Sirach looks at creation and marvels. The Psalmist looks at creation and praises. Jesus looks at weary people and invites. And today the Church does all three. We marvel. We praise. And we come. We come to Christ. Not as masters of creation. Not as owners. Not as people who have figured everything out. We come as creatures among creatures. Dust and breath. Beloved and responsible. Still learning. Still repenting. Still becoming wise.

We are a people of the new creation. We follow the risen Christ. We trust the Spirit who continues to renew the Church and the world. Creation is good. Creation is grace. Creation is a gift placed in our care. Our calling is to receive this gift with gratitude, protect it with love, and join God in the work of healing what has been wounded.

Lessons: Jeremiah 29:10-14, Psalm 130, Romans 8:18-25, Mark 13:24-37 Beloved in Christ, I have been thinking about hope this week. Not the easy kind. Not “I hope things work out.” I mean the kind of hope you have to hold onto when things have not worked out. When you prayed and the answer did not come the way you wanted. When the situation did not resolve. When somebody died. When somebody left. When the money stayed tight. When the Church disappointed you. When you look at t

To have faith is to have trust in God. May we overcome our anxieties and live boldly in our faith.

There is something striking about the way the Church speaks about death today. We call this feast the Dormition. The falling asleep. We do not call Mary’s death an ending. We do not speak about her as someone swallowed by darkness or erased from the story. We speak of her falling asleep in the Lord. And I think we need that language. Because most of us have lived long enough to know death. We know what an empty chair feels like.

The Feast of the Transfiguration is one of the great feasts of the Church. Yet for many Christians, it passes almost unnoticed. We know Christmas. We know Easter. We know Pentecost. But the Transfiguration often feels like one more story tucked into the Gospel. Jesus goes up a mountain. His appearance changes. Moses and Elijah appear. A voice speaks from heaven. Then everyone comes back down. But the Church has never treated this as a minor event.

Justice is one of those words Christians use often without always saying what we mean. Sometimes we mean divine justice. What is God doing to set the world right? Sometimes we mean personal justice. How should we treat the people around us? Sometimes we mean social justice. How should our communities, churches, governments, and institutions treat people? Scripture speaks to all three.

The Convergent Catholic Communion was not born from a desire to be novel. It was born from a desire to be faithful. The Church has always needed renewal. Israel had prophets who called the people back to covenant. The Church has had saints, reformers, mystics, martyrs, and ordinary faithful people who saw where the people of God had drifted and called them home. That is not rebellion when it is rooted in love. That is part of the Spirit’s work.

This season, and especially the Gospel from Mark, calls us back to something Christians must return to again and again. We are called to follow Christ. That sounds simple, but it is never something we master once and move beyond. We are followers of Christ, yes. We are also human beings. We miss the mark. We lose focus. We grow tired. We fall into old habits. We need continued conversion. That is what Metanoia is really about. The word often gets reduced in ways that ma

The Trinity is not a riddle. The Trinity is the life of God opened to us. That matters because many of us were taught doctrine as if it were mostly about getting the right answer. Learn the right words. Repeat the right formula. Avoid the wrong explanation. Keep yourself safely inside the lines. There is a place for careful words. The Church had to fight hard for them. They were prayed, argued, suffered over, and defended because the Church knew that that God shapes the truth

We often treat Pentecost like an important feast, but not quite as important as Christmas or Easter. We know the story. We have heard it many times. The disciples are gathered. The Holy Spirit descends. There is wind. There are tongues of fire. They begin to speak in other languages. Peter quotes the prophet Joel. The Church is sent into the world.

Every time we say the Creed, we are doing more than reciting doctrine. We are standing inside a wounded inheritance. We stand with the Fathers of Nicaea. We stand with the martyrs. We stand with the myrrhbearers. We stand with Thomas touching the wounds. We stand with generations who did not have perfect understanding but had stubborn faith. And we stand with those today whose faith is still wounded, still limping, still searching for a Church that looks like Jesus.

The story of Emmaus begins with two disciples walking away from Jerusalem. That detail matters. They are not standing at the empty tomb with joy. They are not gathered with the apostles ready to preach resurrection. They are walking away from the place where everything fell apart.

We celebrate Good Shepherd Sunday, a feast that, while not universally observed in Eastern churches on this day, holds a cherished place in our parish’s life. It was central to Father Tom’s ministry among us, and so we retain it as an opportunity to reflect on God as our shepherd and to honor those who have served as shepherds in our own lives.

Today the Church gives us one of the most beautiful and necessary commemorations of the Paschal season, the Sunday of the Holy Myrrhbearers. We remember the women who came to the tomb at dawn carrying spices and myrrh, ready to honor the body of the Lord. We remember Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, who showed courage when many others hid. But today, above all, we look upon those faithful women whose love proved stronger than fear.

The Convergent Catholic Communion does not claim to recreate the Church. It claims to stand within it. Our Constitution is clear. We confess the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds. We uphold the sacraments. We recognize apostolic succession. That is not Protestant identity. That is catholic identity in the historic sense. We are not borrowing Eastern forms because they look beautiful. We are receiving them as part of the inheritance of the Church. There’s a difference between imita

Today the Church keeps Thomas Sunday. We remember the moment Christ returns to his disciples, and this time Thomas is there. He does not stand at a distance. He steps forward. He touches the wounds. And he speaks words the Church still holds onto.

Palm Sunday always unsettles me, because it begins with celebration, yet we already know how quickly the mood will change. The crowds gather. They wave branches. They shout Hosanna. They welcome Jesus as king. Within days, everything shifts. The same city that welcomes him will reject him. The same voices that praise him will condemn him. The same crowd that shouts Hosanna will cry Crucify. Palm Sunday forces us to sit in that tension. This is not only their story. This is th

Today we come to the Fourth Sunday of Lent, the Sunday of the Ladder. In the Christian East, this Sunday is tied to Saint John of the Ladder, the abbot of Sinai who wrote about the spiritual life as a kind of ascent toward God. That image has stayed with the Church because it tells the truth. The life of faith is not static. We are either being drawn upward into the life of God, or we are settling back into the old patterns that keep us bound. Lent puts that plainly before us

Lessons: Sir 24:23-34; Ps 95; Ro 1:16-32; Jn 4:5-26 The Third Sunday in Lent is often called the Sunday of the Living Water. The Gospel reading brings us to the well in Samaria, where Jesus meets the Samaritan woman. At first glance the story seems simple. Jesus arrives at Jacob’s well. A woman comes to draw water. They speak. But this is one of those passages where it helps to read the Bible within the life of the wider Church. The Samaritan woman is not simply an unnamed fi