Footwashings from Canon Perrizo By Canon Faith C. Perrizo March 3, 2012 The Slow Work of God Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are, quite naturally, Impatient in everything to reach the end Without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way To something unknown, Something new And yet it is the law of all progress That it is made by passing through Some stages of instability – And that it may take a very long time. And so I think it is with you. Your ideas mature gradually – Let them grow. Let them shape themselves, Without undue haste. Don’t try to force them on, As though you could be today What time (that is to say, grace and circumstance Acting on you own good will) Will make you tomorrow. Only God could say what this new spirit Gradually forming within you will be. Give Our Lord the benefit of believing That His hand is leading you, And accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense And incomplete. ‐‐Pierre Teilhard de Chardin ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ You are my beloved, my little one! I have created you I have chosen you And so you are You are a competent, intelligent, compassionate, wise woman Through me and with me all things are possible Trust ‐ come abide with me Rest for a while in my embrace Tomorrow we will celebrate the wonder and joy of all you are becoming Tomorrow you will know love, my little one For now Teach as you have been taught Preach my word Share my message of hope and love with all you meet Heal others as you have been healed Break bread and share wine Celebrate Come, my little one, my beloved Arise and follow me. ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ You are with me always – In the questions and in the searching of my heart Lover, Teacher, Healer, and Guide Special Companion for the journey Directing me according to your plan. Resisting – I discover pain Controlling – I create obstacles Directing – I encounter chaos You call and I do not hear Your lead and I do not follow And yet, ever faithful , you persist In patience – seeds are planted In patience – plants are nourished In patience – blossoms emerge Your presence warms my heart Your light shines in my darkness Your gifts abound ‐magical ‐unique ‐cherished You whisper in the stillness Nudging me to be – Forming, affirming, evaluating Awaiting my answer Testing my faith Stimulating growth Promising fulfillment ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Archbishop Oscar Romero It helps, now and then, to step back and take the long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us. No statement says all that can be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection. No pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the church's mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything. This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that will one day grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities. We cannot do everything, and there's a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not the Master Builder; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own. Amen. January 5, 2012 Below is an article from the Episcopal News service on the Week of Christian Unity and the recent move by the Pope to offer sanctuary to Episcopalians who have left the continuing Episcopal Church. I thought it worth sharing. The author is a former Roman Priest who is now an Episcopal Priest. Rather than rant and rave about the Pope (grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change…), his article is written with grace. Catholic ‘and’ Episcopalian By Dan Webster [Episcopal News Service] January brings an annual event, the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (Jan 18‐ 25). Across the country you will find ecumenical services in various houses of Christian worship, all with the intent to bring about Jesus’ prayer for us to his Father, “…that they may be one as we are one.” (John 17:22) This new year also officially brings to the U.S. Roman Catholic efforts to create a church home for disaffected Anglicans and Episcopalians. A liturgical rite (aka, “ordinariate”) has been established for parishes and clergy wishing to leave the Anglican tradition and unify with Rome. St. Luke’s parish in Bladensburg, Maryland, in the Episcopal Diocese of Washington was the first to be received last October. Baltimore’s Mount Calvary Church in the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, with its 20 voting members, will be next. Much has been made in the mainstream media of the popularity for such action. History and current data reveals otherwise. According to national survey data from the Episcopal Church, 12 percent of Episcopalians are former Roman Catholics. The figures are higher in areas of the Episcopal Church where the predominant faith is Roman Catholic. A very small percentage of our 7,000 Episcopal parishes have witnessed a majority of their members leaving for other expressions of the Anglican tradition. Far fewer have sought a return to Rome. I am one of the 12 percent. Raised Roman Catholic, I was instructed in the Baltimore Catechism, attended Catholic schools, spent time in a Catholic seminary in college, and came of age during the Second Vatican Council. Those leaving the Roman church have their own reasons. Mine included the primacy of the pope, exclusion of women in leadership positions, and the discrimination of LGBT Christians. There’s a book about us. In Finding Home, Stories of Roman Catholics Entering the Episcopal Church (Cowley, 1997), Christopher L. Webber chronicles the journey of 11 Catholics into the Episcopal Church. One is the Rev. Matthew Fox, the former Dominican now a priest in the Episcopal Diocese of California and founder of the University of Creation Spirituality. “My decision to embrace the Anglican tradition,” said Fox in 1994, “is about including some anglo‐saxon (and celtic) common sense into twenty‐first century catholicism.” Fox cited the Dominican tradition of Thomas Aquinas and Meister Eckhart as completely compatible in Anglicanism. They included “the broad themes of mysticism, social justice, Christian unity, and the central concern for creation,” wrote Webber. “I think the Episcopal Church became the church envisioned in Vatican II,” the Rt. Rev. William Swing told me when he was my bishop in the Episcopal Diocese of California. He said he received at least one serious inquiry per month from Roman Catholic clergy seeking to become Episcopal priests during his 26 year episcopacy. (Swing is the bishop who received Matthew Fox.) The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity was begun just over 100 years ago by the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement when they were still Episcopalian with roots in the Order of the Holy Cross. Later, they became a Roman Catholic order. Trying to keep track of all this could make an ecclesiastical traffic cop dizzy. For Roman Catholics, Christian unity may come down to union with Rome as an ordinariate for various denominations under the authority of the pope and the Magisterium. Or maybe it will be something altogether quite different. It may be a system or non‐institution that any of us have yet to imagine, although it’s difficult to imagine the need for such. Nearly all denominations accept each other’s baptism if done in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Isn’t that unity? Aren’t we already one if we agree on common membership in the Body of Christ? The ordinariate is Rome’s latest effort toward unity as defined by the Vatican. For me, I strive every day to be a faithful Catholic, just not Roman Catholic. The late John Cogley, a former Roman Catholic author, editor of Commonweal and columnist for the National Catholic Reporter, may have said it best when writing about his journey into the Episcopal Church: “I do not look upon this move as a ‘conversion’ since I have not changed any of the beliefs I formerly held. Rather, it is a matter of finding my proper spiritual home.” I suspect former Roman Catholics and former Episcopalians could each say the same of their new spiritual home. And they would both be right. – The Rev. Canon Dan Webster is canon for evangelism and ministry development in the Diocese of Maryland and former media relations director for the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA. December 2, 2011 I have the privilege of traveling all around the diocese and visiting many of our churches over the course of a year. In each place, I learn something new, or pick up a blessing or two. On Advent I, I served at St. Stephen’s, Beckley, and picked up a little Advent Daily Meditations booklet called Preparing for Christmas, authored by Roman Catholic Franciscan named Richard Rohr. Below is the reading for today, which particularly struck me as something worth sharing, since one of our Diocesan themes in the past few years has been about transformation.