Week of June 4, 2023

When I was confirmed in the Roman Catholic Church, after the bishop laid hands on my head and prayed, he gently slapped my cheek. That has traditionally been a practice at Confirmation, although I think only a handful of Episcopal bishops still continue the practice. The reason for the slap was to remind the confirmand of the seriousness of Christian commitment. Prior to the official toleration of Christianity with the issue of the Edict of Milan in 313 AD under the reign of Emperor Constantine, being a Christian was risky, serious business. Afterwards, Christianity became more and more the religion of the empire and of the state, and accordingly, less risky. Being Christian was easier to take for granted. Hence, the slap at Confirmation was needed in a comfortable age. The slap offered a gentle, if slightly stinging, summons: Don’t forget what it means to be baptized into Christ’s body. Don’t forget the cost of Christian discipleship.

Some have likened our current age to pre-Constantinian Christianity in that it can no longer be assumed that people will take their Christian faith seriously. It can no longer be assumed that the Church is perceived as important in society. And yet, unless you are living in a part of the world where being a Christian is indeed dangerous, being a Christian in our current age doesn’t seem to have the severe sting of pre-313 AD. Maybe a little slap here and there is a good thing for us!

I am reflecting on the Confirmation slap as our Pilgrims in Christ class has wound to a close for this past program year. In early September, Pilgrims will resume, but I’m already thinking ahead to next program year. I’m pondering how Pilgrims is something of a Confirmation slap. If you will recall, Pilgrims in Christ is a nine-month intensive adult formation class intended for anyone seeking to deepen their Christian faith, and it’s especially appropriate for those preparing for holy Baptism, Confirmation, Reception into the Episcopal Church, or Reaffirmation of Baptismal Vows. Pilgrims is a “slap” because the entire curriculum is built around an assumption that Baptism, Confirmation, and renewing one’s own commitment to Christian discipleship is a serious matter. By serious, I don’t mean lacking in humor or devoid of fun. And by a “slap” I don’t mean something painful! By serious, I mean that it demands commitment, discipline, and ultimately, metanoia—a change of behavior and a turn towards Christ.

The Episcopal Church has no specific expectations around length of commitment for preparation for Baptism or Confirmation, but it expects that such preparation will be done and taken seriously. The Episcopal Church also hopes that all baptized persons will eventually make a public affirmation of their faith (i.e., be confirmed). This is particularly true for those baptized before the age of reason. In my opinion, recent decades of the Church have seen a lowering of commitment in terms of Christian discipleship, which is why Pilgrims is something special. At Good Shepherd, I sense that we take seriously the discipline and commitment of living as a Christian in what has been called a “secular age.” I suspect that when we do, we begin to understand something of St. John’s message that finding our life in Christ is to live abundantly (John 10:10). Following Jesus gives us a fullness of life that cannot be found exclusively in our work, in our hobbies, or in anything else to which we give our time. And yet, through Christ, our work, our hobbies, and our other relationships can blossom into abundant life.

Although September seems like a long time away, we are already beginning to plan for next program year. Are you feeling a call to deepen your own faith through Baptism, Confirmation, Reception into the Episcopal Church, or Reaffirmation of Baptismal Vows? Or are you eager to integrate knowledge with bodily practice in your life of faith, while connecting with a wider community of fellow disciples? I invite you to consider participating in Pilgrims. Pilgrims is not just for those who have not yet been baptized, confirmed, or received into the Episcopal Church. It’s for those who were confirmed forty years ago, too!

Next program year, I will be expanding the class to make it more adaptable. The first six weeks will be an introduction to the Episcopal Church and Anglicanism, focusing on the Anglican ethos. Anyone who wants to learn more about the Anglican tradition and prepare for Reception into the Episcopal Church would be welcome to participate for only the first six weeks. But I hope all or most will choose to continue for the rest of the program year. Also, Pilgrims will now take on a hybrid in-person/Zoom format, opening the class to anyone across the world! Pilgrims will meet on the first three Thursdays of every month (vestry meetings being on the last Thursday of the month), from 7 to 8:30 p.m., from early September through May.

I ask you to pray about whether you might like to make participation in Pilgrims part of your Christian commitment beginning in September. I believe it’s well worth the time and effort. Please take some time to indicate your interest by registering here. I would also love to have conversations with any of you who have questions about the class or about deepening your journey in Christ.

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

Week of May 28, 2023

Each year when Pentecost rolls around, I brace myself for images from churches all over the world: fire eaters, doves on sticks, streamers, spirit sticks, swathes of red. On the one hand, it is fitting that one of the seven principal feasts of the Church year receives such attention. On the other hand, I wonder whether our Pentecost theatrics can be a cover for avoiding what Pentecost is really about. Are we, in truth, afraid of the Holy Spirit’s power? If so, then hoisting doves into the air and throwing confetti are just ways of avoiding the scary task of looking within our souls to see where the Holy Spirit is trying to get in. I know all too well how easy it is to try to evade the Spirit’s convicting power. What about you? Do you find it easier to throw a birthday party for the Church than to open the dusty crevices of your heart to the Holy Spirit?

Many of us—and particularly Episcopalians—are wary of charismatic Christianity, and perhaps for good reason, since there have been numerous abuses of the spiritual gifts of speaking in tongues and interpreting tongues. These are not visible signs of God’s special favor for certain individuals, but rather, they are genuine gifts intended to build up the Church. But is defiant suspicion of such gifts only another excuse for refusing to yield personal control? There is no question that when we are dealing with the Holy Spirit, we are not in control.

While this may be terrifying, it is also liberating, encouraging, awe-inspiring, and hopeful. I have frequently asked myself why the baptism of thousands of people in one day, as recounted in the Acts of the Apostles, is unheard of in the twenty-first century. If we look around, it might seem as if the Holy Spirit is dormant or has given up on us. But this is not true. The Holy Spirit is like a magnetic force field hovering around us, but the magnetic pull of our own egos and the idol worship of our culture is like an opposing magnetic field keeping the Spirit at bay.

As we celebrate the Day of Pentecost this coming Sunday, we will celebrate this great feast with a procession at the beginning of Sung Mass and with the full richness of Anglo-Catholic ritual. And yet the challenge will be not to evade the true meaning of the feast through the observance of mere ritual. Every day of our lives is a day of Pentecost. Every day is an invitation to be honest about the gifts we have all been given for the building up of God’s kingdom on earth and for the spreading of the good news to the ends of the earth.

I have said this before, but I will say it again, because it can’t be emphasized strongly enough. Each of us has been given particular gifts by God. That is a fact. In the Church, we call them spiritual gifts. Some of these gifts will be used in our daily work and occupations. But the oft-neglected arena for using these gifts is the Church. So many demands are made on our time outside the Church. The job market and the rhythm of our daily lives are hungry beasts that will never stop making demands on our time. This will easily lead to burnout.

But the Church’s call to us—we might say the demand the Church makes on us—is different. God expects that we will use the gifts he has given us for the strengthening of the Church. When we properly discern the gifts God has given us to use in his Church, our use of them will never burn us out. While our jobs and daily lives expect that each of us must fill a standard mold of “never enough,” St. Paul tells us that the Body of Christ only functions effectively when the specific gifts of everyone are used so that all are working together. This prevents burnout. Here’s the good news: each of us does not have all of the Spirit’s gifts, and each of us never will. Isn’t that freeing? The Body of Christ only flourishes and thrives when all of us work together. It’s not a competition. It’s not an individual contest. It’s a collaborative effort, fueled by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The mission to which God is calling the Church of the Good Shepherd is clarifying because we are prayerfully attending to the gifts present in this community. Careful discernment of such gifts is how we know the ministries that should be established in this parish. But this parish will only continue to grow and thrive if more of us use our gifts for the well-being of the Church. None of us is insignificant here. God asks for more of us than attendance on Sundays at Mass. Worship is only the beginning of what God has in store for us. Outside the Church, we may be written off, bullied, or dismissed as ineffective, but God says that every single one of us is necessary for the kingdom to flourish. And perhaps the current state of the Church is proof that too many spiritual gifts are lying dormant and untapped. How can we be a different example at Good Shepherd?

If you are not yet sharing and offering your spiritual gifts for ministry at Good Shepherd, I pray that you will consider doing so. Indeed, God expects that you will, because we need what you have to offer! If you would like assistance in discerning your own spiritual gifts, I would be delighted to help you. There is no “gifted and talented” echelon in the Church. Every single one of us is gifted and talented. Now, that’s something to celebrate.

Your in Christ,
Father Kyle

Week of May 21, 2023

Not my money. Those were the words my seminary class was encouraged to repeat over and over again by the canon law professor. He was speaking about the rector’s discretionary fund, a pot of money intended only for supporting those in need of charity. The professor was right, of course. The money stays at the church even after a rector leaves. It’s not the rector’s money; it’s the church’s money. Well, actually, it’s not even the church’s money. It’s God’s money.

