July 25, 2025

Having just returned from a week of continuing education and two weeks of vacation, I’m reminded of the first verse of John Keble’s (1792-1866) beautiful hymn: “New every morning is the love/our wakening and uprising prove/through sleep and darkness safely brought/restored to life and power and thought” (see The Hymnal 1982, Hymn #10). I’m deeply grateful for the opportunity to have a few weeks for a change of scenery in which both my mind, soul, and body were reinvigorated. Even at Low Mass this morning, I was reminded of how fresh everything seemed after being away for a time. Living, as I do, on campus, I find it immensely helpful to be offsite for a few weeks in the summer. This enables me to turn outwards, so to speak, and it also reminds me of what I appreciate the most about Good Shepherd. This is the importance of time for refreshment and retreat: we remember the vast newness of each moment of daily life and of God’s numerous blessings.

For the first week of my time away, I was in Oxford, UK, attending a theological conference at Pusey House, a notable center of formation and worship in the Anglo-Catholic tradition. At the “Restoring the Image” Conference, I heard nineteen theologians present papers on the topic of theological anthropology, exploring the multifaceted dimensions of the human person before God in Christ. What exactly is the image of God? Was the image once perfect, later tarnished, and then in need of being restored to perfection? Or was the image good but never perfect to begin with and simply yearning for its completion? These were some of the questions explored at the conference. Such occasions of theological enrichment are always humbling for me. I do believe, as the adage goes, that the more one learns, the most one realizes how much one doesn’t know. For me, this is an enticement to continue to learn and grow in theological reflection, to “love God with the mind," as one of my seminary professors used to say.

But another part of the humbling experience of theological formation is that one begins to understand how much we as Christians don’t know and will never know about God. This is partly what makes theological education so enjoyable, and it should keep us modest before God. For instance, in listening to three days’ worth of discussions on the image of God and the human person, one must admit that there’s no defining doctrine posited by the Church. It’s still very much an open discussion and a timely one, considering modern advances in technology and science and greater knowledge of the complexity of human beings and relationships. Many of the speakers at the conference maintained some reticence before the ambiguity of humanity; not all did, which was a further incentive for me to engage different—perhaps even offensive—viewpoints on certain topics with an open mind.

It seems to me that if one takes theology seriously and is well-read in it, one should be severely reluctant to venture forth into judging others as heretical or attempting to constrain too narrowly the limits of “orthodoxy.” Orthodoxy is ultimately about “right worship” or “right praise.” And as our Anglican tradition holds, lex orandi, lex credendi, roughly, “the law of praying is the law of believing.” It all begins with worship. We can never be lost only in our minds before God. We must return to prayer and worship. And lest we idolize any particular theologian or thinker, we should remember the limits and mystery of human finitude. The more I read from theologians over the centuries, the more I’m aware of how much theological diversity has been included within the Church’s definition of “orthodoxy.” Perhaps this was the greatest takeaway I had from this summer’s conference.

While in Oxford, I also had the privilege to preach on July 6 at St. Barnabas, Jericho, an Anglo-Catholic parish founded in the same year as Good Shepherd, 1869. (If you wish, you can read my sermon online.) I’m grateful to the kind invitation to preach by their vicar, Fr. Christopher Woods, who was a gracious host. As I mentioned in my message a few weeks ago, this connection between St. Barnabas and Good Shepherd was made by our parish Friend, the Rev. Dr. Sarah Coakley, with whom I was able to visit and who attends St. Barnabas when in Oxford. I was heartened to see the vibrancy of parish life at St. Barnabas, and it reminds me in many ways of Good Shepherd. There is a diversity of ages, a reverent thoughtfulness, and a warmth of spirit at St. Barnabas. I hope that Fr. Christopher will be able to visit Good Shepherd at some point in the future, and it would be a joy to welcome him into our pulpit.

I’m grateful for the support of the vestry and parish in sending me to the Oxford conference, and I’m sure that my learnings there will be invaluable in teaching and preaching. Thank you to all—staff, lay leaders, and our summer seminarian—who ensured that everything ran so smoothly while I was away. It’s a wonderful thing to be able to leave town for several weeks and not worry about the day-to-day functioning of the parish. As I said earlier, being away always makes me appreciate so many aspects of our life together in community at Good Shepherd. I’ve missed seeing all of you, and I will look forward to reconnecting this Sunday at Mass.

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

SEMINARIAN GOES TO COOKHAM

During my trip to England last week, I made a point to visit a small town called Cookham. Located along the River Thames in Berkshire about 45 minutes from central London, it was in Cookham that the artist Sir Stanley Spencer (1891-1959) spent much of his life. Spencer was in love with Cookham, and saw this little town with its old parish church—Holy Trinity—as a “village in heaven.”[1] Spencer’s canvases are often whimsical, curious, and packed with figures. And they are always colorful and infused with a certain vibrancy which must only come from his love for, and sensitive observation of, the world around him. Many of his pictures are scenes from the life of Christ and the Bible transposed to the streets of Cookham and the local countryside. It seems that Spencer thought it was perfectly natural that the great events of salvation should be shown in a small Berkshire town, where Jesus Christ might be depicted preaching from a busy boat on the Thames or where Spencer’s wife, Hilda, might be shown alongside Moses at the last day.

I include here two of my favorite pictures. The first, Christ Carrying the Cross (1920), shows the road to Calvary as passing by a friend’s house in Cookham. Christ is barely visible behind the various onlookers. Notice how the crossed pair of ladders echo the cross itself in a kind of sacred rhythm, showing forth the sanctification of the ordinary. Spencer’s desire to show the road to Calvary as something so integrated into village life did not arise from a lack of seriousness. Rather, as he put it, “Christ had made everything wonderful and glorious,” and he believed that he might “be able to join in that glory.”[2] Indeed, there is something both beautiful and intensely painful to me that the suffering of the cross should be made so ordinary. Our attentiveness to actually seeing Christ in this picture—looking as though he were another resident of Cookham—seems to visualize the visceral reality of everydayness that comes with the fulness of Incarnation. 

Christ Carrying the Cross. Sir Stanley Spencer, 1920

That everydayness may include the reality of suffering and pain and our call to respond to it as followers of Christ Jesus. And that everydayness may include the possibility and reality of knowing that not one thing is beyond the transfiguring light of Christ—even now. The second picture, The Resurrection, Cookham (1924-26) might be said to take up this latter theme. Here, we see the resurrection of the dead at the last day as taking place in the churchyard at Holy Trinity. The vast expanse of the church’s chalk and limestone wall spans the top of the picture, and all around all sorts of people emerge from their graves in various attitudes of praise, bewilderment, calm, and joy. Along the church wall, too, are seated various Old Testament figures. And Jesus Christ himself is shown as a nursing mother under the white rose covered church porch. A pale and all-consuming light comes from the east; as it moves across the picture it seems we can almost feel the crescendo of life that is emerging from the churchyard. On the left side, very near the people emerging from shell-like tombs, we find a mother brushing off her son’s coat as she would at the start of any new school day. The smallest acts of love have been taken up, and continue, in the Resurrection light.

The Resurrection, Cookham. Sir Stanley Spencer, 1924-1926

Of course, I spent some time at Holy Trinity. Under the hot and indiscriminate light of the summer sun, washing everything out with its brightness, I think that The Resurrection, Cookham did come to life. Spencer’s pictures helped me to see the possibility and reality of resurrection even now. Something familiar and present (me standing in the churchyard on a summer’s day in 2025) was transformed through Spencer’s ability to convey in paint a kind of vision which sees the pulse of the divine in the world we know.

None of this is removed from our life here at Good Shepherd. For, in one way or another, every time we come to this place we are reattuning ourselves to see the world as alive with the intense reality of God’s Incarnate being. To me, Spencer’s pictures seem to articulate in another way the words with which we begin every Mass: “Blessed be God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And blessed be his kingdom, now and for ever.” Spencer, enraptured with seeing the immediate world around him as replete with God’s action, conveys something of the urgency of the Gospel call to realize this Kingdom that is mysteriously now and to come. We are, of course, profoundly blessed at Good Shepherd with a beautiful church and lush grounds (it has become one of my favorite pastimes here to sit on the porch in the morning and watch the light fall across the flowers and ferns by the Lady Chapel). And a beautiful community that—as I have discovered more and more—is so dedicated to the flourishing of this place. And likewise, Spencer’s Cookham and Holy Trinity Church are very beautiful places. It might be tempting, then, to hear all this talk of seeing the divine as a trite or sheltered; it is much more easily done, probably, in pretty places than in unpleasant ones.

Church of the Holy Trinity, Cookham

But I think that Spencer’s eye is, in fact, rooted in a real awareness of the fulness of life. Indeed, Spencer had known first-hand the realities of the First World War during time on the front in Macedonia, to say nothing of the personal travails around his own divorce and remarriage, for instance. Perhaps in some ways it was his deep awareness of the pains of life that enabled him to cling even more closely to the reality that God was present in his beautiful village, in the people and places he loved so much. To proclaim in his own way the blessedness of God’s kingdom now and for ever was not a veil over life’s ugliness or pain. Rather, it was proclaiming boldly a trust, a vision, in the real presence of the ageless, Incarnate God who has met and will meet us precisely in the world we know.  

John Hager
Summer Seminarian Intern

[1] Sir Stanley Spencer CBE, RA (1891-1959). Webpage:

< https://www.cookham.com/about/biographyold.htm >

[2] Stanley Spencer RA (Exhibition catalogue). The Royal Academy of Arts, London. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1980; p. 62.

July 11, 2025

If Father Kyle’s weekly report has gone missing, it probably means summer is upon us,
providing an opportune time to ruminate on budgetary matters. In brief, revenues
received through the end of May are 8% higher than budgeted. This is partly due to
parishioners accelerating their pledge giving, and additional support from newcomers to
our growing parish. However, operating expenses through May were approximately
10% higher than projected, partly because we underestimated utility costs in our
budget. While it may be difficult to recall during a heat wave, the 2024-25 winter was the
coldest in a decade. Further, our more intense use of the Parish House led to higher
than anticipated heating and cooling bills.

During the first half of 2025, we withdrew $20,000 from our endowment in addition to
the regular distributions provided by our investment manager. This higher withdrawal
was projected in our budget, so our net surplus (the difference between all revenues
and expenses) was just over $3,000 through May. After accounting for the first-half
withdrawal, the balance of our endowment at the end of May was $432,000, only
modestly below the $436,000 balance in May of 2024.

Many thanks to all those who supported our 2025 capital campaign, which raised just
over $175,000. Your support is much appreciated! One of the projects made possible by
this fund is a new roof for our Retreat House, which we expect to be completed in
August. From a budgetary perspective, many capital improvements lower ongoing
repair costs in addition to enhancing our buildings and property, further advancing our
efforts to manage a sustainable budget.

The Church of the Good Shepherd has been blessed to see many new faces in our
congregation during the first-half of 2025, giving us renewed energy in worship. As a
reminder, our financial goals include making the necessary investments to support and
enhance the worship and music we cherish as an Anglo-Catholic parish. We are
balancing the use of our endowment fund with other means of support to reach a
sustainable balance between ongoing operating costs and recurring revenue. If you
have questions about these initiatives or want to join in the effort, please contact me or
any other member of the Finance Committee.

Yours in Christ,
Jonathan Adams
Rector’s Warden

July 4, 2025

As you read this message, I’m preparing to leave for a week of continuing education. The gift of continuing education is that it offers a change of scenery for me to be inspired and energized by learning and conversation in topical areas that will enrich my priestly duties in the parish. Next week, I will be attending a theological conference at Pusey House, Oxford, UK, entitled “Restoring the Image: Creation, Salvation, and the Human Person.” This conference will feature twenty different theologians from across the world, many of whom are giants in their field. I’m very much looking forward to being further educated and invigorated by this conference. The topic at hand is one of great interest to me, and I believe it will strengthen my own teaching and preaching within the parish. I’m grateful for the vestry’s recommendation that the parish fund this continuing education opportunity.

