episcopalians worship, from very formal liturgies that feature grand music, formal clothes (called vestments), and incense, to very informal spoken styles that have different music and a more meditative feel. Yet all worship in the Episcopal Church is based in the Book of Common Prayer, familiar to Episcopalians no matter where they go. At Christ Church our liturgies vary broadly in their style and format.
Sundays at Christ Church
Before the 10:00 A.M. service parents and their children meet at 9:45 in Taylor Hall (the auditorium downstairs) for Children's Chapel. Taylor Hall is most easily reached from the entrance on Kensington Road. Children's Chapel is a joyful time when families gather to encounter the readings for the day, hear pertinent announcements, and sing season songs before the children are escorted by their parents to the classrooms. Later, children in grades 2 through 6 enter church and sit with their parents at the Presentation Hymn. The younger grades enter the church in time for Communion.
The Episcopal Church welcomes all who are baptized to share in Holy Communion. Please come to the altar at the direction of the ushers. It is customary to kneel at the rail (as you are able). Receive the bread (wafer) in the palm of your outstretched hands. Receive the wine, which follows, either by drinking from the chalice as it is extended to you, or by touching the wafer lightly to the wine.
If you do not wish to receive communion, please come to the altar to receive a blessing. You may indicate your desire for a blessing by crossing your arms over your chest when you come to the rail.
After each 10:00 A.M. service all are invited to Coffee Hour in the Undercroft.
Sarum Rite
The Sarum Rite is an ancient ceremonial that started at Salisbury Cathedral in England. Sarum is Latin for Salisbury. This is a truly English liturgical style and was brought to Christ Church in the 1930’s by Father Harold Hohly and Canon Morton Stone. Since that time Christ Church has been widely known as an exponent of the Sarum use.
Although the Sarum use at Christ Church has been revised quite a bit over time, to reflect changes in liturgical understanding and to best fit the architecture of Christ Church, the importance of this carefully lived liturgy remains the same - to create an atmosphere through which the Divine might be encountered in a lasting, reverent, and deeply meaningful way. No gesture in the Sarum use is without meaning. It all points to the necessity and beauty of our relationship with God and with one another.
Facing East
From very early on in our faith’s liturgical life the orientation of the church (the people, the Body of Christ) was symbolic of our expectation and belief that Christ will come again to gather us and bring us home. We symbolize the unity of that heavenly community by our unity of direction in prayer – congregation, choir and clergy facing east (defined as toward the altar in churches that don’t meet the geographical requirements).