Category Archives: From the Rector

Weekly articles from our Rector published in the News & Notes newsletter.

Remembered in Prayer

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As o’er each continent and island the dawn leads on another day,
the voice of prayer is never silent, nor dies the strain of praise away.
-from The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, Is Ended, by Charles P. Price
#24 in The Hymnal 1982

Dear Friends,

On Tuesday evening, I attended the weekly community Eucharist offered by monks of the Society of St. John the Evangelist at their monastery in Cambridge. I know that some of you often attend that service. This morning I had the opportunity to preside at the daily morning Eucharist of the Sisters of St. Anne at their convent in Arlington Heights.

People are sometimes surprised to hear of monastic orders in the Episcopal Church. Many know that such orders were discontinued in England by King Henry the VIII, but not everyone is aware that the nineteenth century saw a renewal of Anglican monastic communities, in England and throughout the Communion.

We are blessed to have two such communities so close to us (a third community, the Society of St. Margaret, is based in Duxbury). Their geographic proximity offers persons the chance to worship and pray with them. Each community also offers retreat experiences, accomodations for individual retreats,  along with an invitation to join with them as they observe the daily rhythms of monastic worship.

But they are close to us in more than a geographical sense. They pray for us. At their morning Mass, for example, the sisters of St. Anne pray for a different parish in the diocese each day. We know there are times when we specifically ask persons to pray for us or for the needs of others. How good it is to know that we have communities of faithful persons in our midst who are about that work every day. Prayer is central to their vocation, and we, whether we know it or not, are the beneficiaries.

I was grateful to be present with the sisters this morning. And I am grateful for their ongoing ministry, which blesses so many lives, a continual and faithful gift offered to God.

Faithfully,

Tom

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Measure of Our Days

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 Dear Friends,

On Saturday morning at St. John’s Church the tower bell could be heard along Devens Street; its sound marked the beginning of the funeral service for Florence Johnson, who loved and served tirelessly in Charlestown, the City of Boston, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and the nation. The church was filled to capacity for a community to give thanks for the life of a remarkable woman. The service began with the tolling of the bell, and ended with a bagpiper’s tribute, played from the street outside the church. In between those two sounds were tributes to a life well-lived, prayers of both grief and gratitude, and assurances from scripture of God’s promises to us.

Occasions such as Florence’s funeral remind us that life is a gift. It’s natural in those moments to consider all that we have been given, and in doing so, we count as precious our own lives, and those of our loved ones. We don’t ever know how many days each of us will be given, but we do know we’ve been given today. With what sound does your day begin? With what sound does it end?  What occurs between those two sounds?

We are now well into the season of Lent, a time when it’s customary to talk about what we have “given up.”  True enough. Yet also embedded in these forty days is the invitation to create a meaningful life, a purpose through all that we do and say. There is much about our days and our lives that we cannot control. There will be challenges we confront, including tragedies that seem unbearable; there will be love we receive, including blessings that seem unimaginable. We cannot predict what will occur. But we can make a choice as to how to respond.

In Psalm 121 we hear, “The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth for evermore.” – a promise of assurance, there at the beginning of each day, to whatever sound we awake, and there at the end, to whatever sound beckons us to rest.  This promise—and it is a promise—equips us to offer ourselves in love and service to our families, our friends, and the larger organizations and communities of which we are a part. On Saturday, we remembered the life of a beloved member of this community who did just that, living out the full measure of her days.  Today, and every day, we are offered the invitation to do the same.

Faithfully,

Tom

Welcome the Sojourner

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Dear Friends,

If you were walking by St. John’s last Saturday, you may have noticed a steady stream of people going in and out of the Parish House all day. What was going on?

While we may be familiar with what happens inside our walls on Sunday mornings, our buildings are also used throughout the week for a variety of purposes. On Saturday, members of MIRA, the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, rented the Parish House to provide a free clinic for persons engaged in the naturalization process leading to citizenship. Persons from throughout the Boston area made their way to 27 Devens Street for this training. Almost every room – upstairs and downstairs, was in use throughout the day.

