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Weekly Email Archive [January-February 2008]
If you wish to receive Father Downing's weekly message via email, please contact the parish office at stjames@covad.net
February 7, 2008
Dearly beloved,
On the second day of Lent, I write to you with a sincere hope, wish, and personal prayer that this Lent will be for all of us an opportunity to discover our need for spiritual growth, for forgiveness, and for God’s love to dwell in our hearts, so that we may give that forgiveness to each other. We have made a good beginning to this Holy Season with three liturgies on Ash Wednesday, and at the evening Mass almost 50 of us gathered to focus our hearts upon the true work of this time -- repentance and deepening faith.
As you know, each season of the church year offers us new opportunities for spiritual growth by opening news spaces in our hearts, in our minds, and in our spirits. Our liturgy also changes during the various seasons to reflect better this reality. On this next Sunday, the Fist Sunday in Lent (Sundays occur within the Season of Lent, but are not part of it; they are always Feasts of the Resurrection and can never be considered by catholic Christians as days of fasting) we will vary our principal liturgical offering. Specifically, during this time we will sing the Great Litany in a solemn penitential procession, we will use a different prayer of consecration, a different dismissal, the celebrant will pray a solemn prayer over the people after the thanksgiving and before the blessing, and the setting for the signing of the Our Father will change.
Many of you have noticed that in this parish we hold the hands of our neighbors while we sing the prayer that our Savior has taught us. Using the ancient catholic custom, where outward and visible signs express inward spiritual realities, we grasp the hands of our neighbor as we claim for ourselves and each other the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of humankind. Whether the person beside us is known to us or not, or no matter what our feelings may be regarding that person, we are made brothers and sisters in Christ through the water of Baptism, and this relationship that God establishes with us can never be broken. And just as nothing can separate us individually from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, so God will not allow us to separate ourselves from each other. Holding hands during the Our Father is simply one more way for us as a Christian community to express this reality in our public worship, where the community forms its identity as children of God, heirs of his Kingdom, and agents of his transforming purpose in the world.
Our Anglican ethos has crafted a careful balance in the lives of our communities, offering everyone who belongs opportunities for service, responsibilities for the health of the community, and obligations to live their lives in congruence with the faith of the church. As we make our pilgrimage through these forty days of Lent, let us not forget that we all have important roles to play in the life of our community. Some roles are more clearly defined than others, yet all are of great value. The transforming mission of the church is the responsibility of every one of us. So much we are offered, such a great dignity God confers upon us all, that we may in our own lives be co-workers with God in Christ, reconciling the whole world to himself.
This of course is the grist of the mill of Lent: that is, how our own lives, how our every choice everyday should conform our own hearts, minds, and spirits to God’s purpose, not our own, and how God’s will and God’s person is meant to be the focus of our lives. The principal place where Christian persons may experience the joy and the struggle of learning to love each other with the same love, depth, and power that God loves us is *in* the Church. I know that this process of learning and living into this God love represents for each one of us a great challenge. What is requires is a realistic understanding of who we are individually, and the first thing we must say is what we are not: that we are not God and we cannot allow ourselves to become the focus of our universe. We are surely made in God’s image, and our lives can be transformed by God’s grace. We have the ability to make enormous contributions to each other on every day that we wake up to embrace the Creation. The constant challenge for us is to remember that everyone else has the same dignity that we must respect and the same opportunities that they wish to embrace. It is essential in community that we not let ourselves think only of ourselves. Grasp this opportunity to live in our community of faith as individuals contributing to the much greater whole!
This of course comes to you with my love.
Father Downing
Community updates:
1. As members of the living community, it is also our role to pay our respects to those who have passed on before us. There were two deaths within the parish family this week, and I ask for you to pray for the repose of the souls of these individuals and for the family members and friends who love and cared for them:
* Frances Johnson, the mother of Marjory Powell and the grandmother of Carmen Cannon, passed away on Tuesday.