Not my money. I have been reflecting on that phrase this week, especially after the spring Rogation Days (Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week). Rogation Days seem anachronistic, as they are the product of pre-technological cultures, in which it was considered necessary to ask for God’s blessing on the harvest. But Rogation Days are not anachronistic. We need them now, more than ever, when we litter the earth, waste natural resources, pollute the air, and neglect the care of this planet entrusted to our hands. Not our planet. But what do Rogation Days have to do with money? Quite a lot, actually. This past Rogation Wednesday at the Mass celebrated during our program retreat sponsored by the retreat house, the Gospel was from Luke 12, the parable of the rich fool. This man has such an abundant harvest that he decided to pull down his existing barns to build larger ones, to store up provisions for the future. By today’s standard, this man would be considered smart. He is practical and preparing for his future. He’s a good businessman. Having implemented his practical provisions, he could “relax, eat, drink, be merry.” The poor guy had no idea that he was about to die. So what use were his attempts at financial security?

Not my money. Our money is not ours, nor is anything we may harvest. The earth that’s in our care is not ours either, so in stewarding all things, our hearts and minds are directed back to God and God’s intentions for what has been loaned to us. Not my money. Not our goods. Not our bodies. Not even our souls. They all belong to God. But this is not what we usually think, and why? Because we are given constant messages that there is never enough. You will not have enough money for retirement. You will not have enough savings to put your children through school, or even preschool now! Your children will not have enough “things” on their portfolios to get into the right university. You will not have enough time to care for your health and prosper in your job. You will not have enough money to buy groceries and give to the church. You do not have enough talents to compete with that other person for the job you want. The list goes on and on.

The temptation is, like the rich fool, to hoard. We hoard, and then if there is anything left, we make a gift to the church. Or we give to a charity. But the order is all wrong. Not my money. None of it belongs to us, and so it is foolish to pretend as if it is. To believe that God is abundantly kind, merciful, gracious, compassionate, and caring is to trust that when we do something scary like, first, give back to God, perhaps we’ll be just fine in the end. Why do we always assume that God will not care for us? This isn’t tempting God. It’s simply believing in the God revealed to us in Jesus Christ, whose death on the cross was not a waste but the salvation of the whole world. To believe that being generous is not reckless is difficult, I know. But it is nothing less than remembering that everything comes from God. Not mine but God’s.

What the rich fool in Luke 12 forgot were the injunctions back in the Book of Leviticus (chapter 19) not to reap the harvest to the very edges of the land but to leave something for those who are in need. Not my harvest. In a book that we love to hate sometimes, we find some of the kindest, most generous commands imaginable. If what we “have” is really not ours at all, then it belongs not only to God but to those whom God wishes to give it.

And of course, this speaks to the most obvious elephant in the room. What about those among us who do find it difficult to buy groceries or find a meal? What about those who do suffer from genuine material poverty? God has given us a solution back in Leviticus. It’s an imperative that those who are blessed with material abundance and wealth not reap to the edges of their harvest. Save some for the stranger. There is plenty of wealth out there to go around. God has indeed provided for all. There is abundance.

To be a Christian in 2023 is to live in radical contrast to an anxious age: we are to live as if there is always enough. Always, full stop, end of story. We are to take chances of generosity, even if we think it will jeopardize our future. Of course, it doesn’t mean that we fail to live wisely or ensure that those who depend on us will be cared for. It just means that we refuse to live from a place of anxiety and choose to live from a place of trust. I suspect that none of us will actually end up jeopardizing our future because we decide to be extravagantly generous. In my own experience, I have never seen that happen. But above all, we must ask ourselves this: what good does it do us to be anxious about having enough? Indeed, what good at all, when Jesus has taught us to trust and believe in a God with whom there is always enough?

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

Week of May 14, 2023

In my email last week announcing Matthew Glandorf’s departure in mid-summer, I also noted that I would soon update you on our plans for this period of transition in our music ministry. I shared that Jack Warren Burnam, a wonderful church musician of over fifty years’ experience has agreed to serve as our Interim Organist and Choirmaster after Matt Glandorf’s departure and at least through the remainder of this calendar year. I’d like to introduce you to Jack, and I hope that you will have an opportunity to meet him on a Sunday in the near future, before he is officially serving here. Below is a brief biographical note and picture that Jack has sent me.

Jack Warren Burnam has pursued an active career in music for more than fifty years, as a choir trainer, conductor, organist, accompanist, and composer. He recently retired as Parish Musician of Immanuel on the Green in New Castle, Delaware, where he served for twelve years. Prior to that, Jack was Choirmaster and Organist of Immanuel Church, Highlands for thirty-five years. He served for eighteen years as Music Director of Congregation Beth Emeth; for twenty years as Director of Middle and Upper School Choral Music at Tower Hill School; and as founding Artistic Director of the chamber choir CoroAllegro for twenty-seven years. Jack accompanied the Delaware Senior All State Chorus for five years, and from 2013 to 2017 accompanied the University of Delaware Chorale under the direction of Paul Head.

Jack is a gifted composer of choral and liturgical music for his own choirs and congregations, as well as of a number of commissioned works. His anthems have taken first place awards in two national competitions: sponsored by the Association of Anglican Musicians (2001) and the Sewanee Church Music Conference Fyfe Award (2020). The Hymnal 1982 includes five of Jack’s hymntune harmonizations, and several items of service music appear in the supplemental hymnal Wonder, Love, and Praise.

Jack holds degrees in sacred music from Houghton College (NY) and Catholic University of America, as well as Associate and Choirmaster certificates of the American Guild of Organists. He has served as Dean and Subdean of the Delaware Chapter of the American Guild of Organists, and he is an active member and Past President of the Association of Anglican Musicians. He lives in Delaware with his wife, Jeannette.

It will be a great gift and blessing to welcome Jack to Good Shepherd in a few months’ time. Due to previous engagements before he agreed to serve in an interim capacity here, Jack’s first Sunday with us will be on September 10. But he will begin work here before then, in addition to playing a Sunday in August. Please welcome Jack and his wife Jeannette to Good Shepherd when you have a chance to meet them!

I would also like to give you an update on a proposed timeline for the search process for a new Director of Music. Last Sunday, I met with our advisory committee (Sarah Austen, John Burrows, Ellen Charry, Anne Hallmark, Mitos Hart, and Don McCown) to review the proposed position description. Once details of compensation and benefits are approved by the vestry at its May 25th meeting, the position will be advertised on our parish website and social media and through the Association of Anglican Musicians and the American Guild of Organists. Applications will be accepted through July 31. The advisory committee and I will promptly being reviewing applications and winnow the pool down to a list of semi-finalists, whom we will interview over Zoom. We hope to bring three finalists to audition and interview in person sometime in the early fall. If all goes as planned, we would like to issue a call before Christmas, with a new Director of Music beginning work sometime in the early new year.

But above all, we want this to be a prayerful and thoughtful process. The advantage of having an Interim Organist and Choirmaster is that we don’t need to rush this process, even though we have no intention of dragging it out. We are listening to the Holy Spirit’s voice in this to discern whom God is calling to serve here as our next Director of Music. We might need to adjust and extend our timeline. We shall see, but in all things, we will endeavor to be faithful in this work.

Please pray for the advisory committee as this process unfolds, for Jack as he prepares to join us, and for Matt, who is preparing for an exciting new phase in his career. We are collecting a purse as a small token of thanks for Matt Glandorf’s many contributions to Good Shepherd. To contribute, please make checks payable to “Church of the Good Shepherd,” with “purse for Matt Glandorf” in the memo line, and leave in the collection plate or mail to the church office by Sunday, June 25. Thank you! Please recall that we will celebrate Matt’s time with us after Sung Mass on Sunday, July 2. Matt’s last Sunday will be on July 9, and until Jack Burnam joins us, we will have supply organists for Sunday Masses. Should you have any questions about the music search process, please reach out to me.

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

Week of May 7, 2023

Nearly eight months ago, the Rosemont Community Retreat House officially opened its doors. To date, twenty-one individuals have stayed in the house, twenty-one individuals have participated in group program retreats, three parish vestries have used the house for day retreats, and the diocesan staff has met in the house twice. Looking ahead, eleven individuals have bookings in the near future, five people are planning to attend the next program retreat in just under two weeks, and the diocesan Commission on Gun Violence will be holding their next meeting in the house in June. Additionally, the house has sponsored five day retreats since its opening. Distinguished guests such as Father Andrew Mead and Mother Sarah Coakley have stayed in the house during their visits to preach. And every Wednesday evening, from 7 to 8:30 p.m., parishioner Don McCown leads a contemplative prayer and mindfulness group that meets in the library.