This coming Sunday, July 6, after arriving in Oxford, I will be preaching at St. Barnabas Church, Jericho, a sister Anglo-Catholic parish across the pond. I appreciate the kind invitation of their vicar, Father Christopher Woods. Through our mutual friend, the Rev. Dr. Sarah Coakley (a friend of this parish), Fr. Christopher and I have learned that St. Barnabas and Good Shepherd were both founded in 1869! While in Oxford, Fr. Christopher and I will further discuss the similarities between our two parishes and how we can creatively meet the challenges of modern parish ministry while living into the fullness of our Anglo-Catholic traditions.

While I’m away, I’m thankful for the presence of our supply priests (Fr. Raymond Harbort, Fr. Edward Godden, and Fr. Walter Thorne). Additionally, our summer seminarian, John Hager, parish administrator, Renee Barrick, and financial administrator, Mary Campbell, are doing much to ensure that the daily operations of the office continue uninterrupted. Members of the vestry and other lay leaders are stepping in to help while I’m away. Thank you!

As I reflect on the topic of continuing education, I’m reminded of the importance of Christian formation within our own parish. Our summer formation series will continue even while I’m away. If you’ve attended our meetings this summer, you will know that our overall theme is “Lives Shaped by God.” With the recent distribution of refrigerator magnets announcing special sung liturgies for 2025-2026, we’re making an intentional effort to announce parish events well in advance so that you will have an opportunity to mark them on your calendars. The liturgical calendar is a major way in which our lives are shaped by God.

I’m also pleased to make you aware of our recently published parish events calendar for the 2025-2026 program year. You can find this calendar on our parish website. Please review this calendar carefully and put the dates on your calendar. There are many exciting offerings! I especially draw your attention to our online (Zoom) formation series beginning in September. You will find information about topics and presenters on our website, as well as in the parish events calendar. My hope is that by moving monthly adult formation classes online, we will reserve Sunday coffee hour for fellowship and other conversations. Additionally, we would love for Friends of the parish to join us from across the country (and world) for the online formation series by logging onto Zoom. Stay tuned for parish email announcements with the Zoom links for those presentations. I also draw your attention to a Lenten parish retreat on March 7 led by Brother Ephrem Arcement of the Order of the Holy Cross. I hope you will make a point of attending this retreat, which is intended to draw us into a more fulsome understanding of the spirituality of parish life.

While I’m away, should you have any pastoral emergencies, please call the parish office (610-525-7070), and you will find information about how to contact priests who will be on call to respond to your needs. I will not be checking email while I’m away. For non-emergency requests, you may email the parish office. After attending the conference in Oxford, which ends on July 9, I will be on vacation until July 24. I will miss you while I’m traveling. Thank you to those who are helping with the sustenance of our Daily Office schedule while I’m away. Please note the changes to the daily Mass schedule in the next few weeks by visiting the news page of our website. I’ll look forward to seeing you when I return.

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

June 27, 2025

One of my favorite prayers is found in the intercessions we use at Good Shepherd at the end of Morning and Evening Prayer. Each day, we pray for “all yet unknown to us whom God will draw to this place to come to know and love our Lord Jesus.” This prayer is both specific and not so specific that we try to dictate to God exactly what should happen. Such a transactional view of prayer (i.e. “Here is what I want, God, and I expect it to happen immediately”) is tempting. We often expect a change in our feelings or emotions directly after offering a prayer. Or we expect a discernible result within minutes of praying, as if we’re handing a cashier a twenty dollar bill for an item we’ve purchased.

But the specificity of prayer commended by our Lord in a Biblical passage such as Matthew 7:7 (“Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you”) balances both human clarity of purpose and the divine mystery of God’s response. Our daily prayer at Good Shepherd for “all yet unknown to us” whom God will draw to the parish conveys to God our desire for others to join us in Christian discipleship. And at the same time, it defers to God’s wisdom in sending us the people in question.

More clearly than ever before in my experience as a priest, over the past five years that I have been at Good Shepherd, I’ve seen the power of prayer and of God’s response. Discerning God’s response is not as clear as asking Google what the weather patterns are in New York City and having Google spit an answer back out. Rather, discerning God’s response to prayer is like gazing for a while at an autostereogram and, suddenly, noticing the clear image hidden within it. I have been amazed at those persons who walk through the doors of our church bearing gifts exactly suited for the parish’s needs. Or in other cases, the persons who show up here are in need of something that only this parish can provide. In other instances, these persons are linked with our parish for a brief period of time (for a reason known only to God) and then move on by the circumstances of life. But I believe firmly that all who find their way to Good Shepherd are sent by God.

And in my opinion, this is why the modern grasping after gimmicks and flashy tricks to lure people to church doesn’t work. That quest is Pelagian, assuming that only our human efforts will draw people into the life of faith. What I’ve discovered palpably at Good Shepherd is that if we show up regularly to pray, opening ourselves to God while also specifically conveying to God our intentions, God responds in his own way and in a way that is best for us and for the world God created. The modern Church, so fearful and anxious about dying, doesn’t need a strategic plan for growth or a bag of tricks; she simply needs to pray and show up faithfully to respond to those whom God sends her way, welcoming them into the fold of Christ and partnering with them in a way that honors everyone’s God-given gifts.

As we at Good Shepherd seek to be specific in our prayer, it behooves us to name those areas in our common life where we need God’s help. Currently, the parish vestry and I are striving to build more sustainable ministry at Good Shepherd. In other words, how does ministry thrive beyond the leadership of any one person, whether that of the rector, a staff member, or a parishioner who leads it? This is healthy and ensures that ministry will outlive the persons involved in it. It also assumes that ministry will flourish around the respect for each person’s specific gifts.

I’m inviting you to pray with me for those whom God will send to the parish to support the ministry that God is building among us. I’m also inviting you to pray for those who are already here who may need encouragement in sharing and using the gifts God has given them. Our prayer needs only to be as specific as our daily prayer for “all yet unknown to us whom God will draw to this place to come to know and love our Lord Jesus.” And at the same time, we can name those areas of parish life where help is needed. This is being honest and clear, and lest we think of prayer as demanding things from God, we should also recognize how prayer shapes us as we pray.

Let me offer some intentions for us in our common life. First, we are in need of a long-term plan for oversight of our buildings and property (over 15,000 square feet, to be exact). Currently, the management of this property falls too heavily on our small staff (of which I’m the only full-time employee). Our magnificent property manager, Kevin Loughrey, is only onsite five hours a week, hardly enough time to accomplish all that we throw at him. I ask you to pray for those whom God will send to help us with the stewardship of our wonderful buildings. And if you have gifts to share in this regard, pray about whether God is calling you to help us. Such help doesn’t require expert knowledge. Part of what we need is someone to help us with organizational systems of oversight. Much property requires many eyes watching over it to ensure its health and security.

Second, please pray for our discernment as we build a sustainable system for managing our retreat house. We’d love to see even more programming and activity in that house, but to do so, we need more help. Our retreat house is an invaluable ministry that has welcomed guests from across the world. We’ve also partnered on numerous occasions with Hosts for Hospitals, providing accommodations (free of charge) for those coming to the area for medical care. Our own parishioner Kit Apostolacus has just moved into the retreat house, where, for a year, she will serve as an Assistant for Liturgical and Retreat House Ministries, helping us manage the running of the house and also assisting at the Daily Office and Masses during the week. Please pray for those we don’t yet know whom God will draw here to help with our retreat house ministry, as well as for those already here who might be called to assist, too.

Third, please pray for the growth and flourishing of our new chorister program. This ministry is off to a strong start, but I believe there’s more potential for children in the local community to be touched by the gift of music, and at the same time, acquire important skills for growing into mature and well-rounded individuals. Additionally, they are blessed by Jesus in the process, as ministry allows seeds of faith to be planted in their hearts. We need help in spreading the word about this program and in ensuring its vitality in the future.

In a parish as vibrant as ours, there are many other areas of our common life that are in need of assistance, but at the moment, the areas of ministry I have named seem most salient. I’ve said many times before that our parish will not function as fully as it can unless all of us are using our God-given gifts. But how we use those gifts is determined by our prayer. Please pray for this parish, its proclamation of the Gospel, and our increasing outreach to the local community, wider Church, and world. I’ll look forward to seeing you in church this Sunday as we offer our corporate prayer to the God who always surprises us with his abundant gifts. If you’re traveling this weekend, please offer your own prayers before the altar of another church in your travels. Let’s be specific in our prayer, but then, we must hand the rest over to God to accomplish all things in his good time.

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

June 20, 2025

This past week, I attended the annual conference of the Association of Anglican Musicians in Cincinnati. As a former professional church musician, I have been a member of AAM since 2011, and I try to attend the annual conference most years. Also in attendance this year from Good Shepherd were Robert McCormick, our Organist and Director of Music, and parishioner Jack Burnam, who is himself a past President of AAM.

Good Shepherd, Rosemont, has developed a strong relationship with AAM in recent years. For three years, I served as chair of AAM’s Professional Concerns and Development Committee, whose work was focused on strengthening relationships between clergy and musicians. I currently chair AAM’s Taskforce on Power Dynamics and Abuse in the Episcopal Workplace. Back in 2022, when we were renovating the former parish rectory to open our retreat house, we were given a generous grant of $10,000 from AAM. In fact, members of the AAM Board were the first guests in our retreat house! The Board held a retreat at Good Shepherd last year and will do so again this coming September. I hope there will be other opportunities in which we can partner with AAM, especially as the organization seeks to build healthy relationships between clergy and musicians throughout the Episcopal Church.

I’m deeply thankful for my membership in AAM. At each conference, I enjoy seeing colleagues (musicians and clergy), and I’m inspired by the creativity of the organization. The good energy within AAM reminds me of the good energy at Good Shepherd, where there is a hopefulness for the future of the Church. AAM currently supports an organ fellowship for young organists to receive mentoring in church music in parishes throughout the Episcopal Church. And AAM is persistent in encouraging all who serve within the Episcopal Church to utilize just and ethical employment practices and to strive to live into healthy and mature relationships as members of the Body of Christ.

But each year at the AAM conference, I’m probably most inspired by the vigorous singing. This year, 250 attendees raised the roofs on several churches, as they sang hymns and psalms together, an audible reminder of the power of sacred music. In singing these hymns with fellow musicians and clergy drawn from across the United States, I reflected on music’s incredible power to unite a diverse group of people. Surely we’re all troubled by the rancorous and searing divisions we see among us. Surely we’re all heartbroken at the unending wars and the new ones that have begun across the world. Surely we’re saddened by enmities in our own families, workplaces, schools, and communities. But when people sing together, it becomes much more difficult to remain hard-hearted. When we sing together, our voices are literally vibrating on the same wavelengths, and physiologically and spiritually, something marvelous happens.

You have perhaps heard that music builds community. Of course, it does! Music is a keen agent of cohesiveness in our own parish life. Our new chorister program has knit families within the parish more closely together. And when we sing together in the liturgy, we become a countercultural witness to music’s power to unite in an age of great divisiveness. This is inherently of the Gospel. Where we see deliberate estrangement, we don’t see a visible expression of the Gospel. Where we see reconciliation and efforts at reconciliation, we see the Gospel come alive.

As a musician myself, I think it’s quite difficult to remain at enmity with someone with whom you are making music. This makes music a vital part of our own particular expression of the Christian life both within the Episcopal Church and within the Anglo-Catholic tradition. At Good Shepherd, most of our liturgy is sung. This helps neutralize our own personalities (especially that of the Celebrant!), and it enhances what we share in common—voice, breath, and a yearning to express ourselves in song. It may be that in a time when divisions permeate both Church and world, the witness of an organization like the Association of Anglican Musicians is most needed.