* Early this morning Evelyn Flynn Adams, the mother of Dan Adams, passed away. Dan included in his note that “to honor her wishes in lieu of flowers, the family requests memorials be sent to the Happy Home Orphanage-Nepal. Please make contributions in care of Ms. Judy Morris, 2005 Bowling Green, Denton, Texas76201. Please annotate memo line with “Happy Home Orphanage”.”
2. We are engaged in the exciting work of building together a new parish, bringing together two venerable strains of tradition, worship, and action. We have made the choice to cast our lots with each other for the purpose of a more vigorous missionary outreach.
Our principal Lenten study effort will begin on the Second Sunday in Lent and is designed to further that important work. We will gather in the Upper Parish Hall immediately after we get food at the coffee hour following the High Mass. This study will provide us with the opportunity to acquaint ourselves with the gifts that our patrons, St. Monica and St. James, offer to the universal Church and to this particular community worshiping on Capitol Hill. We have much to learn from each other! I know how richly God has blessed our community with your presence, your lives, and your daily activities. All of these gifts will create the engine of the missionary outreach of this place. So plan to come to worship every Sunday in Lent, plan to stay, and plan to challenge yourself spiritually.
3. Beginning this Sunday our gifted seminarian Mathew Humm will be offering the opportunity to those who wish to explore their own spiritual journey through the Holy Season of Lent using as a basis for prayer and discussion and self-examination a wonderful book written by Edward Hays entitled the Lenten Labyrinth which should be available to the first eleven people. This particular study opportunity will begin in the Upper Parish Hall at 9am and is planned to last the time between the 8am and 10am Masses, so that anyone attending either service is able to benefit from this rich time spent together is prayer and conversation. Please make a point to attend!
4. There will be sign-up sheets for various Easter duties including bringing Easter eggs, being Canopy bearers, keeping vigil with the Blessed Sacrament, and providing flowers for the Altar of repose. Please look for these sign up sheets in the Upper Parish Hall during Lent. It can be none too soon for us to prepare for the heavy liturgical season that approaches us!
January 25, 2008
Dearly Beloved,
With a joyful heart moved by the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, I prayed for our whole community this morning as we observed the Feast of Florence Li Tim-Oi, who was the first woman ordained in the Anglican Communion, in 1944 in the Diocese of Hong Kong. Male priests were forbidden to travel by the Japanese occupying forces at the time. Accordingly, the Bishop of Hong Kong, who sought to provide Sacraments to the Church in Macao, called upon Li Tim-Oi, laid hands upon her, and sent her out to do this critical work. Bravely she accepted the call and offered her ministrations, often putting her own life in danger. Mother Li Tim-Oi can be an inspiration to us all as we seek to hear that particular call from God that will give direction and purpose to our own lives.
In this same vein, this Sunday the theme of the Gospel reading, as well as the other two readings, is discipleship - that is, how individuals respond in faith to God's call, the prompting of the Holy Spirit, and those mysterious ways in which God asks us to participate in his purpose. The Gospel reading for this Sunday is the story of the call of Simon Peter, his brother Andrew, and James and John the sons of Zebedee, one of whom is one of our patrons. Their call was explicit: Jesus saw them, spoke to them directly, and said, "follow me." The wonderful example they set was an instantaneous response; they dropped what they were doing, and they followed him.
This response is the ideal Christian response. As we know, Li Tim-Oi responded very similarly and carried the Cross of Christ right into a dangerous, war-torn region. As Christians, we have likewise been called, God willing not to a situation that entails the kind of danger and destruction that she knew. We are, however, baptized into the very body of the Risen Christ, and God anticipates our response in faith and that we will live our lives in congruence with that faith. Of course, as we are all sinful people, we all respond imperfectly - this is a trait we cannot wish away or, in truth, ignore. The imperfection of our response nonetheless does not release us from responsibility for our actions. Every Christian needs to develop a relationship with God that manifests itself in the community of faith.