And yet, it’s only the beginning. We have just released the 2023-2024 program year offerings for the Rosemont Community Retreat House, which you can learn more about here. Next season, we are expanding to include two online-only offerings by Dr. Ellen Charry, our theologian-in-residence. Please look at next year’s retreats, and help us spread the word! And “like” the retreat house on Facebook. I’m grateful to our wonderful publicist, Eliza Brinkley, a seminarian at Virginia Theological Seminary, who is promoting all of our offerings creatively and effectively.

The Rosemont Community Retreat House is an outreach ministry of Good Shepherd, Rosemont. First and foremost, it’s a place for prayer, rest, healing, spiritual formation, and fellowship. There are many kinds of poverty in our world, and while material poverty is indeed a pressing problem, there is also spiritual poverty. There is loneliness, too, in a world that is more connected than it has ever been and where people are, at the same time, increasingly more and more isolated. The retreat house is a place to build community and foster healing, and this is one form of outreach to the poor.

There is only one aspect of our envisioned mission for the retreat house that has not yet transpired. For various reasons, we have not yet been able to host a family through Hosts for Hospitals. But that still remains a possibility, which we hope will occur in the near future. We are also looking at ways to connect with other organizations who seek lodging for families visiting the Philadelphia region for medical care. If you have ideas, I would love to hear about them.

Finally, since the Rosemont Community Retreat House is a parish ministry, I invite you to consider ways in which you can help. We need your help! Here are some possibilities:

• Cook or serve meals for program retreats. You can make them at home and bring them to the retreat house when needed. It’s simple. Or if you wish, donate a meal from a restaurant. We will accept those, too!

• Ferry dirty laundry to the cleaners as needed.

• Welcome guests.

• Share our programming with friends and family.

• Donate to support operating expenses and scholarships for retreatants.

To assist with any in-person tasks, please email Chris Wittrock.

I’m grateful to all who have supported our retreat house ministry in so many ways. Thank you! And may God bless this peaceful house, which seeks to be a beacon of prayer, hospitality, love, fellowship, and healing.

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

Week of April 30, 2023

Jerome Berryman, the founder of Godly Play (a Montessori-based curriculum that we use for our youngest children at Good Shepherd), considers the Parable of the Good Shepherd to be the foundational story for children in their growing relationship with God. In this, Berryman is clearly influenced by Sophia Cavalletti (1917 - 2011), the late Roman Catholic educator who developed the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd Montessori-based curriculum.

The more I have taught and preached, the more I understand how this is so. Perhaps it’s obvious: I’m the rector of a parish named The Church of the Good Shepherd. But I think the image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd is utterly compelling. It really does encapsulate all that Jesus did, taught, and preached in his earthly life. First, Jesus never abandons us. We are never alone. When we are lost, he will find us and bring us home. Second, Jesus’s seeking of the lost is based in his unconditional, sacrificial love for all humankind. No one is too insignificant to receive his love and care. Third, Jesus is always present and always true. He is a stable and constant presence, no matter how amiss things are around us. He sticks with us, especially when worldly leaders and others do not. He is the opposite of the hireling, who gives up when the chips are down, who is a coward, and who is only a “shepherd” when it’s convenient. When the wolf comes, the hireling runs away, abandoning the sheep. The hireling is self-consumed and is not a real leader. Finally, the Good Shepherd knows each one of his sheep by name, and his sheep know the sound of his voice. Consequently, they will follow him. But in contrast to a leader who gets sheep to follow even when it is to their detriment, Jesus the Good Shepherd leads his sheep to safety, into God’s eternal sheepfold.

Part of the complexity and richness of St. John’s use of the Good Shepherd image for Jesus is that we can easily identify with any character in the story. Of course, Jesus is the foundational, primary Good Shepherd. But there are also times when each of us is called to be a good shepherd to others. And at some point or another, we’re all lost sheep. Perhaps we’ve been the hireling from time to time. Maybe we’ve encountered the wolf on an occasion. It’s a beautiful irony that this parish, named after Jesus the Good Shepherd, found itself to be a wandering sheep for many years. It was corporately the lost sheep. And what we’ve recently discovered is that Jesus found us. We are on his shoulders, and he’s bringing us safely home. No parish, no matter how small and broken, is beyond the reach of the Good Shepherd’s loving embrace. Good Shepherd, Rosemont, is a testament to that fact.

In my role as rector of this parish, I think constantly about what it means to be a good shepherd. I do not take this responsibility lightly. I am committed to being with you, loving you, and accompanying you on your journey in Christ. When you are lost, I want to be there with you. But this is also our duty as a parish. Because of our namesake, I believe we are called to be a collective shepherd to the lost in the world, to allow our parish church to be a safe and loving sheepfold rather than a sheepfold with closed gates to keep certain people out. How can we be such a place in our community and in the world? In what ways is God calling us to be a good shepherd to others?

This Sunday we will celebrate our Feast of Title. Because our parish is not named after a patron saint, we always commemorate our Feast of Title on the Fourth Sunday of Easter, when the Gospel reading is always about Jesus the Good Shepherd. This year we have a full day planned! Father Andrew Mead, the 8th Rector of this parish and Rector Emeritus of St. Thomas Church Fifth Avenue will be our guest preacher at both Masses (and celebrant at 8 a.m.). We have a celebratory luncheon planned after Sung Mass (register here by the end of Friday, April 28!) And then our day concludes with Choral Evensong and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament at 3 p.m. I hope you can join us for a day to rejoice and give thanks that God, who gave his Son the Good Shepherd of the sheep for the salvation of the world, found this parish when it was lost. God, in his great goodness, has provided for us and ensured us that we do have a future and that the Church and world do need this parish. Let us give thanks as we move into the new creation that God is calling us to be, which God has raised up from the old. I will look forward to seeing you on Sunday!

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

Week of April 23, 2023

I remember the first funeral I ever attended. I must have been in the second grade or so. I was nervous beforehand, and I recall sitting in the church pew waiting for the coffin to arrive at the door of the church. When it did, it was covered with a white pall by the priest and led into the church, just as the body of the person being buried was brought into the church in a white garment to be baptized many years before. In hindsight, I am thankful that my mother took me to that funeral. I’m grateful that she did not try to shield me from the reality of death. The funeral was not a traumatic experience for me; it was a helpful life lesson that we can’t avoid death.

Since that funeral well over thirty year ago, I have attended many more funerals. I have been the celebrant as a priest at numerous funerals. I have sat at the bedsides of those who are dying. I have given Last Rites. I have gone to be with families when their loved ones have died. “In the midst of life, we are in death,” the Book of Common Prayer reminds us, in the beautiful but sobering words from the committal service, when the body or ashes of a person are laid to rest.

And yet, in the modern West, we live in a culture and age in which many seek to deny the reality of death. It’s a strange and tragic irony that in a nation where senseless violence is a daily reality, many people seem to believe they’ll live forever. Some are looking for a cure for death. People don’t want to talk about death. Modern medicine has made it possible for people to live much longer, but sometimes at great expense of quality of life. The vast majority of obituaries in the newspaper don’t say someone died but, instead, use other euphemisms to refer to death. But it’s undeniably true that each of us will die one day. No semantic gymnastics or quests for human-devised immortality will change that.

On Sunday, after Sung Mass, I will be leading a conversation entitled “Ars Moriendi: Prayerfully and Practically Preparing for Death and Dying.” It may seem strange to discuss death in Eastertide, but the Easter season is exactly when we are confronted with the fact that death and life are inextricably bound together. When we are baptized, we die to sin and rise to newness of life. The resurrection of Jesus Christ tells us that death is a reality but is not the end of the story. The mark of Christian maturity is to live each day as if it might be our last, in holy preparation for the time when we can commend our own souls to God’s eternal care beyond the grave.

Preparing for death is difficult, if not impossible, when one is in ill health, actively dying, or not in compos mentis. This is why the art (and I use that word deliberately) of preparing for death is a lifelong Christian practice. By the time you are reading these words, you have moved closer to death than when you began reading them. This is not supposed to be depressing or scary. It is meant to be a joyful hope that we are that much nearer to the closer presence of God.

And beyond efforts to prepare one’s own soul for dying and death, it is crucial (as the Book of Common Prayer reminds us) to have one’s own earthly affairs in order out of consideration for one’s family. Mourning the death of a loved one can be excruciating for family and friends. The more each of us can prepare for our own death in practical terms, the more gracious we are being to those we love.

I hope you will join me in conversation on Sunday after Sung Mass. Coffee and light refreshments will be available as always. I will talk about a spiritual and theological preparation for death and dying, and I will discuss practical concerns to consider, including the planning of one’s own funeral. The Church expects that I, as your parish priest, will not neglect this important responsibility. Our conversation is not intended to be a depressing one but a realistic, honest, mature, and hopeful one. I will look forward to seeing you on Sunday, as we continue to celebrate the Great Fifty Days of Easter and its abiding hope in the resurrection from the dead.