One of my favorite moments in Sung Mass is when we all face east together at the beginning and bless the name of God. And then half an hour later, we all face east again and sing the Nicene Creed, the ancient affirmation of our faith in God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the God revealed in Jesus Christ. This action, Sunday after Sunday, is one of the most profound ways in which we as Christians of different backgrounds and perspectives witness to a different way of being in the world, a way of being together in spite of difference, with hearts of flesh given by God rather than hearts of stone.

This Sunday, as we celebrate the Feast of the Corpus Christi (transferred), we will visibly proclaim our willingness to be united in the mind of Christ, a mind that invites us into selflessness for the sake of the Body. We will sing to the One who feeds us eternally, and who alone is our strength and stay. And we will sing to the One who comes among us in Bread and Wine to be the Source of our unity, to knit together those in heaven and on earth into one fellowship of the mystical Body of Christ. I will look forward to singing with you this Sunday at Mass.

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

June 13, 2025

In chapter 64 of the Book of Isaiah, the prophet says, “O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand” (v. 8). Several other verses in Scripture liken God to the potter and humankind to clay. In chapter 9 of his letter to the Romans, St. Paul further develops this image, making a case for God’s sovereignty. I have always found comfort in the metaphor of God as a potter who shapes the clay of humankind. But in a modern age of individualism with its buffet of choices, it may be an increasingly unpopular image.

I personally don’t read the image of God as a potter to be a controlling God of predestinarianism. Rather, I interpret the image as distinguishing God from humankind, making a distinction between a perfect and eternally creative God and imperfect and finite human existence. What appeals to me in the Scriptural images of potter and clay is the dynamic creativity at work in both of them. God’s creative shaping of our lives is for our good. And yet such a God doesn’t forcefully shape us. If the clay is too hard or recalcitrant, it will not be formed into a vase. If we are too stubborn and self-consumed, we will fail to be malleable to God’s hands.

If God is a potter and we are clay in his hands, then we are intended to be shaped and formed by God. The spiritual life becomes a process of allowing God to shape us so that we can grow more and more into the likeness of God. We are created in God’s image, and yet we must continually be molded by God’s grace working in our lives. This shaping happens, of course, in the liturgy. The liturgy is not primarily educative, but it has educative effects. If you want to learn to be a good Christian, going to church is the way to start.

But we supplement this liturgical shaping with Christian formation. At Good Shepherd, we use the word “formation” quite intentionally (rather than “education”). Education suggests something that is head-centered. Formation implies something that is more holistic, pertaining to heart, mind, body, and soul. We could also say that our “primary theology” is our worship. We come together in community to worship God and offer prayer and our lives for transformation. But our “secondary theology” is our reflection on such worship, which is at the heart of Christian formation.

There’s a deep interest in Christian formation at Good Shepherd. During the program year (September through May), we offer regular formation for both children and adults on Sundays. This Sunday (June 15) will be the first meeting of our summer formation series, which brings children and adults together to learn about their faith. The topic is “Lives Shaped by God,” and you can view the list of topics and meetings online. In this formation series, children and adults will tell stories and participate in discussions on central stories and topics of our faith. This Sunday, we begin with a look at the liturgical year. Following the story or presentation in each meeting, we will have interactive discussions or collaborative games as we learn more about each other and the topics presented. Above all, I hope this formation series will be enjoyable, allowing adults and children to uphold one another in their common lives of discipleship. I hope to see you this Sunday at 9:30 a.m. in the Parish House. (Enter via the office door off the circle drive, take a left once inside, go up the steps, and we’ll be in the first room on your right.) There will be snacks for children!

Another significant means of formation within the parish is our Pilgrims in Christ process, which prepares people for Baptism, Confirmation, Reception into the Episcopal Church, and Reaffirmation of Baptismal Vows. Some people simply participate in Pilgrims to further their own spiritual growth. Pilgrims is not so much a series of classes as it is a process, a process of being continually molded, as clay, by the loving hand of God. While Pilgrims in Christ has just concluded after nine months of regularly gathering for teaching, discussion, and theological reflection, we’re already looking toward next program year.

This year, in our Pilgrims process, we had four people prepared for Baptism, as well as numerous others preparing for Confirmation, Reception into the Episcopal Church, and Reaffirmation of Baptismal Vows. But we also had one lifelong Christian and seasoned Episcopalian participate as well. Pilgrims is not only for newcomers to the church. Indeed, I strongly encourage all—especially experienced Episcopalians!—to consider this formation process. Here’s what some of this past year’s pilgrims had to say about their experience.

Good Shepherd's “Pilgrims” class is aptly named. Our weekly sessions became a journey that broadened my knowledge of the Episcopal Anglo-Catholic tradition while deepening my Christian faith. Moreover, the insights and questions from my fellow pilgrims quickly became a much anticipated weekly blessing.  

The Pilgrims in Christ course was an extraordinary experience with in-depth discussions of the key concepts of Christianity in the context of the unique traditions of the Anglo-Catholic church. The course combined with regular attendance at Mass at the Church of the Good Shepherd prepared me for the life-changing experience of becoming a baptized Episcopalian. 

Every part that reached me felt like exactly what I had been seeking. Pilgrims opened a door for me into the heart of Christianity, and I’m deeply grateful for the grace and wisdom shared in this journey.

I found Pilgrims to be a valuable exploration of the Episcopal and Anglo-Catholic traditions and viewpoints as well as a useful review of key Christian concepts more generally. I found it particularly helpful in illustrating the interweaving of practice (worship, prayer) and principle (faith, theology). 

Pilgrims is a beautiful, deeply nurturing experience that provides a solid grounding in Christianity and the Episcopal faith—its history, holy texts, worship, and spirituality. It was joyous, illuminating, and ever-surprising. I loved every minute of it.

While I have been associated with Episcopal churches for many years, both personally and professionally,  I am relatively new to Anglo-Catholic worship. I was surprised not only by how much I learned in Pilgrims but also by how much my faith increased as a result of the course. Getting to know other parishioners on a deeper level was an added benefit.

If you’re interested in being shaped by God as a complement to regular worship and prayer, consider participating in Pilgrims in Christ in the 2025-2026 program year. You may register online now. You may also view the 2025-2026 schedule of meetings and topics online. In 2026-2026 Pilgrims will meet from 7 to 8:30 p.m. on Wednesdays in the Parish House.

One of the most invigorating and inspiring aspects of our parish life is the curiosity, intelligence, and spiritual hunger among parishioners. I’ve found that our theological conversations—whether in Sunday adult formation classes, Pilgrims, or children’s formation—have enriched my own spiritual life. If you’re looking for a way to engage with your faith in a way that extends beyond Sunday Mass, I heartily encourage you to join us this summer on Sundays at 9:30 a.m. Beginning next program year, monthly adult formation will occur on Zoom, so stay tuned for an announcement about topics and presenters.

One of the great paradoxes of the spiritual life is that the more we submit to God and allow ourselves to be shaped by him, the freer we become. God is the potter, we are the clay. This is wonderfully good news because in the hands of an all-loving, merciful, eternally creative God, we will discover that God can indeed do “infinitely more than we can ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20).

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

June 6, 2025

Pentecost has sometimes been called the birthday of the Church, but one could just as well argue that in John’s Gospel, the Church is formed at the foot of the cross as Jesus entrusts the Blessed Mother and the Beloved Disciple to one another’s care. In John, there’s no account of a Day of Pentecost as in the Acts of the Apostles. In John, the Holy Spirit is the Paraclete, the one who comes alongside the apostles to encourage, comfort, and guide them in the aftermath of Jesus’s death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven. The exact moment in linear time of the birthday or formation of the Church is less important than the fact that the Church is formed and given a distinct mission by God. This mission is directed and inspired by the Holy Spirit, and this is cause for celebration on the Day of Pentecost.

But there’s something else that we can clearly associate with the Church in her earliest days, as she was being constituted to live and exist in the aftermath of Easter. The Church came to be known as the group of Jesus’s followers who, while also adhering to Jewish customs, began to gather on the Lord’s Day, the first day of the week, the Day of Resurrection. It’s difficult for us to imagine how startling this would have been. Previously, the Sabbath (Saturday) was the day that defined their existence. But for those who found their new identity in Christ, the day that assumed primal importance was the Lord’s Day, Sunday.

It’s interesting to me that some modern calendars have begun classifying Monday as the first day of the week. There’s probably a practical reason: in a culture defined by work and school, Monday is the first day of the working week. But, sadly, it’s a fit metaphor for the mindset of many of us who go to church. The workweek has come to define our lives. It shapes our sense of success and worth. It determines how we allocate our time. It guides how much money we have and what possessions we seek. We Christians have succumbed to the illusion of Monday as the first day of the week because, in most parts of the world, we’ve forgotten how countercultural and demanding it is to be a Christian. The earliest Christians, in the days when professing faith in Jesus was a matter of life or death, would never have envisioned a week oriented around Monday. Sunday was the day.

Sunday doesn’t seem to carry the spiritual weight of former days. We’re told that the average Christian goes to church about once a month, and somehow this is seen as acceptable by many, even in church leadership. I, however, would hope that we can aspire to something higher, something that aligns better with Jesus’s commands to follow him at all cost. Remember some of Jesus’s words: “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62). It’s my dream that at Good Shepherd we not accept the lowest common denominator of spirituality as our default mode. Recently, Bishop Gutiérrez has encouraged all parishes in the diocese to set a high bar of expectations in terms of Christian discipleship. To paraphrase some of his words: if sports organizations and school activities and other extracurricular activities establish rigorous standards, why should the Church be any different? And why would we expect people to respect the Church if she doesn’t assume deep commitments from her members? This is not a matter of being competitive; it’s a matter of being faithful as Christians. I agree wholeheartedly with our bishop. Why have some in the Church settled for such a lackadaisical way of existing?

A good starting place for striving towards spiritual maturity is observing the Lord’s Day with reverence and awe. To do so is explicitly stated in our baptismal promises, drawing on words from Acts 2:42. In Baptism, we promise to “continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers” (BCP, p. 304). I imagine the earliest Christians would have found it incomprehensible that this meant anything other than marking every Sunday (not one Sunday a month!) as the time for sharing in the breaking of bread and the prayers. I doubt they were so devoted to the Lord’s Day because of a perfunctory obligation. Rather, I suspect they consistently celebrated the Lord’s Day with the Eucharist because they lived in the immediate aftermath of what God had done by raising Jesus Christ from the dead. To be in Christ was to share in his Body and Blood and in the Paschal Mystery of dying to sin and rising with Christ to new life. Furthermore, it was our Lord himself who commanded the regular observance of sharing bread and wine together as a participation in the Body and Blood of Christ. What will it take for us to share the same awe and wonder of those early disciples and to allow the Lord’s Day to be the focus around which the rest of our lives revolve?

It may be that we shouldn’t wait to experience awe and wonder before we pattern our lives on the observance of the Lord’s Day. We will probably need to start with some personal and spiritual discipline. We will need to start by letting Sunday be the first day of the week for us. Could we imagine missing work if we didn’t feel like it? Could we imagine missing school if it were inconvenient? It should seem equally incomprehensible for us to miss the celebration of Mass on Sundays, except for serious illness. Indeed, attending Mass on Sundays should take precedence over all other activities in our lives! If this sounds unreasonable, then it surely demonstrates how far the Christian ideal has strayed from the spiritual patterns of the early Church.

There are all kinds of good reasons to go to church: it’s spiritually beneficial to us, it heals us, it’s good for our physical well-being (studies seem to show), it’s a part of our salvation, and it’s a means of finding community. And while all these reasons may be true, they’re not the ultimate reason to honor the Lord’s Day with deep reverence. The real reason to do so is because it’s the most proper action of a Christian. To take up our cross and follow Jesus and to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength is to let God become the fulcrum around which our entire life moves. In him, we live and move and have our being. God is, simply put, worthy of our praise and worship, and that is why Sunday is the first day of the week for us. That is why in Roman Catholic theology the Mass is described as “the source and summit of the Christian life” (see the Catechism of the Catholic Church).