This was a one-time event. But on any given day of the week, folks from the community are in our building and using our facility. On one evening it may be a 12 step group. Another day it may be 3 and 4 year olds learning soccer skills, and on another day even  younger children are sitting on the floor in the Godly Play room learning Spanish. Then there are the families who find that  the Parish Hall makes a great location for a birthday party or other family gathering.

While in most circumstances there are rental fees for these functions, our making these spaces available is what you might call a ministry of place. Our efforts to create and maintain welcoming spaces is not just about serving our own needs. It is about creating and maintaining an asset for the larger community. On Saturday, I was grateful that our venerable old walls were embracing persons who were engaged in the newest chapter of their lives, seeking citizenship. And I was grateful for all of the generosity and support of the persons in this parish who work so hard to make the church, the Parish House ,and the Garden a place of welcome and warmth for all.

Faithfully,

Tom

Things Seen and Unseen

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Dear Friends,

Last night I had the opportunity to attend the annual meeting of another parish. It is always informative to visit a different community for worship or other gatherings, and inevitably, I find myself making  mental notes and  comparisons. At this annual meeting, there was a wonderful slide show of events of the past year, with many delightful pictures of persons in worship and ministry, along with beautiful scenes of stained glass windows and church gardens. Suddenly, in the midst of those pictures there was a series of more prosaic images: the blower for the church organ, a furnace, and steam pipes in the church basement. Hardly beautiful, hardly evocative. The pictures, however, pointed to a reality – these are essential parts of the building, mostly unseen, but necessary components for all the ongoing ministries that take place there.

On one hand, it can be easy to come into a church on a Sunday morning and give some thought to these things. We may feel that there is not enough heat, or that the church is too warm. On the other, do we really take time to consider all that is necessary for us to have that heat, to have that electricity, and to have a place to gather week after week?

There is a group in our midst that is giving quite thoughtful and prayerful consideration to these unseen things and how we can maintain them for the future.  Currently, the Partners for Sacred Places Team is taking a close look at our heating systems. As is the case with many older structures, we have boilers and furnaces, hooked together in ways practical and quite impractical. And many are old. We have learned, for example, that one of our boilers  will need replacement by next winter. One of the goals of the team is to come to the vestry with a plan for how we can make that replacement and, conceivably, make significant improvements, resulting in greater energy efficiency.

Each of has gifts for ministry in this place. I am grateful for those who have gifts to help us explore some of those often unseen parts of our building. After all, given how cold this winter has been, one of the most beautiful images to behold at a future annual meeting just might be a furnace or boiler that provides heat efficiently and at a considerable cost savings. And for that we will be grateful.

Faithfully,

Tom

PS – Members of the PSP team are George Born, MIchael Giese, Melissa Giese, Steve Spinetto, and Ken Stone. They would be happy to talk to anyone interested in their work.

The Grace of Gratitude

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Dear Friends,

If you have not had a chance to read through the annual reports submitted by all the leaders of our parish, I hope you will do so. You will recognize how blessed we are by so many who give of themselves in such varied ways. And once you have read the reports, I hope you will take some time to marvel at how rich our life is together, sustained by the offerings of so many. Then,  I hope you will do this: in your own way, take the opportunity to say “thank you.” You can say it in person, you can write it in a note, you can say it in a prayer to God. As you come in on a Sunday morning, thank the ushers. When you see a member of the Children’s Choir, thank her. When someone is cleaning up after Coffee Hour, thank him.  When a person may have provoked you with a challenging word about what it means to be a disciple, thank her.   And thank God. Thank God for giving us each other, and for the opportunity to grow in love and service together. Gratitude is a means of grace, one of the ways in which God nourishes, empowers, and blesses us. I know I have so much to be thankful for here in this community. And so I will close with those simple words, “Thank you!”

Faithfully,

Tom