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

Week of April 16, 2023

The Second Sunday of Easter is frequently referred to as “Low Sunday,” but that is an unfortunate choice of words, isn’t it? I’d prefer not to assume that there will be fewer people in the pews in church on the Sunday after Easter Day or that something about that Sunday’s Mass will seem deficient. Indeed, we are only just beginning our Eastertide journey. While Lent consists of forty days, Eastertide has fifty days. In this Sunday’s famous reading of “Doubting Thomas” (although the word “doubt” never occurs in the original Greek text!), we are challenged to confront all that makes us afraid of being Christian. What are you afraid of, and how will the Risen Christ empower you to move beyond fear?

Historically, the Great Fifty Days after Easter has been a period of “mystagogia,” a time for the illumination of the “mysteries” of the faith and when the Church traditionally prepared newly-baptized persons for ministry and service. Might we say that the common liturgical deemphasis on the Great Fifty Days has non-liturgical ramifications? In what ways does everything stop at the door of the church after Mass? Is formation divorced from worship and ministry? Is mission rooted in worship? Do we engage in acts of service and outreach without anchoring them in the truth of Jesus’s resurrection? Eastertide is precisely the season to put our money where our mouth is. If we profess a crucified and risen Savior, then we are also called out from behind the closed doors of our churches into service of the poor, neglected, lonely, and oppressed. We are asked to ensconce all we do in the astounding truth that Jesus was raised from the dead and ascended to his Father’s right hand, therefore enabling us to accomplish even greater works than he did (John 14:12) because of the Holy Spirit’s power. How’s that for a charge?

At the Great Vigil of Easter, everything became new. We lit a new fire, from which the Paschal Candle was lit. We blessed new water in the font, which was poured into the holy water stoups by the church doors and sprinkled on the heads of the faithful at Mass. New bread and wine were consecrated at the First Mass of Easter. So, during Eastertide, we, too, are made new once again by God.

What will this look like for us? For some of us, we might make an Eastertide resolution to forgive those we have refused to forgive. The Risen Christ is the One who gives us power and authority to bind and loose and thereby gives us grace to forgive. For some of us, Eastertide could be an opportunity to become evangelists for the Good News that has brought light and life to our broken lives. More than simply inviting someone to church, evangelism is a visible commitment to allowing one’s entire life to radiate the love of Christ. For some of us, Eastertide is a chance to prayerfully discern the spiritual gifts that God has given each of us for ministry. We all have gifts that are intended to be used, not hidden under a bushel basket. How will you use yours? In what ways are you afraid of using your gifts and why? If I can be of assistance in discernment of your own spiritual gifts, I would be delighted to speak with you about this.

This Eastertide, consider this: let the small, flickering light of the Paschal Candle (which is lit for liturgies during the entire Fifty Days) be a reminder of the Light that enlightens the world and that defies death. Let the Paschal Candle’s light be a summons to overcome whatever is keeping you afraid of living fully as a disciple of the Risen Christ. Let this light be a powerful beacon of hope that when death does its worst and speaks its lies, a greater truth calls more powerfully: come and see, and you will be changed.

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

Week of April 9, 2023

The holiest week of the Christian year has begun, and we are on the brink of the most important liturgy of the entire Christian year. It is one liturgy in three acts: The Paschal Triduum of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Great Vigil and First Mass of Easter. In the Triduum, we come closest to how the Church’s ancient Holy Week liturgies were celebrated. Rather than commemorating different events in Jesus’s life separately, the earliest liturgies of Holy Week were observed in one long liturgy, centered around the historical locations of the final moments of Jesus’s earthly life. While there were pauses within the liturgy for practical reasons (i.e., so people could eat and rest), the liturgy of Holy Week was meant to encompass all the events of Jesus final hours on earth. The triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the passion, the cross, the empty tomb: they are all there in the way the earliest Christians celebrated Holy Week.

This is important because it means that, if we participate in all the Triduum liturgies, we aren’t given the option of choosing what we want to experience, suffering or glory. If we’re going to have salvation, it comes with the whole package: Jesus’s earthly life, his saving deeds, his ministry, his teaching, his suffering, his death, and his resurrection from the dead. When we participate in all the liturgies of the Paschal Triduum, we must acknowledge our own suffering and sinfulness. We must be honest. We must go into the darkest moments of existence with our own selves and with others. We don’t get to pick Easter alone from a buffet of offerings. We either have all of the Paschal Mystery, or we don’t have it at all.

If you have never before experienced all the liturgies of Holy Week, would you consider making time to do so this year? I believe you will be changed. If you truly want to understand the Christian faith, these liturgies will teach you about the deepest mystery of the Gospel.

Here’s some of the good news we will find this week: When truth itself has lost its moorings, eternal Truth speaks confidently in the faces of lies. When immigrants are allowed to die at the border of a country that could offer them a better life, the Risen Christ stands at that border, too, wounds and all, to give them life. When racism continues to play out in insidious ways publicly and privately, we are shown in the mystery of baptism the potential to rise to new life from the death of our sinful prejudices. When hateful rhetoric demonizes our Jewish brothers and sisters, the heirs of God’s first covenantal promises, we know that the mystery of salvation surpasses heinous scapegoating. When LGBTQ+ youth are denied support and safety by the state, leading some to suicidal despair, and while some may wish to wash their hands of their blood, the Good Shepherd finds the lost and brings them home. When death speaks all its accusing lies, the voice of the Risen One tells each of us that we are loved and all that is past can be forgiven.

This is not a week for triumphalist glory. It is a week to celebrate that our truest hope meets us in darkest despair, not with easy answers or facile solutions, but with patience and long-suffering compassion. May you find the loving embrace of the Risen Christ in all the varied emotional moments of this week. In the Paschal Mystery, may you find the salvation offered to the entire world. And may this week be a blessing to you and yours.

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

Week of April 2, 2023

On Sunday, Palm Sunday, we will enter deeply into a different kind of time. Truth be told, the entire Church year, every Mass, every liturgy, really, takes place in both linear/human (chronos) and God’s (kairos) time. But to fully appreciate the sacred mysteries of Holy Week, we must intentionally stand with one foot in ordinary time and another in the eternity of God’s time.

The Palm Sunday liturgy can be disorienting, which is actually one of its most important characteristics. The prayer book’s name for the Palm Sunday liturgy notes the dissonance of this day: The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday. We begin with the Palm liturgy, in which we participate in Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Palms are blessed, and we process around the church with cries of Hosanna. If this seems like a charade, it’s because it is. It’s a charade because to facilely welcome Jesus with boisterous hosannas belies our sinful tendencies to push him outside the gates of our hearts. But we must enact this hypocrisy in the liturgy so that we can begin to live into that rich paradox that is the Christian life: we are sinners and yet redeemed, we welcome Jesus while we reject him. If you want to learn more about a particular soteriological understanding of the liturgies of Holy Week, I highly recommend This Is the Night: Suffering, Salvation, and the Liturgies of Holy Week by James Farwell (New York: T & T International, 2005). Farwell’s premise is that the very mode of our salvation lies in our participation in the liturgies of Holy Week. And so on Palm Sunday, we will find a great dissonance between the initial hosannas of the Palm liturgy and then the whiplash effect of moving to the liturgy of the Passion, where we are in the crowd crying for Christ’s crucifixion.

As I said, Holy Week invites us into a different way of encountering time. We do not move chronologically through Holy Week in the order of the events of Jesus’s final days. We hear one Passion account (from the synoptic Gospels) on Palm Sunday, move to the washing of feet and institution of the Eucharist on Maundy Thursday, and then we are back at the Passion again on Good Friday (from John’s Gospel). Holy Week is not linear. If you subscribe to James Farwell’s thesis, by Good Friday we are in a very different place than on Palm Sunday. Over the course of Holy Week, we move from a perceived distance/separation from Christ in the fickleness of the Palm Sunday crowd to a “soteriological fusion of identities” on Good Friday. The pivot point seems to be Maundy Thursday, where in the footwashing we are commanded to imitate Christ’s humble servanthood when we wash the feet of others and strive to love others as he loves us. By Good Friday, we are in a place of intercession, “soteriologically fused” with Christ when we pray the Solemn Collects, as we inhabit the place prepared for us by Christ the Great High Priest.

When we arrive at the Great Vigil and First Mass of Easter, we arrive at the most important liturgy of the Church year. In the great Exsultet hymn sung before the Paschal Candle, we proclaim “This is the night.” It’s the night when God rescued the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. It’s the night when death was put to flight. It’s the night when we moved (and still move!) from death into life.

At the heart of all these liturgies is the great Paschal Mystery, which stands at the center of every Mass. In this mystery, we do not mechanically appropriate saving grace by virtue of Christ’s blood. The liturgies themselves become salvific, and we find events of the historical past being re-presented in the present, where they are truly alive, real, and saving for us. As the beautiful Spiritual asks, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” Our resounding answer in Holy Week is YES. We were there. We are there now. And we will continue to be. . .

