Saints then, and now - Rector's Rambling for November 3, 2024

     Since September I have been away three times, to New York, Boston, and Philadelphia.  In all three places I had to opportunity to worship in remarkable parishes.

My trip to New York was for the ordination of our own Cam Walker.  While in the City I had the opportunity to attend Thursday evensong at St. Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue.  Sunday through Thursday they have Choral Evensong with their Choir of Men and Boys who attend their  parish boarding school a few blocks away near Central Park.  On Saturday the ordination was at the Cathedral of the Incarnation in Garden City, Long Island, which has a long history of being a flagship Anglo-catholic parish.

While in Boston I attended Evening Prayer at the Church of the Advent at the base of Beacon Hill.  My wife was a member there after college, we are friends with the organist, and I have been friends with several of the clergy over the years.  Also a renown Anglo-catholic parish they two have a full schedule of weekday Masses and the Daily Office in addition to their Sunday worship, with professional choir, as we do at St. John’s. 

In Philadelphia I joined a lunchtime Mass at St. Clement’s Church, a parish that supported me financially and spiritually, and was very important in my formation as a priest in the Anglo-catholic tradition. 

Sunday morning I attended 7:30 Morning Prayer and 8:00 Holy Communion at All Saints, Wynnewood, a near suburb of Philadelphia. Being a 1928 Book of Common Prayer parish the worship for those morning services is a clone of our own (the Prayer Book is good that way).

I am reminded this morning of all the “Saints”, the holy people of God, who have worshipped in our pews and the pews of these other churches.  All those who built and supported these churches, and have left them both as a legacy and as a tool for our own greater sanctification - to help us to become holy as well.  This All Saints Day let us look backward to the Holy who have been, and look forward to the Holy that God desires us to be. To be saints is our ultimate goal as members of the Body of Christ.