As we begin the summer months, it seems good to remind ourselves of the significance—the holiness—of the Lord’s Day. The summer may be a time for vacations, but it’s not a time for vacations from Mass. Whether you’re in town or traveling, I encourage you to make Sunday the first day of your week. If you have family or friends visiting, bring them to Mass. If you have a commitment that conflicts with the 10:30 a.m. Mass, come to the 8 a.m. Low Mass (and vice versa). At Good Shepherd, we’re signaling the importance of Sundays (even in the summer!) by offering a formation series for all ages, where we will explore ways to put God at the center of our lives. If you’re traveling (and many of us will be this summer), find the nearest Episcopal church and go to Mass. Going to church is not a burden; it’s a joy! And if it feels inconvenient, that’s probably when we most need to go to church.

This Sunday, as we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples (and upon us) and the beginning of the Church’s missional movement to the ends of the earth, let’s also rejoice in our call as Christ’s risen Body, a Body called to gather on the first day of the week, every week. When we gather to celebrate the Eucharist, we’re drawn into deepest union with God and one another. We’re drawn into deepest union with the communion of saints and the whole host of heaven. In the Mass, heaven and earth are joined for a brief period of earthly time. Sunday is the first day of the week because the mystery of that day constitutes our very identity. Is there any other reason needed to go to church? I’ll look forward to seeing you at Mass this Sunday.

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

May 30, 2025

This past week, we observed three Rogation Days, days that historically have been intended to give thanks for God’s good creation and to pray for abundant crops, especially in more agrarian societies. The color for Rogation Days is traditionally violet: a color of penitence. In ancient cultures, there was a sense that penitence and fasting were required to avert God’s wrath. Even if we don’t ascribe to this Deuteronomic theology (namely that sin causes God’s anger to be unleashed upon us as punishment), the color violet seems quite appropriate to Rogation Days. In a more technological, modern age, we have laid waste in many ways to God’s glorious creation, and that seems to demand a spirit of repentance.

At Low Mass on Wednesday, one of the Rogation Days, I was struck by the readings and how vividly they remind us that everything—our lives, all of creation, our wealth—are gifts from God. This is at striking odds with our contemporary mindset. We think of my life, my money, my things, but this is a lie. The first reading from Job amounted to a great rhetorical question from God: where were you when I created everything? In other words, who do you think you are to irresponsibly use my creation for nefarious purposes or to lazily neglect it?

The second reading, which was from the First Letter to Timothy, is incisive and short enough to quote in full. You will recognize some of the words from the liturgy for the burial of the dead in the Book of Common Prayer.

We brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it, but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains. As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches but rather on God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life (1 Timothy 6:7-10, 17-19).

Isn’t that last line amazing? This should be the summit of all Christian life: to seek “the life that really is life.”

And the final reading from the Gospel according to St. Luke was the parable of the rich fool (12:13-21). If you recall, the “rich fool” is the one whose land produces an abundant harvest. So, the man has a solipsistic dialogue with himself (reflecting his selfishness) and decides to hoard his wealth for later in life, so that he can lead a cushy, safe existence. But that very night, God demands his life. Of what use was all the hoarding? To what good end was the wealth used?

This latter parable caused me to reflect on the way the Church often views money. We adopt a worldly view. We obsess about endowment draw rates that are “healthy” at around 4% per year, and we will adhere to this at all cost, which in many places results in slashed budgets, cutting the very ministries that give God’s people a foretaste of “the life that really is life.” I’m thankful that this prevailing attitude has not tainted our own parish. While our parish leadership is indeed intent on being responsible stewards of money and preparing for a secure future, they have also agreed that we need to work towards the goal of a balanced budget. It takes time as we build ministry that will change lives and enable growth. And there may, in fact, be times in which we need to sacrifice the ideal of a 4% annual endowment draw because there is a ministry or cause worth supporting. If you ask me, this is meet and right; this is valuing “the life that really is life.” Such a flexible spirit reflects a growing spirit of abundance in this parish, and I’m thrilled by that.

Our recent capital projects fundraising campaign also reflects this parish’s intention to be good and responsible stewards of what God has entrusted to our care, in this case, our buildings and property. It is fitting that as we conclude a week of Rogation Days we also conclude this campaign. We’re actively trying to balance vibrant ministry with caring for over 15,000 square feet of property. It’s not an easy task, but our aim is to do so as prayerfully and faithfully as we can. Thank you to those of you who have donated towards this campaign. Your gracious gifts are making a huge difference in the overall health of our physical plant, which also supports the ministry happening within its walls. Although we have now reached our goal of $175,000, if you would still like to make a gift, you’re welcome to do so online. A reserve fund (not to be hoarded!) for capital projects has been established through this campaign, and so I invite you to consider making a gift at any time (perhaps yearly?) to that capital projects fund in addition to an annual pledge to the general operating fund. This allows us to continue to care for what God has given us for ministry.

As I’ve said before, every financial gift to the Church is a spiritual practice of returning to God what God has given us. In addition to the practical benefit of supporting crucial work to the parish’s infrastructure, giving to the Church and God’s mission on a regular basis perpetually shapes us to see all of life as a gift, and it forms us as a thankful people who give out of a trust in abundance rather than hoarding out of a fear of scarcity. In doing so, we become a people who render all of our lives back to God as we seek “the life that really is life.”

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

May 23, 2025

In the drawer of my bedside table is a rosary recently given to me by my father. It belonged to my great-grandparents, who were devout Roman Catholics. This rosary is the largest one I have ever seen, with beads the size of small grapes. The rosary is so large because it’s meant to be prayed by two people. It was prayed by my Big MawMaw and Big PawPaw together each night before they fell asleep. I’m deeply moved as I think of my great-grandparents sharing their prayer by holding onto the rosary that is now in my possession. Their profound Roman Catholic faith was rooted in love of God and family but also in a steadfast devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Blessed Virgin has always had, and still has, a remarkable way of bringing people together, especially when Christians find plenty of reasons to be divided.

There’s something about the Virgin Mary that inspires deep devotion. Perhaps in a Church that for too long denied leadership roles to women (and still does in some corners), Marian devotion filled a need for maternal care, strength, and warmth in a Church run by power-grabbing male leaders. In her life, Mary was steadfast in faith and devotion. She was there at the foot of the cross in John’s Gospel, hanging on until the bitter end of her son’s life. She’s a powerful example of the comfort given to us in the communion of the saints, whose prayers are always with us. And while we most certainly should pray directly to God, there’s a great encouragement in asking for Mary’s prayers, too, as we would ask for the prayers of a friend.

This month of May is Mary’s month. To celebrate this, our Godly Play children’s formation class participated in a simple crowning of the statue of Our Lady in our beautiful Lady Chapel. Parishioner Gail McCown crafted a lovely wreath of rosemary, which is often associated with the Blessed Mother. I also took the children around the church, finding as many images of Our Lady as possible. If you haven’t noticed, when we worship in the church, we’re surrounded by Mary! It’s a reassurance that her prayers are with us at all times.

Marian devotion is a regular part of our life as an Anglo-Catholic parish. We begin each recitation of the Daily Office with the Angelus (a devotion that includes the Hail Mary and is a remembrance of the doctrine of the Incarnation) or the Regina Coeli in Eastertide. At Choral Evensong and Benediction, we sing one of the seasonal Marian devotions. The presence of Mary is threaded through our common life, inspiring us to humility—as Mary was humble—and calling us to point to Jesus in all we do, just as images of Mary frequently show her holding the infant Jesus and pointing to him. Mary is not a replacement for our Lord in the salvation of the world; she is a shining example of how God uses humans in his plan of salvation.

I’ve felt that through the ups and downs of Good Shepherd’s history, the Blessed Mother has been a reassuring, constant reminder of God’s faithful presence with us. She has guided this parish to live into its humanity with grace, obedience, and charity, especially when humanity’s sinfulness seemed to have the upper hand. She has reigned over the Lady Chapel, asserting that the church has always been a house of prayer, even when conflicts caused people to focus less on the Gospel than on a spirit of reactivity. Mary has been a rock of stability, pointing, of course, to the inherent changelessness of God.

And how can we not remember the words of Our Lady in John’s Gospel, when he turned water into wine? Do whatever he tells you, she said. How appropriate those words are for us today. More than anything, Mary urges us through the ages to listen to her son. Do whatever he tells you. And at the foot of the cross, Mary is part of that earliest community of the Church, as Jesus entrusts her and the Beloved Disciple to one another.

The Western Church has referred to Mary as the Mother of God, highlighting the incredible reversal in the kenosis (self-emptying) of Jesus as the Word made flesh. God comes to earth, and Mary, a human being, becomes the Mother of God. In the Eastern Church, Mary is the Theotokos, the God-bearer, encouraging each of us to be God-bearers in a world that sorely needs visible images of the beauty of God.

When you’re next in the church, visit our Lady’s statue in the Lady Chapel or at the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, light one of the blue candles before her, offer a prayer, and behold her reigning there, the Queen of Heaven, Bearer of the Eternal Word, the Blessed Mother, the God-bearer, the one who is praying with and for us, who points us and the world to her son, the Savior of the world.

We beseech thee, O Lord, pour thy grace into our hearts, that we who have known the incarnation of thy Son Jesus Christ, announced by an angel to the Virgin Mary, may by his cross and passion be brought unto the glory of his resurrection; who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

May 16, 2025

In the eighteenth chapter of the Book of Exodus, after God’s people have been delivered through the Red Sea from slavery into freedom, and after the Israelites have journeyed through the wilderness for some time, Moses’s father-in-law, Jethro, gives him some keen advice. Moses has been sitting before the people he’s leading, and over the course of an entire day, he judges the people. Jethro is disturbed. He asks Moses why he alone is sitting before the people, judging them all day while the people stand about (twiddling their thumbs?). Jethro is direct: “What you are doing is not good. You and the people with you will wear yourselves out, for the thing is too heavy for you; you are not able to perform it alone” (18:17-18).

Jethro has a better idea. Moses should continue to teach the people in the way of following God. He will be their guide. But he also needs to choose able persons from among the people to be rulers who can do most of the judging, especially in small matters. Moses doesn’t have to take all of it on himself! In large matters, however, the people can and should still approach Moses for help. Moses took his father-in-law’s advice, and presumably, the advice worked.

This brief passage from Exodus aligns beautifully with St. Paul’s theology of the Body of Christ. Paul would, of course, have known this passage, but he takes it one step further. Paul, in his various letters, develops a theology in which the Church’s ministry is shared, but he fleshes out this theology by referring to spiritual gifts given by God to his people. The Church’s ministry is now tied to the creative and dynamic presence of the Holy Spirit. Ministry is never a solo endeavor. Whether heeding the model of Jethro or of Paul, shared ministry enables ministry to flourish without wearing down the collective body of the faithful.

Ministry is increasingly difficult in our own day, especially as churches have grown smaller. How indeed do we sustain vibrant ministry with small staffs and small congregations without burning ourselves out? Jethro offers words of wisdom, and St. Paul outlines a theology. But if we dig deeper below the surface of Paul’s theology of the Body of Christ, we will see that ministry is directly informed by the gifts present in a particular community. Too often, we approach it the other way around. We have ideas for ministries that we like or that we think we should implement, without asking whether a parish has the spiritual gifts present to support those ministries. What if we inverted the order? If we ground ourselves in prayer while, at the same time, paying close to attention to the obvious and latent gifts in our own parish, I believe that we’ll understand more clearly the ministries to which God is calling us. We can’t do everything, nor should we. But there are certain things that God is specifically asking us to do, if we have ears to hear his voice.

