Starting this past Monday, the Church entered its longest season of the liturgical year -- often called Ordinary time. Technically speaking, it isn’t actually a season, but rather the time between the major seasons of the church calendar. The longest stretch of Ordinary time reaches from the Monday after the Feast of Pentecost (June 10 this year) all the way until the Saturday before the first Sunday of Advent....
As I write today I am at the annual Priests’ Conference of the Diocese. Most of the priests of the Diocese of New York have gathered together with our bishops for three days of fellowship, education, and relaxation. This year we are in the Poconos and it is beautiful, if a bit on the rainy side!We have had a guest speaker named Jonathan Merritt. You might remember an opinion piece he wrote last year for the Sunday Week in Review section of the New York Times titled “It’s Getting Harder to Talk About God,” and his most recent book is called “Learning to Speak God from Scratch.”...
As you receive this meditation, we will have just concluded our Good Friday liturgy. In our Book of Common Prayer, the three services at the end of Holy Week -- Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Great Vigil of Easter on Saturday night - are conceived as one long worship service over three days. That means that from the Good Friday liturgy, which ends appropriately in silence, to the beginning of the Vigil with the kindling of the new fire in the dark, there is a long stretch of more than a day when we are still technically within a worship service....
As many of you know, I was in Phoenix last weekend attending my friend Jennifer Reddall’s consecration as Bishop of Arizona, and it was truly a blessed event. It was blessed not just because Bishop Reddall is now the first female bishop of Arizona. Or because she is currently one of only ten women who are the primary bishop of one of our 111 dioceses in the Episcopal church. Or because the ceremony included an amazing ritual to create sacred space led by Native American women, one of whom is also an Episcopal priest. Or because the music was a delightful combination of beloved Anglican and Spanish-language hymns (helped by an 80-member choir and a mariachi band, of course). Or because the celebratory performance by former “lost boys” from Sudan who have found an Episcopal church to call home in their new land. Or the vibrant presence of our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry. It was blessed because of the palpable presence of the Holy Spirit. For a sermon in her days as rector of Church of the Epiphany here in New York, +Jennifer once did some research on doves as an image of the Holy Spirit.....
Today, Friday, January 25, is the day we remember the conversion of Paul. The story of Paul being suddenly struck from his horse by a blinding light while on the road to Damascus is immediately familiar to us, from the several bible passages that describe it (Acts 9:1-22, 22:6-21, and 26:9-21; Galatians 1:11-24). Even if you don’t remember anything else about the story, you are likely to be able to visualize one of the many paintings of Paul’s experience on the road - one of the most famous is by Caravaggio (click here to view).
The Reverend Susan E. HillMerry Christmas!This is a season of new beginnings. We are in Christmastide (remember we celebrate the birth of
As you know from the email we sent recently, this week’s parish prayer list has been revised. Our goal is to simplify the previous format, as well as to make the list easier to maintain. All this rests on one big hope: that you don’t simply see the email in your inbox and click delete. Or look at it briefly to see if anyone you know is on the list. Or maybe even just read the meditation, and then delete the list! The hope that we have instead is that you spend time with the list and say a prayer for the people and issues on it....
This past Monday, October 29, was the feast day of St. Simon and St. Jude, who were named as apostles in the gospels. We don’t know much more about them than that, at least from the scriptures. Tradition has it that they were martyred while missionaries together in Persia. There are various theories about them -- for example that Simon had been part of a radical Jewish independence group called the Zealots, and that Jude might have been one of Jesus’ brothers -- but little is known for sure....
This past Sunday, we kicked off our fall Christian Education series “Foundations of our Faith” with a whirlwind session discussing the history of the Episcopal Church. In order to pare down the information, I relied heavily on Christopher L. Webber’s Welcome to the Episcopal Church: An Introduction to Its History, Faith, and Worship -- a useful primer for new church members. I did have a significant problem, though, with the material presented in the opening chapter on History -- an issue that those present at the forum picked up on pretty quickly too. Although I understand that the purpose of Webber’s volume is to be as inviting as possible to newcomers, I was surprised and disappointed to notice that in a chapter that focused heavily on the church’s history in America, there was no mention of the church’s involvement with slavery. Since I did not do enough to counter that omission on Sunday, I thought I would write a few sentences here to clarify....
One of my favorite television ads of all time was for Staples – it ran some years ago, and you might remember it. It featured ecstatic parents practically dancing as they pushed shopping carts in Staples, picking out school supplies with their glum, feet-dragging kids in tow. Peppily playing in the background is Andy Williams’ Christmas song “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!” I always got a kick out of the joy the parents took as they got ready to send their kids back to the more structured time of school, akin to the joy their kids wouldn’t have until Christmastime....