Summer church visiting - Rector's Rambling for July 21, 2024

     Today is a rare Sunday this summer that we don’t have something EXTRA at St. John’s.  Since June we have had on Sunday our Outreach Giving Day, Institution of a new member for the Order of the Daughters of the King, Baptisms, and an interment of ashes in the Columbarium.  Next week we have our Founders Day Sunday when we celebrate our 165+ years of worship and ministry at St. John’s Church with worship from the original American Book of Common Prayer, in use at St. John’s when we opened our doors for worship on November 17, 1859.  An ice cream social follows. 

Summer is a time for travel and I am grateful for the many parishioners who have visited other churches while away, and brought back the Service Bulletin so we can see what other parishes are doing on Sunday.   Some folks have regular ‘away’ parishes because they vacation each year in the same place.  Others have the adventure of discovering a new parish in a new place they are visiting.  I know just last year I worshiped again at Holy Innocents in Lahaina, Maui, only to hear it was consumed in the tragic fire there a few weeks later.  I also consider it a great blessing when I travel and get to visit a parish where a friend is the priest and be  able to join him for worship.  Only if there is no parish available nearby on vacation to do go to plan B, which is to say Mass myself.  Of course, if you are on vacation and can’t find a parish at which to worship you can always pray Morning Prayer with the readings assigned for the day.

Wednesday is one of my favorite feast days — St. Thomas a Kempis.  His book, The Imitation of Christ, as the Episcopal Church’s Lesser Feasts and Fasts says, “has been translated into more languages than any other book except the Holy Scriptures. Millions of Christians have found in the manual a treasured and constant source of edification.”  It was this book which I read the first year after my return to the practice of the faith that furthered my conversion and understanding of the place of scripture and the sacraments in the life of the faithful.  I continue to re-read it if fits and spurts even to this day.  I highly recommend it to you.  It is a book of devotions best digested a chapter or so a day over a long period of time.