I hope that I have given you enough of a teaser to seriously consider attending all the liturgies of the Paschal Triduum (Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Great Vigil of Easter). They are the most important liturgies of the entire year. It requires a sacrifice to make the time necessary to attend them, but it’s well worth it. If you want to begin to understand the mystery of what it means to be a Christian, these liturgies will help you.

I will offer something else, too: as we hear many readings from holy Scripture over the coming week (some of which, like John’s Passion, can be difficult to bear at times), we hear them as they are situated in the liturgies themselves. Liturgy invites us to move from our heads into our hearts. Hearing Scripture liturgically is not so much about analysis as it is letting it speak to us metaphorically, poetically, and in an embodied way through ritual. I encourage you to consider all this as you participate in the Holy Week liturgies.

But perhaps the greatest news of all, is that these liturgies don’t teach us to chronologically move from suffering to relief of suffering. They defy linear time and modern metanarratives of simplistic progress. They reassure us that God meets us in the liturgies. (See more in Farwell’s book.) We don’t pass through Good Friday just to get to Easter; we find Easter even in Good Friday. In John’s Gospel, the cross is the moment of Jesus’s glorification, even in the face of suffering and death. This is God’s strange, eternal time. It offers hope to everyone who is lamenting now. In Holy Week, we lament with parents who grieve the deaths of their children massacred in schools. We lament with those who still miss their loved ones whom COVID took three years ago. We lament with those grieving recent losses. We lament with our Jewish brothers and sisters, who have experienced hatred and violence during this week for centuries, as they still face anti-Semitism. We lament with every person now who is longing for joy. We lament with all our brothers and sisters, but we see in the darkness of such suffering and trauma a candle burning as a still, small point of a newly-kindled flame. It shows an empty tomb. The flame will grow and spread throughout the church until, waiting in the darkness and encouraged by its meager light, we sing, Rejoice.

A blessed Holy Week to you.

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

Week of March 26, 2023

Let’s be honest: prayer often is not easy. Which of us truly knows how to pray? What words do we use in the wake of devastating loss or in a deep depression? How do we articulate our needs and desires without trying to sway God’s hand too much or telling God how to answer our prayer? When you are numb from grief or, alternatively and oddly, when things are going swimmingly, finding the right words to pray eludes us.

Which is why St. Paul’s description of prayer in his Letter to the Romans is some of the best news in the Bible. “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). Paul gets it all out there: we simply don’t know the right way to pray. We’re human. On this side of the Fall (using the words of theologian Lauren Winner), we will inevitably ask for the wrong things. And yet, the effort is worth everything. The answer is not to stop praying but to let God pray within us, as Rowan Williams says. We must submit, we must cede control, and this is not easy for us.

I usually think of St. Paul’s words in relation to wordless prayer. Sitting silently as our interior space aches with grief or holding our anger intentionally before God is prayer. We lack the linguistic facility to articulate what we really need, so the Spirit prays within us. But there is another way in which we can let the Spirit pray within us and make ourselves available for God to answer our prayers in his good time, as much as that may seem like procrastination to us. This making ourselves available is perhaps most effectively seen in the regularity and rhythm of the Daily Office.

A priest friend of mine recently remarked that the rhythm of daily prayer (the Mass and the Daily Office) is the “heartbeat” of the parish, especially in Anglo-Catholic ones that make an effort to keep this rhythm. I believe this is true. It seems less than honest to put on a splash on Sundays for Sung or High Mass without recognizing the echoes of that prayer during the week. Daily prayer—ordinary prayer, maybe with only a priest praying the Office, or with one or two in the congregation at Mass on a Thursday—is what keeps us humble. It’s easy to enjoy the sumptuousness of a Sunday Mass, but the ordinariness of daily prayer ensures that we are actually intending to stick with God in good and bad times. There is no pomp and circumstance in daily prayer. Sundays are when we eat, liturgically, whatever we want—fried foods, lipids, sweet desserts (except maybe during Lent!). On weekdays, we need to ensure that our diet is healthy for the benefit of our spiritual system. Daily prayer is also a humbling reminder that prayer can be sustained by even one or two pray-ers, whose prayers intercede for all. When schedules don’t permit everyone to be present on Monday or Tuesday for Evening Prayer, those who are there pray for us. We need each other as members of Christ’s living Body.

And people come. I can’t usually predict when they will come, but strangers wander into the church as our doors are open for prayer. Some stay to pray with us. Some realize they want to stay with us long term. People’s need for prayer is not limited to Sundays.

Tomorrow, we have an opportunity to spend one of the waning days of Lent reminding ourselves of the power of ordinary, daily prayer. Our Rector’s Warden, Donald McCown, will lead a Lenten Quiet Day inspired by the interesting quasi-monastic seventeenth century community of Little Gidding, England. Dr. McCown will tell us more about it tomorrow, but suffice it to say that the historic witness of Little Gidding is a part of what we aim to do at Good Shepherd. We keep the rhythm of daily prayer suggested by our Book of Common Prayer. It’s not fancy or complicated. It’s just what we do.

If you’re looking to claim a few moments of quiet and prayerful reflection during Lent, I encourage you to attend tomorrow’s Quiet Day. You can register online. In the middle of the day, at noon, we will celebrate Mass for the Feast of the Annunciation; all are welcome for that. For a moment, we’ll let the extra-ordinariness of a Major Holy Day interrupt the ordinary rhythm of daily prayer.

Often, prayer is about not trying too hard. It’s simply placing yourself intentionally before the Triune God, within whose life prayer is already happening. The Father has sent his Son, in the power of the Spirit, to sweep us up into that divine life of prayer, so that we may ultimately live with him. Whether aching with pain or complacent with happiness, our task is to remember to place ourselves there before God. For when we don’t really know how to pray, which is most of the time, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. Thanks be to God.

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

Week of March 19, 2023

If you open one of the cabinets in the vesting sacristy, push aside cassocks and surplices hanging there, you will see a rectangular block with 1893 etched into it. This is the cornerstone of the church building. Sadly, when I first arrived at Good Shepherd, that cabinet had mold growing on the wooden door, which we eventually washed down with bleach and cleaned. Perhaps it was something of a metaphor: in decades of parish life, ups and downs, the church’s very cornerstone was forgotten in the busyness of other things. I occasionally like to open that sacristy cabinet and look at the cornerstone and imagine what the day was like in 1893 when it was laid. The cornerstone reminds me of the solid foundation of the parish.

That cornerstone is also a metaphor for the countless generations of those who have come before us at Good Shepherd. It is always interesting to me that those who are visiting the church for the first time often comment to me that the church building has a good feeling. I don’t believe this is new age thinking. I think there really is something to the power of prayer that permeates the walls and corners of a building. Haven’t you ever noticed this in an ancient church? Have you been able to feel the prayer that has taken place over hundreds of years? I am always overjoyed when someone tells me they feel that goodness (and joy?) when they walk into the Church of the Good Shepherd. It is encouraging to think that no matter how many difficulties a parish might suffer, the goodness of rightly ordered prayer triumphs. When I say rightly ordered, I mean that prayer itself can be distorted by human sin; we don’t always know how to ask for the right things (for more on this, see a wonderful book The Dangers of Christian Practice: On Wayward Gifts, Characteristic Damage, and Sin by Lauren F. Winner, New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2018). But it seems that even though I’m sure prayer has been disordered at times in the past at Good Shepherd, there has been enough rightly intentioned prayer to carry the parish through troubled times. Christ has won the victory over sin and death.

We, after all, as Christians in this little corner of God’s kingdom, have been brought to the present day by generations who have come before us. They are a cloud of witnesses who, since the founding of the parish in 1869, have been committed to a catholic expression of Anglicanism within the Episcopal Church, to serving the poor and needy, and to bringing the Gospel to the ends of the earth (read more here). To some extent, the commitment to regularized, structured prayer rooted in the Book of Common Prayer protects us from our tendency to offer warped prayers. And I’m grateful for that.

At Good Shepherd, we are, in many ways, a community that is rebuilding. And the only way we can do that is, of course, with God’s gracious help. But God is also working through the prayerful and financial support of those who have come before us and those who are now with us, whether living geographically close to the church or afar. This is why our parish Advancement Committee has now formed an official Friends of Good Shepherd society. You can read more about this Friends society, but suffice it to say that those of us on the ground here in Rosemont can’t rebuild this parish alone. We need God first and foremost, but we also need the prayers and financial support of our friends, near and far.

Perhaps the greatest piece of good news in being a Christian is that we are never alone in what we do. We often forget this, but it’s true. On difficult days in the parish, I remind myself of this. I am deeply grateful for those of you who have already befriended this parish. Last week, emails were sent to a group of people who are connected with the parish but do not worship regularly with us. Some of them are charter members of the Friends of Good Shepherd because they already contribute financially to the parish. Others we hope will make an annual donation of at least $50 to be an official Friend. We in the parish commit to praying regularly for these Friends, and we intend to keep them connected in various ways, especially in a digital age. Each year, we will have a Friends gathering on the weekend of Good Shepherd Sunday, our Feast of Title.