Eastertide is arguably the most important liturgical season in which to discern our own spiritual gifts. The thrust of the season of Easter is outwardly directed. In the early Church, after the resurrection of Jesus and his ascension into heaven, and following the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the apostles, the Church had to rely on the Spirit’s guidance. The Church, to thrive and survive, needed to rely on the shared gifts of all her members. This is how the earliest deacons emerged on the scene. As the Gospel called the early disciples farther into the mission field, ministers were needed to serve the widows “back home.” The Gospel both needed to be proclaimed in various places, and there were still people in need of aid in local contexts. And as the Church grew, priests were eventually needed to assist bishops in celebrating the Eucharist.

I have long said that Good Shepherd will not be as vibrant and effective in Gospel ministry unless we’re all—official members and regularly attending non-official members—participating in ministry in an active way beyond Sunday Mass. We need each other, and the Church needs our many gifts. We would do well to remember Jethro’s advice, practical and wise: if we try to do things alone, we will wear ourselves out. And yet, the solution is not to diminish ministry or to assume that the Church should remain small. The Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles certainly assume that the Church will grow because the Gospel is not meant only for a local context but for the whole world.

This Easter season, if you aren’t already participating in a parish ministry, I invite you to consider doing so. What gifts has God given you that will complement our life in community? If you don’t know where to start, prayerfully reflect on what skills you have as well as your passions. Or schedule a time to talk with me, and we can look at spiritual gifts in relation to your life. Peruse our parish website to learn more about our ministries. We’re always in need of acolytes to serve at the altar for Sunday and weekday Masses, persons to launder altar linens (which can be done at home), persons to serve on parish committees, new ushers, and volunteer assistance with our retreat house ministry, among many others. I assure you that we will find something with which you can be involved.

Ultimately, Jethro’s and St. Paul’s perspectives on shared ministry are liberating. We don’t have to and shouldn’t do ministry alone. We have each other. And more than anything else, we have the grace of God and the specific gifts that he has given us not to hide under a bushel but to use for the benefit of his kingdom. So, as Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, let your light shine before others, so that all you do and all that you are will testify to the astounding glory of almighty God.

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

May 9, 2025

Five years ago, shortly before I came to Good Shepherd as your rector, a former rector of this parish, Fr. Andrew Mead, emailed me to wish me well. He has been so supportive of ministry here, and the years of his rectorate are happy years to which we should look for inspiration. I’ll never forget Fr. Mead’s words as he connected in my mind the rectorate of this parish with the Biblical imagery of the Good Shepherd found in John’s Gospel. Since that helpful exchange with Fr. Mead, I’ve thought long and hard about what it means to be a good shepherd. The Good Shepherd is, of course, our Lord. But as his disciples, each of us is summoned to be a kind of good shepherd, too.

To be a good shepherd as a Christian and as a representative of a particular parish community is not a task to be taken lightly. In our feeble attempts to be good shepherds in leading others to Christ, we’re fallible, human extensions of Christ’s ministry. We must be reminded of one of the baptismal promises: to proclaim the good news of Christ in both word and deed. Most good shepherds do this effectively through deed.

A good shepherd is one who is known to be reliable, gentle, pastoral, and brave. A good shepherd, like the Good Shepherd, is even willing to give her life for the sheep. And we can’t help but recall the persistent Old Testament admonitions against bad shepherds. Those bad shepherds are rampant among us, in the world and in the Church. The bad shepherds are self-serving, and they scatter, rather than divide.

Scripture suggests that a tree can be known by its fruits. St. Paul seems to suggest a variation on that when he says that a life lived in accord with the Spirit will bear the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. As I reflect on our parish life, I see such fruit among us. I see the fruit of the lives of many good shepherds doing their very best to follow the Good Shepherd, who calls us through himself to God the Father. The visible fruit of a parish fired by the Holy Spirit’s love and direction is evident to me on a daily basis. But it was particularly evident this past Sunday as we hosted our Parish Fundraising Celebration.

You will see in this week’s Weekly Word pictures from that event. Notice the smiles and the happiness. Notice the fellowship. This is not clubbiness; it’s the behavior of Christians who are constantly open to the stranger among them, to new faces, and to supporting one another in their Christian lives. This parish is a sheepfold to which our Lord has brought so many, and in our future, there are many not yet of this fold who will find us. It’s all our Lord’s doing, but we must be ready to greet them and love them and welcome them as Christ himself.

I want to thank all who made this past Sunday’s Parish Fundraising Celebration a huge success: the fundraising committee for its hard work, our friend Jessi Cooke for sharing her art with us, and Robert McCormick for the magnificent musical event. And as we look towards this Sunday, our parish’s Feast of Title, I thank you, both parishioners and friends, for bearing the visible fruit of a life rooted in the love of Christ. How can we be anything other than hopeful about the glorious future that God has prepared for us? Through good times and bad times, the Good Shepherd has never forsaken the sheep of this parish. The Good Shepherd has always been drawing the sheep towards the flourishing of eternal life in God.

I will look forward to seeing you in church this Sunday as we celebrate the love of the Good Shepherd who offers us abundant life and to give thanks for this parish, which seeks daily to live into the spirit of its namesake, the One who calls us home.

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

May 2, 2025

It’s a very good thing that the Church hears passages from the Acts of the Apostles every Eastertide. In the afterglow of Holy Week and Easter, the Great Fifty Days of Easter often get short shrift. While the days of Easter could seem anticlimactic, they’re precisely the time in which we’re challenged to put words into action, where, as the collect for the Second Sunday of Easter reminds us, we “show forth in [our] lives what [we] profess by [our] faith” (BCP, p. 173).

The modern Church desperately needs to immerse herself in the Acts of the Apostles. If you haven’t read and studied this incredible book authored by St. Luke the Evangelist, I encourage you to do so. In Acts, we see a group of people learning to live in the aftermath of Jesus’s resurrection from the dead. We read that they’re on fire with love for Jesus and the Gospel, a palpable response to the Pentecostal fire that lightens upon them following Jesus’s ascension into heaven. The passion and love for the Gospel that are described in Acts might be smoldering a bit in the contemporary Church, but the embers are still glowing. The fire is not put out, and it will never be put out. It can’t be because Jesus is alive and the Gospel is still alive.

How, then, do we reclaim our fervor for the Gospel if we sense that it has diminished? For starters, we could look to the newly-baptized. At the Great Vigil and First Mass of Easter on April 19, Abolfazl Baloochiyan, Emma Simpson, Hassan Baloochiyan, and Melika Balouchiyan were all welcomed into the Church. Journeying with them towards Holy Baptism was inspiring to me, and, I suspect, to all those in our Pilgrims in Christ formation process. The enthusiasm for Christ of the newly-baptized has reminded me of what I should never take for granted as a lifelong Christian. If you’re looking for spiritual invigoration, look to the newly baptized. Look also to those who are new among us. They love being in the parish, and they readily tell of it. They should be examples for all of us.

But there are other ways to live in the joy of the aftermath of Easter Day. Come to church and participate weekly in the breaking of bread and in the prayers. This is part of our baptismal promises. Make the celebration of the Lord’s Day and Jesus’s resurrection the center of your existence. Let it become a priority over any other obligations or commitments. Rather than fitting church into your busy schedule, shape your schedule around the Church’s life. Let the Church’s ongoing sacramental life feed you and restore you to health. If you’re feeling discouraged by world events, remember that the Gospel is quite literally good news for a confused world. If you’re feeling lonely, remember that the Church is your family, and this parish is, too. If you’re feeling aimless, remember especially this Eastertide that God has given particular gifts to you, gifts that should be used in service of the Gospel. You’re more than just a number. You’re a name and a person, a soul loved and redeemed by God, who is called to make a difference by sharing sacrificially of your gifts. Your gifts are very much needed at Good Shepherd as we heed Jesus’s commandment to love and serve in his name and to make disciples of all nations.

Eastertide is nothing less than a season for evangelism. Evangelism, which derives from the Greek word euaggelion is “good news.” It’s not forceful conversion or browbeating or scaring people into finding Jesus. It’s about pointing to the living presence of Christ in the world, among all people. And it starts with knowing our own personal stories. How has Jesus changed our own lives? What does being in relationship with Jesus do for us? How do we find fullness of life in him? How are our lives imminently better because we know him and are a part of the Church? We are not to be shy about this. And while evangelism won’t ordinarily look like handing out tracts and knocking on doors, it will look like confident and bold speech (see again the Acts of the Apostles) that doesn’t deny Jesus or shy away from honoring him but, instead, affirms his activity among us.

The future flourishing of the Church depends, of course, on the grace of God but also on our response to that grace. In this broken world, now is not a time to be ashamed of being Christian or to apologize for it. Now is a time to reclaim the good news from those who would make it judgmental bad news for those they deem unworthy of salvation. If the Church and our parish are to continue to flourish and find the abundant life that Jesus offers, we must be bold in proclaiming the Gospel in word and deed as our baptismal promises enjoin us to do.

So, this Eastertide, go and tell the good news. Go, tell your friends about the risen Christ and his effect on your life. Invite people you know who are yearning for meaning in their lives to join you at church. Tell them about what this parish and Jesus mean for you. Speak openly about how our Lord has found you in your sorrow and pain and given you hope. Tell others how Jesus is there for them, too, if they can open themselves to receive his gift. Tell out the good news of forgiveness in a deeply unforgiving world. Let nothing or no one intimidate you. May we be like those early disciples who, when faced with opposition, yet proclaimed, “we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20). The Gospel is good news and it can’t be kept private. It should be bubbling out from our souls and into a world that is longing to hear it.

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

April 18, 2025

From this day until tomorrow evening, we wait. It’s the gap in the story, the time of sheer, uncomfortable silence, when we hold our breaths. As we wait, the body of our Lord rests in its tomb. After the turmoil on Calvary, the silence is unnerving, like trying to sleep in the quiet countryside when used to the city’s noise. We wait. And we wait.

Most of life is like this. Most of our lives, we live in the silence between Good Friday and Easter. This is the silence of sitting by the bed of one who is dying, of waiting for the test results, of praying for a new job, or of trying to make it until the next meager paycheck clears the bank. Holy Saturday is the stuff of real life. The liturgy of Holy Saturday (which we will observe tomorrow at 9 a.m. in lieu of Morning Prayer) is perhaps the shortest in the prayer book, and it’s rarely celebrated. We are too quick to move to Easter. If we have been to the Maundy Thursday and Good Friday liturgies, we will most likely relish this time of utter silence as we wait for Easter to spring forth from the darkness, even while the rest of the world wants to rush to Easter.

In his spectacular poem “The Answer,” the late Anglican priest and poet R.S. Thomas beautifully meshes the silence and absence of Holy Saturday with the mystery of our faith at the heart of the empty tomb.

Not darkness but twilight
in which even the best
of minds must make its way
now. And slowly the questions
occur, vague but formidable
for all that. We pass our hands
over their surface like blind
men, feeling for the mechanism
that will swing them aside. They
yield, but only to re-form
as new problems; and one
does not even do that
but towers immovable
before us.

Is there no way
other than thought of answering
its challenge? There is an anticipation
of it to the point of
dying. There have been times
when, after long on my knees
in a cold chancel, a stone has rolled
from my mind, and I have looked
in and seen the old questions lie
folded and in a place
by themselves, like the piled
graveclothes of love’s risen body. [from Collected Poems, 1945-1990, London: Phoenix, 1993]

In Seeds of Faith [Mark A. McIntosh and Frank T. Griswold, Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2022], Mark McIntosh says that “[t]he resurrection is the Father’s response to the prayer that Jesus had made of our world, the prayer that Jesus had made of his entire life” (86). We could say that the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is God’s answer to a world in need of salvation and of being made whole again, at one with God and one another. And our answer, as R.S. Thomas suggests, to the many questions raised by a faith centered around an empty tomb, which yet demands a response, is to stay on our knees in prayer, sitting with the silence and emptiness of our lives but living in hope. The empty tomb and the historical absence of Jesus’s physical body on the third day are the visible signs of God’s answer to a broken world, but as R.S. Thomas rightly points out, many questions still remain. Sometimes the remnants of those questions lie in the empty tomb, folded up neatly and abandoned. We catch fleeting glimpses of the resurrection’s palpable answer within our lives. But much of our lives we live in the haze of mystery where we still see suffering and violence and unspeakable tragedy. The truth of the resurrection eludes our grasp to control it, just as the risen Christ told Mary Magdalene not to cling to him. We can’t cling to solving this mystery. We can simply sit in the silence of life, rejoicing when the stone occasionally rolls from our mind and our old questions lie neatly folded in the aftermath of resurrection glory.

This Easter is, of course, a moment for us all to rejoice. We can rejoice in the victory of life over death, of forgiveness over sin, of freedom over slavery. We know this is all true. We can dare to hope because Jesus’s body was not in the tomb on the third day. But Easter will not and should not abolish our confusion, our doubts, and our sufferings. It will not prevent the world’s sorrow, but it will transform it. Easter is always a juxtaposition of sorrow and joy, just as in John’s Gospel, Jesus’s moment of glory is the moment in which he breathes his last on the cross.

A dismissal of the complexity of Easter (by skipping over Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the waiting of Holy Saturday) is irresponsible Christianity. If left unchecked, it will give us permission to ignore the plight of the voiceless and lowly who are trampled on in the world’s quest for unlimited physical power and greed. A shallowly triumphalist Easter will lead us to believe that if we’re faithful enough and doing things right, every day will be sheer happiness.

But from the beginning, God’s answer to the world came in the “twilight in which even the best of minds must make its way now.” Even in the aftermath of that divine answer, “the questions occur, vague but formidable for all that.” And still, God comes to us, in our pain, walking beside us as we weep, question, and celebrate the joys of life. For the One who has redeemed us has also wept like us and been in the tomb as we will one day be. And in the startling but marvelous absence of “love’s risen body,” the best news of the resurrection is that the story continues. Love the Good Shepherd still calls our name, leads us to still waters, protects us through danger, and one day, he will bring us home to the green pasture of paradise. May this Easter be a blessing to you, as we revel in its joy, ever sweeter because it holds our pain, too.

I want to thank all who are giving of their time, energy, and gifts to ensure that the liturgies of Holy Week and Easter proceed smoothly and reverently. Thank you! I will look forward to sharing in the holy mysteries of this week with you.

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

April 13, 2025

If you were to ask most Christians about salvation, I suspect that few would connect it with the actual liturgies of Holy Week and Easter. For many Christians, salvation is about God and me. Only infrequently do I hear many Christians talking about God and us, of recognizing that our salvation is tied up with the salvation of the entire world and the redemption of all creation. But a careful look at the liturgies of Holy Week and Easter would reveal both the corporate nature of salvation and the essential connection between these particular liturgies and our own participation in the salvation of the world.

It has much more to do than with mere showing up, although showing up is where we start. In the holiest services of the Church year, events of past years are re-presented to us in the present moment. Our memory is deepened. It’s the memory of anamnesis, a very ancient way of remembering seen in the Jewish tradition at the Passover seder meal and carried into the Christian tradition. God’s people gather not simply to recollect events of the past but to participate in them. And so the beautiful spiritual queries, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” And the answer is a resounding YES!

The theological movement from Palm Sunday to Easter Day is profound and absolutely necessary for us to enact each year so as not to lose a corporate memory of our salvation. And yet, by participating in these liturgies, our memories are shaped and formed as they’re brought into conversation with who we are each year as people who have changed since last Holy Week. In the liturgies of Holy Week—all of them, not just Easter Day—God is saving us.

On Palm Sunday, we start with a disconcerting juxtaposition of Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, greeted with “hosannas” and then a brutal crucifixion on a cross outside the city walls. We in the congregation are the crowd who welcome him with cheap hosannas and then call for his crucifixion in the next breath. Why, many ask, do we start Holy Week with one account of the passion and then hear another one on Good Friday? One answer is that our lives are a constant whiplash between professing faith in Christ and denying him all the same. All of us are as fickle as the crowds in the Gospel Passion accounts. And on Palm Sunday, we’re reminded of the chasm created between us and God by our sins (although God, of course, is never far from us). We begin Holy Week with this uncomfortable tension between wanting to follow Christ, saying we will, and then falling short.

But by Maundy Thursday, we find our Lord commanding us in the great command (mandatum) to follow his example and serve others in his Name, just as he became a servant for our sake. Love one another as I love you, Jesus said. And in that loving of others, in that self-sacrificial service of all humanity, we identify more closely with our Lord. As we receive his Body and Blood at the Eucharist (in commemoration of that first Eucharist in the Upper Room), we receive his inestimable gift, remembering that he gives it freely to us although we constantly deny him.

And so, by Good Friday, at the foot of the cross with Jesus, hearing St. John’s account of Jesus’s Passion, we’re not in the same place as we were on Palm Sunday. We have participated in the washing of feet, in the partaking of the Eucharist, and shortly thereafter witnessed the stripping of the altar, a brutal reminder of how gift and betrayal are closely linked in Jesus’s Passion. As Jesus willingly goes to the cross in John’s Gospel (in utter control of his destiny in obedience to the Father), we find ourselves closer to him than we were on Palm Sunday. So close, in fact, that we step into the intercessory role as a priestly people prepared for us by Jesus the Great High Priest himself. We offer the great Solemn Collects for the salvation of the world, and then we prostrate ourselves before a cross, kissing the feet of Jesus hanging on the wood.

After the emptiness and silence of Holy Saturday, as Jesus’s body lies in the tomb, we gather in the dark, on the eve of the third day, and everything is made new. New light is kindled in a fire, and by the light of the Paschal Candle, kindled from that same fire, we hear the stories of our faith told, as if around a campfire. We journey to the font with four adults who will receive the sacrament of new birth in Holy Baptism. We go with them under the waters, dying to an old way of life and rising to a new one. And then, our family has expanded, it has grown by four. We’re soon at the foot of the altar in the dark, hearing the first proclamation of Easter, and suddenly, all the lights in the church come on, the organ sounds for the first time since Maundy Thursday, and Easter is here once again. Bread and wine are consecrated anew, and we have crossed the Red Sea from slavery into freedom.

I hope you can see the way in which our participation in these liturgies is part of how God saves us. It’s very difficult to get a fulsome sense of this if you only show up on Easter Day. And so, I heartily encourage you to make an effort to attend all the liturgies of Holy Week and Easter. If there’s any week in which you might consider taking a few hours off in the middle of the day, please think about doing so on Good Friday. After a long workday on Maundy Thursday, please make a point of coming to Mass at 7 p.m. If you have children, please give a thought to introducing them to these liturgies. The moving drama and ritual can impress themselves on people of all ages, even without prior knowledge of the complexities of the liturgies.

This is the week of weeks, the holiest time of the Christian year. Wherever you are—with whatever suffering you’re experiencing and with whatever joy you’re living—the liturgies meet you, and God meets you in these liturgies. Sorrow and joy are inseparable in the Easter mystery. Easter Day doesn’t stamp out your pain; it gives new meaning to your pain. The final word is the hope of the resurrection, which comes to us not on the other side of pain but in the midst of it.

I leave you with the opening words from the Great Vigil and First Mass of Easter, the occasion on which Abolfazl Baloochiyan, Hassan Baloochiyan, Melika Balouchiyan, and Emma Simpson will become members of the Church, our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Dear friends in Christ: On this most holy night, in which our Lord Jesus passed over from death to life, the Church invites her members, dispersed throughout the world, to gather in vigil and prayer. For this is the Passover of the Lord, in which, by hearing his Word and celebrating his Sacraments, we share in his victory over death. (BCP, p. 285)

Beloved in Christ, may this week of weeks be a blessing for you, and may you experience something of the mystery of your own salvation as all of us "share in [Christ’s] victory over death.”

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

[My reflections on the liturgies of Holy Week and the soteriology behind them is drawn from James Farwell’s book This Is the Night: Suffering, Salvation, and the Liturgies of Holy Week, New York: T & T Clark, 2005.]

April 4, 2025

This past Sunday at Mass, we sang Frederick William Faber’s beautiful hymn “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy.” But as it occurs in The Hymnal 1982, perhaps the most extraordinary verse is left out.

But we make God’s love too narrow
by false limits of our own,
and we magnify its strictness
with a zeal God will not own.

Is this really what many of us believe? Is this what some Christians believe when they say that God hates certain groups of people or that a natural disaster inflicted on a particular city was the enactment of God’s wrath on that place?

The oft-unheard third verse of Faber’s hymn reminds us of two chilling tendencies within the human condition. We make God smaller than he is (to paraphrase the late Archbishop Michael Ramsey), and we make God into a superhuman (like us but far bigger) who is full of rage. We do this “with a zeal God will not own” because holding onto our anger and resentments is a powerful feeling. And we, unfortunately, wish to attribute such fickleness (interestingly, a fickleness akin to that of the mythological gods and goddesses) to God. But Faber’s hymn reminds us that the wideness of God’s mercy surpasses our limited human understanding. And as the hymn concludes, in The Hymnal 1982’s version:

If our love were but more faithful,
we should take him at his word;
and our life would be thanksgiving
for the goodness of the Lord.

As I see it, the Sacrament of Reconciliation (private confession) is an act of thanksgiving “for the goodness of the Lord.” But far too often, the confessional is seen as a place of anxiety. Is that because we “magnify. . . the “strictness” [of God’s love] with a zeal God will not own”? If we fear the confessional, then could it be that we don’t yet trust enough in the wideness of God’s mercy?

In one sense, it can be extremely difficult to appreciate the wideness of God’s mercy without bringing the concrete specificity of our sins into the loving presence of the Church (represented by the priest confessor) and then receiving the clear and certain assurance that God has indeed forgiven us. Indeed, God has forgiven us before we asked for it, and to recognize this astounding reality, repentance and confession are necessary. There is a palpable sense of release and freedom when the priest utters the words of absolution. In Form Two of the Rite of Reconciliation in the 1979 prayer book, the priest concludes (after the absolution) with these incredible words, drawing on imagery from the Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke’s Gospel: “Now there is rejoicing in heaven; for you were lost, and are found; you were dead, and are now alive in Christ Jesus our Lord. Abide in peace. The Lord has put away all your sins” (451).

The point of a good confession is not to feel guilty. The point is not that God won’t forgive a sinner unless the sinner confesses to a priest. The point is to be assured, in a way that we humans often need, that God’s mercy is infinitely wide and that we have no need to “magnify its strictness.” The Sacrament of Reconciliation in our prayer book is contained with the “Pastoral Offices” section. It’s telling that not only is the act of confession a sacramental act; it’s also a way of receiving pastoral care. And the rite is also located in the prayer book before the Ministration to the Sick. Just as the priest wears a violet stole for anointing with holy oil in a healing rite, the priest wears a violet stole for confessions. The Sacrament of Reconciliation is a sacrament of healing.

A wise and faithful priest should never, of course, make you feel worse after you’ve confessed. A wise and faithful priest should also be making their own confession regularly! But a wise and faithful priest can also offer words of comfort and offer an objective and gentle assessment of patterns that one confesses. This can help us see our own sinful proclivities, and this knowledge is helpful in praying for special grace to change those distorted tendencies.

In short, the Sacrament of Reconciliation is a gift of Christ to his Church. As we near Holy Week and Easter, I heartily encourage you to consider availing yourself of this gift. I highly recommend Fr. Martin Smith’s book Reconciliation: Preparing for Confession in the Episcopal Church. If you need additional help, please contact me, and you may also contact me (or any other priest) to schedule a confession. It’s my prayer that the gift of confession will enable you to “take [God] at his word,” trusting in his boundless forgiveness. And may all our lives, lived in Christ before a merciful God, be “thanksgiving for the goodness of the Lord.”

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

March 29, 2025

There may be no more mystifying and befuddling aspect of the Christian life than prayer. We may claim to know what prayer is, and yet, many of us struggle to pray. One reason is that our modern propensity to talk without ceasing (whether audibly or through silent text messages or on social media) is, paradoxically, a deterrent to true prayer. If we were to ask many Christians what prayer is, they might say, “talking to God.” And herein lies the problem. We often conceive of prayer as an extraordinary effort on our part, something that we initiate, and this fails to recognize that prayer is already happening in the life of God. Prayer might be better characterized as being in conversation with God, not talking at God.

In 1 Samuel 3:10, Samuel says to God, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” This, I think, captures the posture of prayer. But, as a humorous riff on that verse points out, our unspoken address to God is usually, “Listen, Lord, for your servant is speaking.” Because our lives are full of words, it’s extremely difficult for us to stop talking and listen. It’s harder yet to stop being so action-oriented in prayer and become more passive, not forcing ourselves into conversation with God but allowing our lives to join the constant, eternal flow of prayer between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve written about two parts of the traditional threefold Anglican rule of life: the Daily Office and the Mass/Eucharist. The third part is “private prayer.” And while no prayer is truly private, we know what private prayer is referring to, which is the prayer that occurs not in public liturgies but in the depths of our hearts, whether when on our knees by the side of our beds, or as we drive to work, or at the hospital bed of a dying loved one, or as we read a collect from the prayer book alone. Private prayer takes many forms, which our prayer book categorizes as adoration, praise, thanksgiving, penitence, oblation, intercession and petition, and corporate worship (p. 857). While these categories might be helpful, hopefully, as our prayer lives deepen, prayer simply becomes who we are and less what we do.

St. Paul’s exhortation to pray without ceasing is less a daunting assignment and more a beautiful invitation to allow God to weave the fabric of our lives into his eternal life of prayer. It’s also St. Paul who reminds us that “the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words” (Romans 8:26). What an encouragement this is! When we are too tired to pray, when we lack the words, when we are so broken down and burned out that we don’t even have the energy to formulate a sentence, all that “stuff” that we bring before God is our prayer, and the Spirit is interceding on our behalf. Prayer isn’t really so much about us as it is about the trinitarian life of God drawing us into a dynamic energy of pure love.

Having said all this, prayer can become so esoteric in our minds that we must be disciplined in order to experience the liberty of prayer. This is the benefit of having structured times of prayer such as the Daily Office and the Mass. And when it comes to private prayer, we will need to be intentional in setting aside specific times of the day in which to pray. Whether it’s a moment of thanksgiving early in the morning or a few minutes of self-examination at the end of the day, Lent is the season in which we can give form and shape to our lives by setting aside time for private prayer.

A parishioner recently shared about their Lenten practice of reaching out to someone whose name pops into their head during the day. This is a wonderful way of “praying without ceasing.” I encourage you to listen to the nudges throughout your day. If you think of someone, offer their name up to God or contact them to say you’re thinking of them. You might take our Sunday Mass leaflet home each week to pray each day for the individual or family listed. At the Daily Office, we pray for all who regularly worship at Good Shepherd, as well as for all Friends of the parish. When we engage in this kind of intercessory prayer with intention, we become more aware of “all whose lives are closely linked with ours” (BCP, p. 388). If you notice that someone isn’t at Mass on a Sunday, pray for them and reach out to them; let them know they’re missed.

I’m constantly reminded of how much prayer seems to elude me. But I suspect that it most eludes me when I try to control it. When I think I have to “get it right,” or “succeed” at prayer, then prayer does escape my grasp. It’s meant to do so. But if I can sit for ten to fifteen minutes in silent prayer, with no words and with simply an intentional receptive stance towards God, no matter how much my mind wanders, I can rest assured that, bit by bit, I’m beginning to dip my toe in the eternal stream of ceaseless prayer in the eternal life of God.

Prayer takes time, and we’re an impatient lot. Prayer isn’t about how we feel or about immediate results. Prayer is the long, slow process of relinquishing control so that we can share in the life of God. It was St. John of the Cross who purportedly said that silence is God’s first language. When we learn to listen first, then God’s voice can be more clearly discerned beneath the noise of our world. When we learn to listen first, we remember that God is in charge, not us. When we learn to listen first, we recall that God first loved us, and because God did so, our only task is to love him in return.

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

March 21, 2025

In last week’s message, I wrote about the Daily Office, one of three parts of the Christian rule of life, as it has historically manifested itself in the lives of the faithful. The center of that rule, its foundation and source, is the Mass. As an Anglo-Catholic parish, we’re used to talking about “the Mass,” but in most Episcopal parishes, it’s referred to as “the Eucharist.” Both are legitimate ways of naming “the principal act of Christian worship on the Lord's Day and other major Feasts” (Book of Common Prayer, p. 13). If we examine the etymology of these two words—Mass and Eucharist—we learn a great deal about the importance of coming together weekly on the Lord’s Day to share in the breaking of bread and the prayers.

“Eucharist” comes from the Greek word εὐχαριστέω, which means, “I give thanks.” The Eucharist is first and foremost about thanksgiving. It’s no mere “obligation,” although we would do well to drag ourselves to Mass even when the weather is poor and we might prefer to stay at home! The Eucharist starts with our gratefulness to God. Here’s food for thought. When you open your eyes on Sunday, try recalling, first, that you are awake and alive by God’s gracious love. God first loved us, and so, our own love is simply a grateful response to God’s love. Let this love motivate you towards the Mass. This acknowledgment of love is expressed in the first action of the Mass. We bless God. “Blessed be God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” or during Lent, “Bless the Lord who forgiveth all our sins.” We’re gathered on any given Sunday (or weekday) because God’s love animates our being. God’s love is the reason for our earthly existence. God’s love is how we can get up for yet another day, go to a lifegiving or enervating job, carry on with life’s challenges and joys, and still show up on Sunday to give thanks. The Eucharist is an act of thanksgiving.

In the first part of the Eucharist, The Word of God, we present ourselves before God, all facing east, the historic posture of prayer, and we acknowledge that we’re facing God, “unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid.” We’re laid bare, and stripped of all our pretensions, and we try to open our ears enough to hear God’s word proclaimed in holy Scripture. The one who has ears to hear, let that one hear. We’re given texts chosen not by the priest but by the wider Church, texts that challenge and encourage us and intersect with our own lives. And as we move to the central point of the Mass, our trust in the community of the Church reaches a peak in the singing of the Nicene Creed. This is no litmus test of belief. It’s an act of believing, of praising a God who defies our human descriptions and who is far larger than words can express. And finally, we pray specifically for the needs of the Church and the world. In these prayers, we’re interceding, as Christ does for us in heaven, before the throne of God. Our lives are knit together with all of humanity. These prayers are specific, not sanitized and general. The hurt of someone living in a war zone across the world must be ours, too. The joy of someone in the next pew is ours as well. We then confess our sins because perhaps something in the prayers has moved us to realize the collective shortcomings of humanity. We hear God’s words of forgiveness. And then we turn to our neighbors in the pews, look them in the eyes, and offer the peace of Christ. This is not social hour, but a moment of profound reverence in which the peace that passes all understanding is offered in the Name of the One who reconciles us to God and one another.

At this central point in the Mass, we turn towards the altar. We have arrived at the second part, The Holy Communion. Gifts of bread and wine, the fruits of the earth and work of human hands, are carried to the altar by members of the congregation. Money is brought, too. But something invisible is likewise brought. To that altar, each of us brings the deepest intentions of our hearts. We bring our concerns, our pleadings on behalf of someone dear to us. We bring an awareness of our human limitations. We bring the heaviness of living in a cruel world. And all of that is placed on the altar. Only God can transform human brokenness into wholeness.

In the Eucharistic Prayer, we thank God for all he has done in salvation history, and that grand scope of a narrative narrows down into the Upper Room, where Christ gave thanks to God the Father, blessed bread and wine, broke, and shared it, and then sent the disciples into the world to serve in his Name. We move into God’s (kairos) time, where the past, present, and future meet. The events of Jesus’s final hours are re-presented to us. In God’s time in the Mass, we participate in our own salvation. The priest says Jesus’s very own words, the Words of Institution, and then asks for the Holy Spirit to come upon the gifts of bread and wine to make them the Body and Blood of Christ. The priest also prays that that same Holy Spirit will come upon us and our lives to make them holy. After bells are rung, what once was bread and wine is now Bread and Wine, Christ’s true Body and Blood, a mystery we accept but can’t understand.

After we say the Lord’s Prayer, the priest breaks the Bread so that it can be shared. We receive the Bread and Wine with thanksgiving. With hands outstretched, right over left, the Bread is placed in our palms and brought directly to our mouths, a Gift that can’t be controlled but only received. The Wine is consumed with our hand gently guiding the chalice to our lips—again, a Gift to be consumed, not grasped. We thank God for this Gift, the priest offers God’s blessing, and then we encounter one of the most overlooked but important parts of the Mass. And this brings us to another etymological exploration.

“Mass” comes from the Latin word “missa,” which derives from mittere, which has to do with sending. While it may be tempting to think we have done the most important thing in receiving Christ’s Body and Blood and so we can then quickly depart from the church, we’re indeed missing something profound if we leave the church before the Dismissal. The Dismissal, when the priest sends us out into the world to serve in our Lord’s Name, is crucial to close out the Mass. The Dismissal is about mission. We hear the Lord’s charge to go and make disciples, to go and love our friends and enemies. The Mass is not complete until we hear these words. To leave before we hear these words is to receive a Gift without acknowledging how that Gift makes a demand on our lives. I urge you: after receiving our Lord’s precious Gift, please stay until you hear these words. They are your eternal charge from the God who is mission.

I hope it’s clear to you why the Eucharist/Mass is at the heart of our lives. It has had such primacy in the Anglo-Catholic tradition that many parishes offer daily Masses, not simply to be excessive but as a reminder that every moment of our lives is suffused with God’s gracious gifts. Every moment is one for thanksgiving. This Lent, I encourage you to make attendance at the Eucharist on Sundays an essential part of your lives, and carry that beyond Lent, too. Consider, if you can, coming to one of our quiet, contemplative daily Masses. These Masses are wonderful. On Wednesdays or on Fridays, with often just me and a parishioner present, at midday or in the stillness of the early morning as the world is waking outside, I remember friends and parishioners who are suffering or rejoicing, and my intentions for them are placed on the altar and then rise up to God as incense. A daily Mass may reinforce to you the great power of the Mass, which is always an act of healing. Never underestimate the objective power of the Sacrament. Even when you don’t “feel it,” your reception of God’s gifts at our Lord’s command is healing you and the world. The efficacy of the Mass transcends our incomprehension and our desire to control it.

After the servers and I have processed out of the church on Sundays, we end with this magnificent prayer, and I will end this message with it, too. “Blessed, praised, worshipped, hallowed, and adored be our Lord Jesus Christ on his throne of glory in heaven, in the most holy Sacrament of the altar, and in the hearts of his faithful people.” Indeed. Amen.

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

March 14, 2025

It was just five years ago (doesn’t it seem longer?) when the Covid-19 pandemic shut the world down. The Church didn’t know what to do in March of 2020. People weren’t allowed to congregate, and so the sacraments couldn’t be safely administered. It was both a horrible and a confounding time. But even in those harrowing few months in the spring of 2020, there were moments of grace. And one grace-filled legacy of that horrible time of pandemic was a recovery of interest in the Daily Office. Churches couldn’t legitimately celebrate the Eucharist online (the sacramental life requires people being present in person with each other). So, during the lockdown, most churches resorted to the Daily Office (Morning and Evening Prayer) as a way of worshipping and praying together.