Our personal experience is not only made richer and more meaningful, but it is ultimately defined by our willingness to live in that community of faith. For it is in the community of faith that we can learn as individuals how God's love can change everything including our own nature. The community of faith can bestow upon us transforming love, acceptance, and forgiveness. It is here where we can learn how to place God's purpose ahead of our own, the welfare of the community ahead of our own desires, and make true the sense that more hands collected can do exponentially more good work than the hands of well-meaning individuals. The constant struggle to live in a way that is counter-cultural is the struggle that every Christian must embrace if we are to discover the joy and wonder of God's purpose for us. Though the path is difficult, the rewards are great!
It is in contemplating our common life that the Epistle for Sunday can give us some insight. Paul reminds the church in Corinth, which at the time was deeply divided, that "all of you be in agreement, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose." Paul spells out right here, it seems to me, the key to congruent Christian life. As I noted last week, the Episcopal Church is organized in such a way as to handle, in a truly positive way, the very human experience of division within community. Some sincere Christian people have differing opinions from others, as we have noted and experienced in our own community, but when the established institutions of our common life think, speak, pray, deliberate, and decide, even though the differences of opinions remain, the decisions that are taken and the direction in which the community will move is set and must be embraced by everyone.
What God has continually provided the Church throughout history, and our parish at this very moment in time, are wonderful opportunities for everyone to grow in grace, setting aside individual opinions, and instead releasing and giving oneself over to a positive response to God's call. In this, each of us is learning that even the greatest reservations must be overcome if the community of faith is to be free for its mission. I know that this is difficult for us, as each of us has the propensity to think at various points of ourselves and our opinions as more important than the decisions taken by the duly constituted authorities in the Diocese as well as the parish.
Yet, the call to grow in humility, as well as service, by aligning ourselves sincerely with decisions that may trouble us, is one of the surest ways to produce in our own hearts a new relationship between ourselves and our ideas, between ourselves and our community, even between ourselves and God. This realignment encourages us to give the new things God may be trying to do a chance to flourish and even prosper with our help, no matter how reluctant we might be.
And throughout all of these challenges, we have that amazing grace that God provides and with which he equips us for this work. Certainly we know that sometimes we will meet a task too big for the moment. As we grow into the pattern that the saints offer us as a portal to the Divine, we know that even St. Paul and his co-workers ran into great difficulty in the mission of the church and sometimes chose to part ways rather than to inflict their personal conflicts upon God's Church. Regardless, like the Saints whose witness we celebrate in our community of faith every day, we need to look at each other with a resolve and determination to make every good effort to grow this place that we know and love so much, and to grow it for a future marked by health, vibrancy, and unity.
The whole purpose of the mission of the Church is the thrust of the first reading for this Sunday when Isaiah says, "the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who live in a land of deep darkness - on them light has shined. You have multiplied the nation, you have increased its joy… the yoke of their burden, and the bar across their shoulder, the rod of their oppressor, you have broken." Here we see the fruit of the willingness not to think of ourselves only, not to invest so much in what we want, or what we expect, or what makes us comfortable, or what we have know in the past, but rather to come to grips with that freedom from the narrowness of our own thought. We are made to reassess our own comfort and in so doing to embrace the fullness of God's love and his purpose in the world. For us in this parish, that means creating a community in which people are more important than our personal desires or aims. It is a community in which we can celebrate the power and vibrancy of the many hands doing the work together.
We here at St. Monica and St. James are embarking upon a wonderful Christian venture that will best be realized if we can learn to think of the well-being of the whole and to regard our own comfort or desires as secondary to the interests of the whole community. If we can simply cast our lot with the future, and let go of the past, we can seek to enrich our lives and fulfill God's wish for us, just as our patrons Monica and James did. Let us vow to each other to be faithful in our response to God's call in the face of any number of vicissitudes, hurts, sorrows, unfulfilled hopes, and yet in the very tears of St. Monica and the martyr's blood of St. James, we will advance God's purpose, strengthen God' Church, and transform our very lives.
This comes to you with my love.
The Lord's peace be with you,
Father Downing
January 17, 2008
Dearly Beloved,
With a joy-filled heart I write in the midst of a beautiful snowfall to remind us of the claim that God makes upon our lives, and of the promise God makes to us of redemption, forgiveness, and eternal life. For our redemption, forgiveness, and eternal life, God sent his Son -- his only Son. This is his pledge and his revelation to all of humankind of his nature, his desire for all of us is to be reconciled to God through our relationship with the risen Christ.
John the Baptist recognized Jesus. He pointed him out to others. He witnessed God's Holy Spirit lightening and remaining upon him. And then he knew: Jesus the Christ is the Lamb of God. John the Baptist's recognition led others, Andrew in particular, to follow Christ and bring his brother Peter along. Like John the Baptist, we also, each and every one of us, are blessed with that baptismal relationship that connects us with Jesus the Christ. That baptismal relationship is intended to overcome any separation our own sin may create between us and our best selves, between us and our neighbor, and between us and God.
We can rely upon God always to remain true to his promises and his own nature. God calls us to reflect that same acceptance and forgiveness into all the creation, but most particularly within God's Church, which is God's gift to us and to the whole universe, belonging to him, existing to carry out his purpose, relying upon the efforts of all of us to make his will known and real everyday. Of course, the Church, being made up of people like us, suffers under the weight of our own sin. Yet each day we have opportunity to become different, changed, and even transformed simply by accepting God's gifts of grace, forgiveness, and love, and offering them to everyone around us.
Praise God for all these gifts and for the opportunity every day to accept and share them. Praise God for our common life in the new Parish of Saint Monica & Saint James. What a wonderful opportunity God continues to offer all of us to learn to know each other, to learn to love each other, and to take our part in God's reconciling purpose in the world.
One of the principal challenges of the Christian life has always been learning to live, respect, enjoy, support, and engage honestly with other Christians. Our common life, as expressed in the polity of our church, reminds us that we are meant, called, even required to be open, honest, and forthright in our dealings with each other for the common good, but to do so with humility and love. Our parishes are organized in such a way as to both represent God's people and the traditional life of his Church.
Therefore, we have lay representatives elected to constitute the governing body of each parish in conjunction with the Rector. In our case (since we are a parish and not a mission) this body -- Rector, Wardens and Vestry -- form the corporation which holds the property in trust for the larger Church and is charged with the responsibility of governing the ongoing life of the congregation. This organization has endured for quite some time, and I believe it serves God's Church very well.
Of course, every community has its disagreements and differences of opinions. Yet I think it is important to say, in congruence with the Holy Scriptures, that factions within the Body of Christ do not serve its long-term health. This, of course, is the place where open, honest, direct, truthful communication is the key, and if not to pleasing everyone, at least to offering a way forward for the whole. As Isaiah saw in his vision, the Church is meant to be a light to the nations. And it is the life of the church that is the witness of our Christian life. That is why over the course of centuries dioceses and parishes have been organized, so that authority and responsibility are not only shared, but clearly defined. So when decisions are taken by those responsible and authorized to make them, they are in fact decisions which bind the whole community. Differing points of views are of course taken into consideration. Ultimately, however, the decisions are made by the lawful governing institutions. Thank God for these clear lines of authority.
We all, from time to time, may have reason to fret over, or even resist some of those decisions. But in the long term, it is my fervent belief that we may trust God's Holy Spirit to see that God's purpose will prevail. So as we learn to live our new life together, let us resolve not to think of ourselves more highly than we out to think, as St. Paul so thoughtfully said, but rather to value those healthy life-giving institutions which have governed our lives together and which have served even God's purpose over centuries.
One of the ways in which we as individuals can seek to discern and live our lives in congruence with God's purpose is to remain open, even humble, in the face of those events and changes that call us to expand our horizons and even step beyond our zone of comfort, so as to provide a fertile field for God's will to be accomplished in our own hearts and in the world.
As we approach our Sunday worship I hope that these things will be much in our thoughts, hearts and prayers, so that this parish community may go forward in strength so that we can become that beacon of light, love, forgiveness, and joy that we know God wills for us.
Two final parish notes. First, on Saturday February 2nd, following the 10 AM Mass Father Darko and Father Downing need help to bring heavy boxes of records over from Saint Monica's church. That day is the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ at the Temple. It is a principal feast in the Church Year; it would give me great joy to have company at Mass on that day and to have help afterwards.
Second, Ash Wednesday is quickly approaching. Please remember to bring you palms from last Palm Sunday to church so that we can make ashes.
This comes to you with my love.
The peace of the Lord be with you,
Father Downing
January 10, 2008
Dearly Beloved,
With joy we greet the Season of the Epiphany. This is the time of the Church Year where we take the opportunity as the Body of Christ to contemplate the way in which God has revealed himself in the body and life, teaching and passion, death and resurrection, and the ascension of Jesus the Christ. At the same time, it is also the season where we contemplate how God continues to reveal to us and to the world his presence and call everyday.
We began this year by celebrating the Feast of the Epiphany this past Sunday when we were reminded that God has truly come in the form most accessible to us human beings. He came as one of us to provide us with an encounter never to be forgotten, of God in human flesh, and humanity at its very best.
This next Sunday, January 13th, we will think and pray together about the Baptism of Jesus the Christ and its effect upon his life, as well as its effect upon our own lives. We will think together about the nature of baptism, what relationships are established therein, and the consequences for every moment of every day of our individual lives and our life as the Church.
The first thing that I earnestly pray we will never forget is that the relationship God establishes with us in our baptism can never be broken no matter what our desire. No matter what we say or do God has claimed us for his own, and in that relationship has given us great dignity, great opportunity, and enormous responsibility. All of these things we claim and we seek to live into as our lives profess that the relationship is forever, and our opportunity for growth never ends. What a wonderful and refreshing truth that can be. For it is never too late for us to claim our place in this creation as God’s agents for transformation- beginning of course in our own hearts.
I do hope that we all appreciate here in the Parish of St. Monica and St. James, what a wonderful adventure we have begun. What a witness we can be for so many in the diocese and the larger church who are watching with joy, hope, and expectations for how we in our common life will show to everyone how the power of God’s love lived out in our lives can overcome everything else. The mission of God’s church is to prove that no difference of color, sex, orientation, and class can keep God’s loving purpose from being lived out in the lives of his people.
Bearing witness to this mission is the life and ministry of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Though most of the country will celebrate his Birthday on 21st of January, in order to make a convenient three day weekend, this Parish will celebrate his ministry on the day of his actual birthday, January 15th with a celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass at 6:30 pm. We will use the proper for a martyr, and if sufficient persons attend we will be able to sing hymns. So bring your heightened sense of the ways in which individual Christians, living their lives in congruence with the Baptismal Covenant, make no peace with oppression, and recognize and seek to serve Christ in all persons, loving their neighbors as themselves.
At the end of this email will be the worship schedule for Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. I fervently hope that you will make every effort to worship in your parish church on that day and make a good beginning to that Holy Season. In anticipation of that Day please bring your Palms from last Palm Sunday so that we may use them to provide ashes for Ash Wednesday. Do not for one moment think that these events are in anyway unimportant. They are of supreme import to all of us as we seek to shape our hearts and lives in the form that will make them recognizable to the Christ who has redeemed us, who holds our souls in life, and who maintains through his love our very being. Worship is the way we most readily cultivate that saving relationship and learn how best to serve God in this life.
This comes to you with love.
The Lord be with you,
Father Downing
ASH WEDNESDAY WORSHIP SCHEDULE
7 AM Low Mass
Noon Low Mass
7PM High Mass
January 3, 2008
Dearly Beloved,
With a joyful heart I write to wish you all a Merry Christmas and remind all of us that the season of Christmas ends with the Feast of Epiphany, January 6th, which this year falls on Sunday. So we will have a wonderful opportunity to celebrate that Feast together in our new community!
The spiritual focus of the Epiphany is the way in which God has revealed himself to us in Jesus the Christ, whose birth we celebrate in the Christmas season and the consequences of which we study in the season called Epiphany. Epiphany is when we, God’s Church, reflect upon this supreme gift -- God’s own self and the way in which the gift opens for each one of us both a personal and a corporate relationship with God and each other. We believe as Christians that God has made himself known to everyone, and through our baptism we share a personal relationship with the incarnate, crucified, and risen Christ.
Likewise we share together with all the rest of the creation a corporate relationship in what is now, in this moment in history, the incarnate body of Christ -- the community of all Baptized people. For we believe that we share in his risen life, and through that sharing, we now become Jesus the Christ in the world. It is a mystery, this relationship created by God, which we all share with God. And it makes for a relationship between each and every one of us. Together we must look for the ways in which our individual and corporate lives reveal God’s presence here and now.
One cause for great rejoicing among us here in the Parish of St. Monica & St. James is that we have chosen to join our lives in a new missionary community. We have casts our lots with each other, and the wonderful work of discovering who we are and how our corporate life will advance God’s kingdom is now our principal work. Your dedicated Wardens and Vestry are stepping up and beginning to plan a series of activities and events that will enable us all to learn together, work together, eat together, talk together, laugh together, and before too long, we will be able to experience together all of the emotions of a family.
What we are called to do is become a united Christian community. This endeavor will require all of us to participate in the process of becoming personally vulnerable, personally involved, and personally responsible. In truth, as we do these things we will create for each other a community in which we will all grow in the knowledge and love of God, as well as cultivate a whole host of new friends, many of whom will both expand our own hearts and help us to develop into our true selves. Of course, this will require personal growth, prayer, and commitment. But the promise of the Epiphany season is exactly that: just as Jesus showed forth the nature of God in his time, so we will be enabled to reveal in this time and place the true nature of Jesus the Christ.
We can do this in many ways! Some will have to do with choices we make in our own personal lives. Other opportunities will have more to do with our corporate life, such as bringing food for others to share at the coffee hour, helping to set up the coffee hour, helping to clean up the coffee hour, welcoming each other and newcomers, participating in the worship regularly, reading the prayers of the people, ushering, bringing the elements to the altar, reaching across the aisle and grasping the hand of the person worshipping on the other side of the church and thereby bringing our community together physically. Let us resolve not to behave in a way that will ever allow anyone who is worshiping with us to say, or even think, that we are “God’s frozen chosen.” Instead let the warmth of our common life make evident the truth of the shrine that stands at the back of our church, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, on fire with love for all of humankind!
As we move down this road of discovering each other and God, please accept as many opportunities as humanly possible to make yourself known.
* Greet the people around you.
* Fill out the little blue information cards, so that we will be able to remember your birthdays and anniversaries and pray for you on the day and throughout the week when they occur.
* Join the weekly email (if you receive this one, send it to your friends who may not and encourage them to sign up by contacting the parish office). Give your parish family the opportunity to keep you informed about our common life, about opportunities to serve, and about needs that we can all address together.
Our parish family is blessed to be counting among its members two retired priests, both of whom are willing to participate in our life by undertaking priestly duties. As you well know, they are Father Robert Macfarlane and Father Michael Marrett. It is my fervent hope that we will be seeing them on weekdays and Sundays more and more. They both offer tremendous depth of experience and dedication. I hope that you will make full use of their many gifts.
We now have made arrangements for regular nursery care during the 10am Sunday High Mass and there is also Sunday School for the older children. Please make use of these opportunities!
Also if you are interested in volunteering in any capacity please make this known by filling out an information card or by calling the parish office (202-546-1746). You can also take these other initiatives:
* If you are interested in serving on the altar, please contact David Baker (202-547-0774 or davidbaker27@hotmail.com) or Father Downing (202-546-1746 or fatherdowning@covad.net).
* If you are interested in being on the altar guild, please contact Louis Loh (202-398-1783 or louis.l@mac.com).
* If you are interested in hosting coffee hour, please sign up on the bulletin board or contact the Parish Office.
This comes to you with my love.
The Lord be with you,
Father Downing
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