Please note the celebrations planned for this year’s Feast of Title on April 30, when former rector Father Andrew Mead will return to the parish to preach at the morning Masses. We will also hold a celebratory luncheon after Sung Mass (register here), and we will pray Choral Evensong and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament at 3 p.m. If you know of people who might like to become official Friends of Good Shepherd, would you please invite them to visit our website and learn more about Friends?

We are currently a small parish, even though we are growing, but we face enormous potential as well as enormous challenges. We are not too proud to ask for help. We routinely pray for God’s help. If you love this parish but live afar, will you consider becoming a Friend? And above all, will you pray for us? I believe this parish is a gift to the local community and wider Church. We are still discerning the specific ways in which God is calling us to serve that community and Church. And we would love your prayerful and financial support as we seek to become a light to the world for the sake of the Gospel.

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

Week of March 12, 2023

The first presiding bishop I ever heard of when I first started attending Episcopal churches over twenty years ago was Bishop Frank Griswold. Wherever you were in the United States (or beyond in some cases), countless parishes were praying for Frank, our presiding bishop. Little could I have imagined at the time that one day Bishop Griswold would be connected with a parish of mine. From Christ Church, New Haven, Connecticut, to the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, New York City, Bishop Griswold’s paths kept peripherally crossing mine, although I really did not know him at all.

But when I came here to Good Shepherd, I realized that he had been associated with this parish since his earliest years as a priest. He was born right here in Bryn Mawr, and when serving his first position as curate at our neighboring parish, the Church of the Redeemer, he would regularly say one of the daily Masses here at Good Shepherd back in Father Cupit’s tenure as rector. Bishop Griswold was presiding bishop during the deepest throes of Good Shepherd’s former troubles. And it was a lovely closure to a life well-lived that saw Bishop Griswold supporting the Church of the Good Shepherd, Rosemont, as it rebounded from difficult times, a parish he knew and loved from so many years back.

I was deeply saddened to learn of Bishop Griswold’s death on Sunday at age 85. As someone has already noted, he was a “gentle giant” in the Church. He did not lead through boisterous speech but through a quiet depth of holiness. I feel enormously privileged to have known him and listened to him share the wisdom of his deep spirituality with younger priests. Just last November, he led one of our program retreats here at the Rosemont Community Retreat House, “To Charm and Attract,” which was intended for clergy and musicians working together in parish ministry. It was a marvelous retreat.

Some of you may remember that Bishop Griswold was the celebrant and preacher for the Great Vigil of Easter here at Good Shepherd not quite two years ago, and he also led our Lenten adult formation series that Lent of 2021. He has always been tremendously supportive of this parish getting back on its feet again. I think this was a real testimony to his humility and character. Even this small, struggling parish was worthy of his attention and support.

But I also suspect that if Bishop Griswold were reading this message, he would not wish me to go on and on about him. So, I’d like to draw our attention to something that I think he taught the Church, if not directly then indirectly, in his service as a bishop. Bishop Griswold was a catholic Anglican, and to me, that meant embodying a spirit of generosity. He served as co-chair of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission for five years, and he was deeply involved in ecumenical work. But he did not get caught up in “issues.” His ecumenical spirit never caused him to shrink from moving forward when the Gospel called for it. He served as presiding bishop during one of the most tumultuous times in recent history in the Episcopal Church—the debates over human sexuality prompted by the ordination of Gene Robinson as the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church. Bishop Griswold shepherded the Episcopal Church through a perilous time in the life of the wider Anglican Communion with grace and compassion.

What we have to learn from this example is that our Anglo-Catholicism and commitment to tradition is never an excuse to be exclusive or spiritually parsimonious. It is never an excuse to judge others within the Church, to behave as if God withholds grace from some, or to ignore the Gospel’s power to reach all people. My prayer is that Anglo-Catholicism will move forward and thrive as wide-armed and generous. I like to think we are aiming for that at Good Shepherd. Catholic means “whole” (more accurately than “universal”). It is ironic that some who most profess to be “Catholic” are deeply provincial in mindset.

This all makes me think of another holy person from the Church’s recent memory, the late Archbishop Michael Ramsey (1904-1988), who embodied his catholicity in his theological generosity and lack of pretension. Archbishop Ramsey always cautioned against making God smaller than he is. This is about some of the wisest advice we can heed as Christians.

As the Church mourns the death of Bishop Griswold, we can celebrate his enormous contributions to the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, as well as his commitment to being a truly catholic Anglican, which always envisioned a God much larger than our frail human images and restrictions. There is a power in the catholic strand of Anglicanism that the Church needs today, and it is nothing less than an incarnational witness to such generosity. Even now, Bishop Griswold, Archbishop Ramsey, and others like Archbishop Desmond Tutu—all of whom lived generously as catholic-minded Anglicans—can pray for us in our earthly journeys. May we aspire to know and love a God who is more generous than we can ever imagine. And may the soul of Bishop Griswold, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God rest in peace.

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

Week of March 5, 2023

Depending on the situation, the word “discipline” can either be interpreted positively or negatively. It takes discipline to master a sport, play a Beethoven piano sonata, or drive a car safely. I remember first learning the organ in college and laboring rather tediously through technical exercises. I wasn’t allowed to play the pedals for months, but I persevered. I knew, somehow, that this hard work would pay off. It did. When I finally moved on to rigorous repertoire, not only could I play the notes with ease, but I could make real music. The discipline of practice, which previously might have seemed restrictive, was now the means by which I could add rubato and other musical gestures.

But, apply the word discipline to the spiritual life, and most people nervously cough or say that discipline gets in the way of their prayer and relationship with God. If only they could be free to pray as they wish and choose what and what not to take on, their lives would be spiritually better. Without wholly dismissing the flexibility necessary for the spiritual life, we should be wary of eschewing talk about spiritual discipline.

Lent is certainly an appropriate season to explore anew the meaning of spiritual discipline. The Book of Common Prayer, in a little known (or conveniently ignored?) instruction, says that Ash Wednesday, the weekdays of Lent and Holy Week (except for the Feast of the Annunciation), Good Friday, and all other Fridays of the year (except in Christmastide and Eastertide) are days “observed by special acts of discipline and self-denial” (p. 17). In Lent, some of you may be accustomed to avoiding flesh meat on Fridays. We pray the Stations of the Cross on Fridays to walk the way of suffering and death with Jesus. But what does “discipline” and “self-denial” mean more broadly?

Above all, I think it means that the intentionality, focus, and time that we give to many aspects of our lives outside the Church also belong within the Church. Why is that so often not the case? It takes discipline to pray at set times during the day, especially when we are busy and don’t feel like doing “one more thing.” It takes discipline to rouse the children from bed on a Sunday morning to go to church. Temporarily, perhaps it’s a chore, but long-term, it’s a vital planting of seeds of faith that will hopefully bloom in the lives of those children down the road. It takes discipline to carve out time for God in our lives that are, frankly, overstuffed by too many demands on our attention.

Discipline, if uncomfortable at first, can bring great joy, and it always brings great freedom. It brings the freedom of knowing the only love that matters—the love of Christ Jesus. It brings the freedom of forgiveness from self-hatred, contempt for others, and our sins. It brings the freedom of knowing, more than anything else, that God does not love us based on what we accomplish but simply for who we are. We don’t need to be overachievers to win God’s love. We simply need to be ourselves, ready to acknowledge our frailty, to repent, and finally, to accept God’s gift of mercy and forgiveness.

How will this season of Lent be a time of renewed commitment to discipline? How might you benefit from such a commitment? How might you be changed? And how might this discipline be not “one more thing” to do, but an embrace of the truth of the love that sets us all free?

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

Week of February 26, 2023

Have you ever been wracked with guilt over something you did, thought that God could not possibly forgive you, and carried the painful guilt so deeply within that you couldn’t let it go? Or do you happen to be an overscrupulous person who is frequently convinced that you have committed grievous sins but aren’t sure how to make amends (or whether you’ve actually sinned at all)? Or have you felt like your own self-reflection and brief recalling of sins before bed or at Mass is not enough to keep you spiritually honest? If you have answered yes to any of the previous questions, then you may find the Reconciliation of a Penitent helpful.

Many Episcopalians (and non-Episcopalians!) are surprised to learn that auricular confession has always been a part of the Anglican tradition. It has not always been made self-evident within the various versions of the Book of Common Prayer, but our current American Book of Common Prayer of 1979 has made this sacrament abundantly explicit. Unlike its predecessor prayer books, the 1979 book has an entire pastoral office for the Reconciliation of a Penitent, including two forms that may be used.

The well-known Anglican adage holds true: “all may, some should, none must.” The Sacrament of Reconciliation is not required by the Episcopal Church. In other words, we don’t say that you have committed yet another sin by not availing yourselves of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. But that doesn’t mean that this particular sacrament would not be of great value to all Episcopalians and Anglicans. Some should. Perhaps, many should.

The purpose of this week’s message is not to explain the theology of the Rite for Reconciliation within the prayer book. That will occur on Sunday after Sung Mass, when I will teach an adult formation class on the Sacrament of Reconciliation in the Episcopal Church. In my opinion, this sacrament is not practiced widely enough in the Anglican Communion nor is it taught about frequently enough. I have found that fulsome teaching about this sacrament of healing can soften people’s various resistances to it.

Some of this resistance is held by those who have experienced private confession within another denomination, specifically the Roman Catholic Church. If this is you, I invite you to attend Sunday’s adult formation class to learn how Anglicans view the Sacrament of Reconciliation. I believe we Anglicans have a beautiful way of looking at it. Or some people may be resisting private confession because of deep post-Reformation suspicions. Why do we need to confess our sins before a priest (representing the Church) if we can do it on our own, keeping it solely between us and God? It’s a good question, and I have a response to it. But that will wait until Sunday!

In short, suffice it to say that the season of Lent is an appropriate time to make a confession. The Sacrament of Reconciliation, unlike confessions at Mass and on our own in the privacy of our homes, keeps us spiritually honest in a completely different way. Private confession has always been a vital part of the Anglo-Catholic witness in the Church. At Good Shepherd private confession can take place any time at the request of a penitent. Should you wish to make a confession this Lent, please contact me to schedule an appointment. The seal of the confessional is morally absolute. The confessional should be the safest place on earth, where trust is at its deepest level. I hope to see you on Sunday for Mass and conversation afterwards!

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

Week of February 19, 2023

One of the gifts of praying the Daily Office is being immersed in the words of holy Scripture. There are some days when, in the moment of praying the Office, the assigned readings are either confusing, disturbing, or seem to have little relevance to our lives. And then later in the day, some event will summon up a phrase from the words read in the morning Office. The Daily Office lectionary has, of course, been established for years, but God knows precisely how to illuminate certain words or phrases for us in the course of our lives.

On Wednesday, the first reading at Morning Prayer consisted of portions from Isaiah 63 and 64. These familiar words leaped off the page for me: “O Lord, thou art our Father; we are the clay, and thou art our potter; we are all the work of thy hand” (63:8). On the eve of Lent, it occurred to me that these words sum up exactly what Lent is: Lent is a season of inner renewal in which we allow ourselves to be clay in the hands of God.

This is not easy work. If I’m honest with myself, I usually want to be the potter for the clay of my life. And God becomes a “consultant” in the process. God, I will do this with my life, and I need this also. Give me advice on how to accomplish it. But am I willing to fully submit myself as unformed clay to the hands of almighty God? That is the hard work of Lent.

It’s not difficult to find Lent burdensome, morose, and devoid of joy, and yet this is precisely the opposite of what Lent should be. Lent is a season of joy found in the gifts of penitence and self-examination. Lent starts not with our sinful nature but with the goodness implanted within us from our birth. Recognizing our tendency towards sin is how to reclaim the original goodness (to quote the late priest and theologian John Macquarrie) latent within us. And we can only do this by being clay to the hands of God the potter.

On Ash Wednesday, February 22, we will hear humbling words as ashes are imposed on our foreheads: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” In the same place on our foreheads where we were anointed with the oil of chrism in baptism, sealed by the Holy Spirit, and marked as Christ’s own forever, we are given a physical reminder of our mortality. But this Lent, could we find joy and hope in the words said to us as ashes are imposed on our foreheads? Being reminded of our mortality enables us to rely on God to be shaped more fully into his likeness. That is something to celebrate.

Lent is a season of fasting, penitence, self-examination, renewal, and living more fully into our baptismal identity. But it’s also a season in which we try to find God’s grace in the disappointments and failures of life. In those humbling moments, we recognize that we cannot find abundant life on our own. And yes, God desires that we have abundant life (see John 10:10). But we need God’s help. After all, we are only clay. God is the potter, and God longs to mold each and every one of us into his likeness, reclaiming the original goodness within us, which God made and knew while we were still in our mother’s womb. We are “marvelously made” (Ps. 139:13).

Please note that on Ash Wednesday we have Low Mass at 8 a.m. and Sung Mass at 7 p.m., both with imposition of ashes. I hope you will made it a priority to come to Mass (or if you can’t make it to Good Shepherd, go somewhere else during your workday) in order to mark the beginning of a holy Lent. Our invitation to a holy Lent is not just about ourselves but about the salvation of the entire world. Join us for Stations of the Cross on Friday evenings at 6 p.m., after Evening Prayer. If you wish to make a private confession, reach out to me at any time to schedule a time for that sacrament. May you find the joy of God’s forgiveness in this Lenten season, and may you assent to the loving, creative hands of God the potter, who is forming you into a new creation.

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

Week of February 12, 2023

For the past few days, as I have looked at the news on my computer or smartphone, my heart has sunk at the increasing number of casualties in the earthquake on the border of Syria and Turkey. As of this writing, the dead number over 20,000. Certainly, that number will rise even by the time you read this message. Needless to say, we are praying daily in Morning and Evening Prayer (and when we have Mass) for those affected. It is imperative that we do so. When we gather for public prayer, especially when we gather for Mass, we are offering not just bread and wine, and not merely our selves (souls and bodies), but we are offering the brokenness of the world to God for healing, transformation, and redemption. All of those things are placed on the Altar before God. In the Mass, we pray for God to take all of it, bless it, and give it back to us so that we and the world can be put back together again.

I have been thinking about the meaning and context of public prayer as it occurs in the Mass since I have been preparing for this week’s Pilgrims in Christ class on the Eucharist. In that preparation, I came across some words of the late liturgist Robert Taft: “the purpose of the Eucharist is not to change bread and wine, but to change you and me: through baptism and eucharist it is we who are to become Christ for one another, and a sign to the world that is yet to hear his name” [from “What Does Liturgy Do? Toward a Soteriology of Liturgical Celebration: Some Theses,” in Primary Sources of Liturgical Theology, ed. Dwight Vogel (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2000), 143-44]. God always moves to change us in mysterious ways, but we must be ready and willing to be changed. Part of being changed means bringing not just parts of our selves and bodies into worship but all of it. And along with that, we bring not just money we drop in the collection plate. We bring all the concerns and needs of the world.

This is why the Prayers of the People at each Mass are not meant to be cookie-cutter prayers that eventually become meaningless through rote repetition. As a priestly people, we are obliged to add prayers for those specific needs and concerns that are rising up out of the world’s suffering, injustice, and cries of lament. To do otherwise is insensitive and neglectful of our calling. We name the devastating tragedy in Syria and Turkey in the presence of God and before his Altar, just moments before we bring the fruits of the earth to be taken, blessed, broken, and then shared as a sacramental sign of our interconnectedness with one another. We add prayers for an end to the hideous gun violence that seems never to stop. We pray for those individuals dear to our hearts. All of it needs to be brought before God and not simply captured in large, sweeping swathes of language. We need to be specific so that we can be specific about how we need to be changed by God.

There are moments in preparing the Sunday leaflets when I have to remind myself that I am not doing inconsequential work. There is a certain tedium in making sure the prayer list is up to date, but a reality check usually reminds me that it should be no tedium at all. It is prayerful work. The time and energy spent in keeping our prayer lists relevant and up-to-date, and the naming of all people in need at the Daily Office is the foundation of what it means for us to be a Christian people, a priestly people, always at prayer, interceding on behalf of the world before God’s throne.

If you have gotten in the habit of glossing over the prayer lists in our Sunday leaflets, look at them afresh. We pray through a parish cycle of prayer for parishioners and friends of the parish; your name is probably on that list, and if not, we’d love to add it! Just let me know. We pray for churches in the diocese and dioceses throughout the worldwide Anglican Communion. One of my favorite prayers is for those whom we do not yet know but whom God will bring to this parish to know and love our Lord. That is a pure prayer of submission. We can’t control those people we don’t yet know! Only God will send them here. Look around and notice whom God has sent here.

If you have petitions or names of people you would like to appear on our prayer list, please email Chris Wittrock at office@goodshepherdrosemont.com. Consider incorporating these intentions into your own daily habits of prayer. There is nothing more important we can do than this priestly work. And please pray for the people in Syria and Turkey. If you wish to make a donation to relief efforts through Episcopal Relief and Development, you can do so here. And when you come to Mass each Sunday, bring all that troubles and gives joy to your hearts. Don’t leave anything out. Bring it all, and place it on the Altar.

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

Week of February 5, 2023

At our annual parish meeting a couple of weeks ago, I invited the parish into a corporate rule of life. The foundation of all that we do as Christians is worship. Everything else flows from that worship. The life of the Christian is rooted in the praise, adoration, and worship of God. Although some may think that such a focus on worship neglects acts of charity and social justice, nothing could be further from the truth. As the late Roman Catholic monk and spiritual writer Thomas Merton said, contemplative prayer is the root of social justice. We only know how to respond to the world’s injustice if we are grounded in true prayer.

Putting worship first (and not mere programming, activities, or “fun”), is how we are shaped into a Christ-like people. Worship is not something we can control, even though some try to. Worship is pure and unadulterated adoration of God, with no objective other than to give God the glory due his Name and to enjoy God’s presence. There is no hidden agenda. There is no ulterior motive. We don’t (or shouldn’t!) worship in order to gain favor with God or get into heaven. We worship because that is what the Christian does. Worship is the only fitting response to what God has done for us.

I’m now inviting you to consider making intentional worship a part of your own spiritual life. I’m inviting you to think about living into a shared rule of life. But this rule of life is not just some vague thing; it’s a particular way of worshipping in a particular place and location. This rule is enacted geographically in a local context here at Good Shepherd. The late Anglican writer on ascetical theology Martin Thornton said that the “remnant” of the Church consists of those who abide faithfully by a rule of life in a particular parish church. When they do so, they are not narrowly interceding for the parish alone; the parish itself is a microcosm of the entire Body of Christ. Through the deep prayer of the remnant, others are drawn into this “core” of the parish. The remnant at prayer in a parish church (even if only three people) is praying for the entire world.

Thornton notes the threefold structure of an Anglican rule of life: 1) the Daily Office; 2) the Mass (without question on Sundays and Major Holy Days, and perhaps more frequently); and 3) private prayer (including meditative prayer). Good Shepherd’s liturgical life is built around this rule. Will you consider embracing this rule in our own local context? When you can’t be physically in the church on a weekday because of work or other obligations, consider adapting it to your own situation. Mark your day with prayer, wherever you are. A rule of life also demands flexibility.

The advantage of a rule is that we are shaped into the people God is calling us to be. The rule shapes us; we don’t shape it. God is the potter; we are the clay. We don’t observe the rule only when we feel like it. We don’t go to Sunday Mass when it’s convenient; we go when it’s demanded because what has distinguished Christians from the earliest days of the Church was keeping the Lord’s Day. Precisely when we don’t feel like attending Mass, we should go! The most effective way we can all support the work of this parish is to show up constantly to pray together.

One final word: we don’t observe a rule of life to “get” anything. We don’t do it so that this parish will grow. But, if we are indeed to continue to grow for the sake of the Gospel, we will only do so by being a faithful people, praying together (in person) in a particular place and time. We will not attract others to this parish through gimmicks or flashy initiatives. Yes, we absolutely must look outward and be in the community, but only God gives the growth. We pray. We plant seeds. We water them lovingly (frequently in our prayer), and then God gives the growth.

Beginning next week, weekday Masses will be held on Thursdays at 6 p.m. and Fridays at 8 a.m. There will be no Mass on Wednesday mornings. This new schedule will ensure that a congregation will be present for Mass. It seems that the morning Mass time on Wednesday is not good for many people’s schedules. Masses on Major Holy Days will be offered as announced, usually at 6 p.m. on those days. I hope that this new schedule will make it easier for some of you to more fully inhabit our parish rule of life.

Whether you are rejoicing or mourning, busy or underworked, “feeling it” or not, come to church. There is always a good reason to go to church, even if you don’t know what that reason is. Mark your day with prayer. This parish’s doors are open always. We are porous to the world, and we intercede on its behalf daily. How will you participate?

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

Week of January 29, 2023

I’m currently making my way through The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke out of Auschwitz to Warn the World by Jonathan Freedland. The book tells the story of Rudolf Vrba (born Walter Rosenberg) who escaped the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944 and then detailed the atrocities happening inside the walls of the camp. While a prisoner at Auschwitz, Vrba utilized the gift of his prodigious mind to memorize the statistics of horror that he witnessed. From the time he entered the camp, Vrba realized that the most effective way he could respond justly to the evil injustice of the Nazi regime was to escape and then warn the world about what was happening at Auschwitz, because the world outside was in many ways blind to the gruesome realities within the concentration camp. This drive to escape and announce the heinous injustice of the Nazi regime was Vrba’s motivation to survive in a place oriented only towards death.

Reading this book has roused many questions for me as a Christian, especially since many of the perpetrators of the Holocaust were self-professed Christians. It brings up the larger question of how any Christian could justify the hideous actions that occurred in the Holocaust. Indeed, vile injustice is rampant among us even today, much of which we are not aware. Undoubtedly, there are people responsible for such injustice who purport to be Christian. How is this so?

And this causes me to think about Christian worship. Worship is not a means to an end; it is the end, but the end should have a transformative effect on our lives. Because of what God has done for us, we can only respond with adoration and praise. And yet. . . there are ethical dimensions to our worship. So, what does it mean when some people attend church faithfully but do not act in love towards their neighbors? What does it mean to be in church every Sunday (or more) and not feel the stirrings of change within oneself? Worship should eventually turn our cold hearts of stone into warm hearts of flesh, on fire with love for God, self, and neighbor. How can one not be changed by the efficacy of the sacraments administered and received? A sacrament might be valid under the right conditions, but what does its efficaciousness look like?

Much of this is a mystery that we will never know, but it behooves us always as Christians to be mindful of the way worship does and should shape our lives. For centuries, many Christians have turned a blind eye towards injustice. Many still do. Christian discipleship demands that we be prepared to let any dissonance between what we profess and what we do disturb us. We are always called to repentance.

On Friday, January 27, we will be holding a Holocaust Remembrance Service at 7 p.m. This is deliberately not an interfaith service because the focus will be on Christian repentance for complicity in injustice. While it may not seem entirely integrous to ask for repentance for those heinous crimes we did not personally commit (such as those in the Holocaust), each of us is always at risk of turning an blind eye to injustice. It is no secret that antisemitism is currently alive and well across the world, and recently it has been given more of a public platform in this nation. Tonight’s liturgy will invite each of us to examine our own sinful behavior and proclivities towards ethical apathy and to ask for God’s forgiveness where such forgiveness is due. This evening’s service will follow the Book of Common Prayer’s “Order for Worship in the Evening,” which has a similar pattern to the evening Office. As permitted by the prayer book, we will say together the Litany of Penitence, found in the Ash Wednesday liturgy but also allowed on other penitential occasions. This evening is one such occasion.

My prayer for the Church of the Good Shepherd is that our robust schedule of liturgies will not become a perfunctory performance of mindless rituals but instead work on us in slow and subtle ways, to shape us and mold us into people who are truly alive in God. Perhaps the words of the prophet Micah, which we shall hear in Mass this Sunday, says it best: “what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8).

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle Babin

Week of January 22, 2023

If you are sitting near your calendar, please mark this Sunday, January 22, on it. After Sung Mass, in accordance with our parish bylaws, we will hold our annual parish meeting. As I mentioned last week, we will elect new vestry members and lay delegates to diocesan convention. We will learn more about the 2023 budget. But most importantly, we will be together as a parish family. Please see this occasion as more than a business meeting; see it as an opportunity to meet together in one space (other than for worship) and to talk about what God has in store for our future. Before Sunday’s meeting, I ask you to please read the 2023 Annual Report. Although I will offer an oral report at the meeting, it will be different from what is written in the annual report. I hope that Sunday’s meeting will be more conversational in tone. Please bring your questions about the 2023 budget or anything else related to the life of the parish. The vestry and I want to hear from you.

In particular, on Sunday, I would like all of us to reflect on our individual role in this parish’s life. We will hear more from St. Paul in Sunday’s second lesson at Mass (as well as in the sermon!), but suffice it to say that St. Paul gives us a robust theology of the Body of Christ. It should go without saying that each of us has particular, unique gifts given by God, not to be squandered or filed away, but to be used for his kingdom. They are to be used in this place. I have said before that I believe each of you has been brought to Good Shepherd because you have some specific role to play in building up the Body of Christ in this local community. It requires prayerful discernment to figure out what that role is. At the end of Sunday’s parish meeting, we will look at all our parish ministries, and I’ll invite you to consider playing an active part in sustaining those ministries. We need your help. But above all, God’s mission needs you, too.

And at our meeting, I will also be asking all present to take a brief survey. Part of this survey is a direct ask for your participation in living into a parish rule of life. Some of the questions will pertain to the need for a slight shift in our daily Mass schedule (not Sundays), and some of them will ask about what other parish ministries you hope might be created and formed over time. For us to grow as a parish, we need to give voice to our hopes and concerns. This Sunday’s meeting is an opportunity for you to do so. I do hope you will make attendance a priority.

As you will read in the Annual Report and hear about on Sunday, despite our challenges (which every parish has), the state of the parish is strong. Hardly a day goes by when I’m not surprised by what God is enabling us to do through his grace. Thank you for your commitment to walking the Christian Way in this place, for sharing your gifts, time, talent, and money. I will look forward to seeing you on Sunday!

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle