Dear Friends,

Every Sunday, we come to the altar and share a meal. It is the meal that Jesus ate with his disciples on the last night of his life. It is a meal in which we believe that Christ continually gives himself to us in the consecrated bread and wine. We believe that transformation takes place in this meal. We may wonder how ordinary bread and wine becomes Christ’s living presence. But the more miraculous transformation we are invited to consider each week is the transformation that takes place in us. Ordinary human beings, you and me, are fed by Christ so that more and more, we may become the presence of Christ in the world.

I invite you to think of that transformation as you consider two invitations to partake in other meals this summer – with the MANNA community at St. Paul’s Cathedral, and with the B-SAFE summer program at St. Luke’s/San Lucas Episcopal Church in Chelsea. You’ll find the invitations elsewhere on this website. Our nourishment at the altar on Sundays means little if it does not result in our lives becoming the joyful sacrifice that was and is Jesus Christ’s life: an offering of ourselves to the world, for the nourishment of all God’s people.

At the heart of our worship each week is the mystery of ordinary bread and wine becoming the life giving presence of Christ. And that very mystery is then made manifest in ordinary human lives living in extraordinary generous and loving ways. As St. Augustine told those who came to the altar centuries ago: “There is your mystery on the table. Be what you receive.”

Faithfully,

Tom