Even while the doors of Good Shepherd were closed on weekdays and opened only for Mass on Sundays, we revived the Daily Office on weekdays in August of 2020, although it was prayed via livestream. While online participation is not the same as in-person attendance, the Daily Office can be more meaningfully prayed online. And to this day, there are a handful of persons who regularly pray Morning and Evening Prayer with us through our livestream.

In last week’s message, I referred to the Church’s traditional threefold “rule” of prayer: the Mass, the Daily Office, and private prayer. It’s worth spending some time reflecting on the value of the Daily Office, especially as we seek to enrich our prayer lives with greater intentionality this Lent. Our prayer book classifies the Daily Office as one of “the regular services appointed for public worship in the Church” (13), along with the Eucharist. The Daily Office is one of the most effective ways of sanctifying time in the Anglican tradition. Indeed, at the time of the English Reformation, the monastic hours (seven times of prayer during the day observed in the monasteries) were the sole provision of those monasteries. But Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556) brilliantly condensed that sevenfold “office” to a twofold one, and the Daily Office became more commonplace in the parish church. This is one of the loveliest gifts of the English Reformation.

And so, it has been the custom in parish churches within the Anglican tradition (and especially in Anglo-Catholic parishes) to pray Morning and Evening Prayer with regularity. At Good Shepherd, each Office begins with the Angelus, a Marian devotion of the Incarnation, reminding us that in this world, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Monday through Friday, Morning Prayer is prayed at 9 a.m. and Evening Prayer at 5:30 p.m. On Saturdays, Morning Prayer is prayed at 9 a.m. While at times, the Daily Office could seem rote and tedious, its real beauty lies in the marking of time. God’s kairos time is layered onto our chronos time. No matter what chaos is happening in the world, the church doors are opened, and prayer is offered at 9 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. When the world seems to be going off the rails, the Church’s rhythm of prayer never ceases.

But beyond the mere setting apart of “hours” for prayer, the Daily Office finds its center in the Book of Psalms. In the appointed cycle of readings for the Daily Office, one prays nearly the entire Book of Psalms (150!) over the course of about seven weeks. At Good Shepherd, the psalms are usually recited antiphonally (from side to side of the Choir), and we take brief pauses at the asterisk of each psalm. These pauses slow us down in our busy lives. They allow us to reflect and breathe. This rhythm of antiphonal recitation of the psalms is soothing and comforting to me.

We don’t avoid difficult psalms either. Some of the psalms are, in fact, grotesque. The psalmists pray for the death of their enemies, for unspeakable horrors to be visited upon others, and at times, such as in Psalm 88, the psalmist appears almost to have given up on God. In my opinion, we should be praying these psalms, not in the spirit of vengeance of the original authors but as a way of keeping ourselves honest. I would be dishonest with myself if I couldn’t locate within my heart (if unspoken) some of the terrifying emotions to which the psalmists give voice. As I pray the psalms in Morning or Evening Prayer, I’m reminded of the ways in which I want to make God in my own image, but in a spirit of repentance, I can turn to God and give thanks that God isn’t like us in such a fickle, emotional way.

The Daily Office also gives us an opportunity to swim in the waters of Scripture. We read in their entirety many books of the Old Testament that we would never hear at Mass. We hear the central stories of our faith. And again, we recall how our own sinfulness is reflected in the vicissitudes of very human people trying to figure out their own relationship with a God who ultimately eludes their grasp until Christ gives humanity the perfect image of God.

I’m always amazed at how the Spirit will speak a word to me, unbidden, at the Office. Sometimes a phrase lights up for me, like Psalm 18:20: “he rescued me because he delighted in me” or Psalm 37:9: “do not fret yourself; it leads only to evil.” On some occasions, I’ve found humor. In another parish, I once observed a man living on the streets in a pre-Office verbal tussle with a parishioner, and upon reciting the words of the Lord’s Prayer, the man raised his voice quite visibly at the words “as we forgive those who trespass against us”! On that day, and hopefully in a spirit of repentance, that man needed those particular words (as perhaps did his interlocutor). While some appointed readings for the Office might leave us flat on a given day, more often than not, there’s a compelling word to hear.

At Good Shepherd, we conclude the Office with specific prayers, for the world, the nation, the local community, the sick, the departed, and the parish. We pray through our parish cycle of prayers, remembering by name those who worship here regularly. And we pray for our beloved Friends of the parish. One of my favorite prayers is for those whom we don’t yet know but whom God will draw to this parish for a deeper relationship with Christ. We ask God to send such people to the fold of this parish, but ultimately, who comes and when they come are in the hands of God.

If the Christian life is about reshaping and reprioritizing our lives, then praying the Daily Office is one way to do that. It takes great intention to devote a period of time each day for prayer, but it’s well worth the effort. This Sunday, we all have the opportunity to experience Evening Prayer in its glorious sung form, Choral Evensong, a hallmark of the Anglican tradition. Come and let the beauty of Scripture and sung prayer wash over you. And then revel in the presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament in Benediction. Have a bite to eat after Sung Mass and the Lenten reading group, and then return to the church to rest in the presence of God at 3 p.m. this Sunday.

When our day is structured intentionally around God in praying the Daily Office, Scripture becomes our language for a time. The quotidian realities of daily existence intersect with God’s loving, timeless initiative, which enfolds us in unending compassion and mercy. We no longer see our lives as something into which God intrudes when we need him. When we pray without ceasing, God is our life, and everything else is oriented around God. And as Scripture rightly tells us, in him, we live and move and have our being.

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

March 7, 2025

Last Sunday’s adult formation conversation led by Bonnie Hoffman-Adams was remarkable. As I listened to parishioners speak, I gave silent thanks for the profound depth of spirituality and theological intelligence present in this parish. I listened as two parishioners reflected on their experience in another parish many years ago in which the liturgies of Holy Week and Easter were considered so special and so essential to salvation that no one in the parish would have thought of missing them! Can you imagine that? That comment inspired me, and I thought what a magnificent dream it would be for us at Good Shepherd. Imagine if no one in the parish could bear to miss out on the extraordinary liturgies of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Great Vigil and First Mass of Easter. Imagine planning your lives so that you wouldn’t miss these saving liturgies of the Christian faith.

I heard several consistent themes during last Sunday’s rich conversation. It was clearly expressed that Good Shepherd is unusual among many parishes in our commitment to the Book of Common Prayer’s expectations for public worship. Mass is celebrated frequently (and, of course, as the principal service on the Lord’s Day) and the Daily Office is prayed nearly every day here. I also heard parishioners rejoicing in the loveliness of our size right now. We’re still small (but not too small!), and so there’s a wonderful openness to fresh ideas and very little territorialism around ministries. There’s also a (unique?) opportunity to inculcate a culture of intense prayer in this parish, especially as we’re not yet too big and diffuse to do so. I also heard a desire to preserve the warmth and openness of our parish in its current size even as we grow. And finally, I heard a real desire to figure out how we could mutually encourage one another, so that anyone who misses a Sunday at Mass will know they’re missed. In other words, how do we call one another into a deeper prayer life?

So, I return to my original musing. Imagine if none of us could bear the thought of missing the Church’s important liturgies. I think that realizing that dream is more than setting out to do it. I believe it begins with something more prosaic, but also highly disciplined. It begins with establishing a regular rule of life.

A rule of life is not as rigid as it sounds. It’s merely a way of structuring one’s existence to ensure that it’s centered on God. We have “rules” in our “secular” lives. We probably rise at the same time most days. We go to work or school at a set time. We exercise at specified times. In other words, we build a skeletal structure for our days so that they have shape and focus. There are times when we deviate from our “rules,” and that’s okay. But a life without a “rule” is as shapeless as an amoeba.

The late Anglican ascetic and pastoral theologian Martin Thornton writes of “The Christian Framework” in his book Christian Proficiency (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1988). This framework is essentially a rule, or as he puts it, “the frame or supporting structure of the ‘Body’” (17). Thornton describes the Church’s threefold rule as the Mass, the Daily Office, and private prayer (20). He uses an analogy to explain how these parts of the rule relate to the Body of Christ. He writes, “dare we think of the Eucharist as the living heart of the Body of Christ, the Office as its continual beat, its pulse, and private prayer as the circulation of the blood giving life and strength to its several members according to their need and capacity?” (17).

Good Shepherd, Rosemont, along with many of our sister Anglo-Catholic parishes, has established its public rhythm of prayer around this ancient threefold rule. Masses are offered not only on Sundays but on Major Holy Days and on other weekdays. (In the past, when there were more parishioners and multiple clergy, Masses were offered daily; on some days, two Masses were celebrated.) The Daily Office is prayed publicly Monday through Saturday, and some parishioners and I pray the Daily Office every day, even if not in public. Private prayer is, of course, ongoing in the lives of parishioners. In a time when it’s tempting to reject ancient “rules” of prayer so that we only do things “when we feel like it,” there’s much to be commended about traditional forms of prayer. Indeed, in our rather aimless age, we would benefit enormously from returning to our roots in this regard.

Martin Thornton makes yet another interesting point to which we should pay some attention. He writes of the “Christian Regular,” “one who chooses to undertake his common obligations and duties, and to develop his personal spirituality, by acknowledging, accepting or ‘embracing’ some total scheme, system, pattern or ‘Rule’ of prayer” (47). Maybe our dream for Good Shepherd is to become a parish full of Christian Regulars.

The regularity of our individual lives, while oriented around the Mass, Daily Office, and private prayer, will be shaped differently. As Thornton points out, rules of life are not inviolable or legalistic; they’re malleable and lifegiving. Each of us will need to establish our own way of integrating the three pieces of the ancient Church rule. But each of us can do this if we intend to do so. As I said in last week’s message, Lent is a time for greater intentionality in our lives. It’s a time to give form and shape to the chaos of our daily lives. It’s a time to put God at the center and to let our worship and praise of God animate all that we do.

It’s my deep conviction that the flourishing of ministry in this parish will be enabled by our collective commitment to being Christian Regulars. I believe that when we’re disciplined in our prayer lives, God habituates us to a remarkable openness to the Spirit, who lives and breathes among us. And that openness allows us to respond to God’s call in surprising and glorious ways.

Some of us may have more time to pray than others, and those of us who do will carry a certain amount of weight for the good of the whole Body. But all of us have time to do something. In our prayer, we’re not just aligning our lives to God as to a north star; we’re also supporting one another. To riff on St. Paul, the prayer of the Body’s foot is as essential as the prayer of the Body’s brain. We all have a role to play in our collective prayer life.

This Lent, would you consider becoming a Christian Regular? Would you consider patterning your day on our parish’s daily rhythm of prayer? If you can, come to the Daily Office in person. Maybe you need to start with allocating one day of the week on which you can pray one of the Offices. If you can’t attend in person, pray with us online. Try attending a daily Mass during the week if your schedule allows. And by all means, please prioritize attendance at Mass on the Lord’s Day. Remember that we have two Masses each Sunday, at 8 a.m. and 10:30 a.m.

To be a Christian Regular means that prayer suffuses our life so thoroughly that when we miss out on it—or when we miss a Sunday Mass or something that is part of our Rule—it feels irregular, like a heart skipping a beat. Some words of the late Roman Catholic priest Henri Nouwen may speak more to our hearts than Thornton’s valuable but “drier” way of describing the spiritual life. Nouwen felt a call in his own life to develop what he called “prophetic vision,” which is “looking at people and this world through the eyes of God . . . This is not an intellectual question. It is a question of vocation. I am called to enter into the inner sanctuary of my own being where God has chosen to dwell. The only way to that place is prayer, unceasing prayer. Many struggles and much pain can clear the way, but I am certain that only unceasing prayer can let me enter it” (The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming, New York: Doubleday, 1992, pp. 17-18). In a rule of life well conceived and prayed, we become whole, and our whole life becomes unceasing prayer. It starts with discipline, but it ends with freedom, the freedom that is nothing less than finding the abundant life that Christ brings and that is God’s unending gift to us.

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle