The Week of March 17, 2024

In a recent book I finished reading called The Way of Thomas Merton: A Prayer Journey through Lent, the author makes this insightful claim, reflecting on Merton’s approach to reading the Bible: “[T]he Bible must be read existentially. That is to say, in order to read the Bible at all is to read it as if one’s life depended on it, not as if the book were meant for someone else. The book’s meaning and value simply does not yield itself to a purely analytical or dispassionate reading. An ‘alienated reading,’ as Merton calls it, looks at the Bible as an artefact of the past or a species of antique theology. Neither reading is in sync with the book’s true organizing principle” (from Robert Inchausti, The Way of Thomas Merton: A Prayer Journey through Lent, London: SPCK, 2022, p. 89).

I’ve certainly found in my teaching that the Bible is often approached as an artifact, or at the very least, with some sense of separation, or “alienation” as Merton put it, between reader and text. I have come to diligently avoid Biblical commentaries that are dryer than a valley of bones and that miss the forest for the trees in interpreting a living Word that should put sinews and flesh on the dry bones of our lives. After all, the Letter to the Hebrews tells us that “the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (4:12). Our modern mindsight too often wants to treat Scripture as an archaeological dig or an objective text mined for knowledge or, more usually, clues to be crudely used for salvation.

But historically, the Bible was read more imaginatively, and certainly more prayerfully than we are wont to do. Monks of old, who had few books in their libraries, would “chew” on the text slowly. This method of reading, often called lectio divina, involved a slow and prayerful reading of a Biblical text until some word or phrase would “light up.” The reader would then put the text aside and use said word or phrase as an impetus to prayer.

Another prayerful way of reading Scripture is Ignatian in character (inspired by Ignatius of Loyola). One puts oneself in the text, “as if you were there” when the action happened. The readers hears things, smells things, touches things, and is sensorily engaged with the text. One might be the woman at the well whom Jesus doesn’t condemn but looks upon in love. One might be Jonah, pouting under the bush. One might even be Judas, who betrays his Lord.

In the bimonthly Bible study that I lead at Bryn Mawr College, we attempt to read the text on various levels, but principally, in a spiritual fashion. And my experience has shown that most of the students are less interested in heady, academic “mining” of the text than they are in discerning how the text is speaking to their lives, right then and there. Such holy reading submits to the movement of the Holy Spirit.

The final spiritual practice of Lent named in the Invitation to a Holy Lent on Ash Wednesday is “reading and meditating on God’s holy Word” (BCP, p. 265). There are many ways to do this, some of which I’ve already enumerated. Praying the Daily Office of Morning and Evening Prayer is one of the best ways to swim in the sea of Scripture. The Daily Office regularly exposes us to more Scripture than we’d normally encounter in other liturgies. And obviously, we hear a lot of Scripture at Sunday Mass. But I want to suggest that the way we encounter Scripture liturgically is far different from a Bible study. In the liturgy, we don’t encounter Scripture with our heads buried in the text; we allow God’s Word to speak to our hearts through the ritual movement of our bodies and the shape of the liturgy. We listen. And when we listen—rather than read—we are impacted differently.

We will soon be entering into the holiest of weeks for Christians. In the liturgies of that week, we participate in the saving events of our salvation, and the use of Scripture in those liturgies is intended to convict, judge, and give hope to our mortal lives. Above all, this Word of God, which we hear all the time, is living and active. It gives meaning to our lives, past, present, and future. It’s one way in which God touches each of us personally. As we draw near to the cross and empty tomb, may God’s holy Word enliven your heart and your mind, and may you find in it, the risen Christ, who has already prepared a place for us in the heavens.

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

The Week of March 10, 2024

This past week during our campus ministry’s Bible study at Bryn Mawr College, we discussed the “Parable of the Rich Fool” from Luke’s Gospel (12:13-21). If you recall, in this parable, a well-off man finds himself with an abundant harvest. Running out of room for storage, he decides to tear down the existing barns and build larger ones to store up his overflowing crop. At that very moment, God comes to him and says that he will die that night. The question is this: to whom will belong all that the rich man has amassed? Without knowing he would die (and perhaps imagining that he was invincible), the man has saved up his fortune for nothing. The moral of this parable is that there is judgment for those who are not “rich toward God.”

As we discussed this challenging parable at our Bible study, we explored what this might mean for us today. Does it mean that we shouldn’t prepare for our future through fiscal responsibility or savings? Are we not supposed to “store up” material things to provide for our children and relatives after we’re gone? We could ask question after question in this vein. But I don’t such questions are really what Jesus was after when he told this parable. I think that Jesus was speaking about a posture of abundance as opposed to a posture of scarcity. If you recall, the “rich fool” enters into a solipsistic dialogue with himself. He addresses his own soul in the dialogue. It’s a terribly self-centered conversation that he’s having. And God is the one who interrupts this self-centeredness with a stark reminder that the man is mortal and the world is larger than this man and his wealth.

My reading of this parable is that it’s not a question of preparing for the future or not. Of course, we should be sensible in preparing for our future, that of our loved ones, and yes, of the Church that will live on after we have died. Rather, the parable poses the questions of whether our preparations for future security are fear based and whether or not we are willing to give even more than we are willing to save. Jesus’s parable challenges our desire for security, which is usually material security or emotional security. We want to store up everything we can so that we can be happy. In short, if we see with the eyes of scarcity, it’s hard to trust God.

Trusting God is what the spiritual practice of self-denial is all about. Self-denial can look like any number of things, but ultimately, it’s about parting with what seems dearest to us in order to strengthen our reliance on God alone. In this sense, self-denial is quite similar to fasting. Fasting refers, particularly, to refraining from food or drink to remind ourselves that we don’t live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God (Deuteronomy 8:3). Self-denial means that we refrain from doing something that pleases us in order to recall that it is indeed possible to survive (and even thrive!) without the thing that has taken hold of us. Self-denial is not masochism or deliberate torture of ourselves; there’s no edification in such practices. Instead, denying ourselves is instructive in forming our whole-hearted dependence on God alone.

Self-denial is the opposite of what the rich fool does. The rich fool is foolish because he things that material happiness is all there is to life. But with the mind of Christ, what seems foolish to the rich fool is wise, and the rich fool (wise by the world’s standards), is indeed foolish. Self-denial reaffirms our truest joy and spiritual fulfillment as coming from the One who is the Source of our life and strength: God.

There is a striking paradox in self-denial. The more we deny ourselves, the more we find our true selves, as we have been created and are loved by God. In self-denial, what we’re really denying is not our self but a self shaped by lies, which tell us that we need money, material things, success, affirmation (fill in the blank) in order to be fulfilled. When we deny ourselves—emptying ourselves so that God can fill us with his Spirit and life—we find who we really are in God.

What does self-denial look like, practically speaking? During a season of self-denial, such as Lent, it could be as simple as refraining from eating something that we rely too much on (e.g., sweets, desserts, chocolate are the typical Lenten ones). It could mean that we stop ordering all those things we don’t really need but which are readily accessible online (do we really need one more piece of clothing or that extra book?). Perhaps we give up practices that are spiritually harmful, such as gossiping or reveling in criticism of others, practices that perversely make us feel stronger through the denigration of others. Maybe we give up social media, because it has become an obsessive source of self-affirmation for us. Whatever we give up or deny ourselves, it should be something that hurts when we part with it. In that experience of loss, we will hopefully discover that we have gained something far better—an awareness of our true self as made in the image of God. Ultimately, we learn that in our fear, we can yet trust God to take care of us.

At its heart, self-denial means that we break the vicious cycle of turning inwards on ourselves. We enlarge our world to include, first of all, God, and then our neighbors and all of creation. Self-denial affirms our citizenship as members of the family of God. That is what Lent is all about: living more fully into the promises we made in baptism, or promises that were made on our behalf. And in doing so, we discover who we truly are.

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

The Week of March 3, 2024

These days, we can have almost anything we want on demand. We can rent our favorite movie while staying in a hotel. We can order almost anything we need online. The world has become a vast marketplace. We are the consumers, and if we don’t find what we want, we will go or shop wherever we can.

But imagine for a minute that you’re in a situation where you can’t get what you want. Maybe your internet is down and you can’t order that book for your Kindle (since you just finished another book). Or you’re looking for a particular ingredient in the grocery store, but they’re out of stock. What do you do? These are privileged problems, but regardless, they teach us something. When we can’t get what we want on demand, we usually find ways to cope. Moreover, we might even realize that the things we so readily covet are actually inessential to our lives.

The spiritual practice of fasting is intended to teach us how to rely on God alone. “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD” (Deuteronomy 8:3). Fasting, in and of itself, is not utilitarian. It’s not intended to get something or achieve something, for that would defeat the purpose of fasting. Fasting opens interior space within us to make room for God. Fasting enables us to prioritize God over all other things. Fasting also reveals those dark things inside our souls that we paper over with possessions and habits. In his book A Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster notes that “[w]e cover up what is inside us with food and other good things, but in fasting these things surface. If pride controls us, it will be revealed almost immediately. . . Anger, bitterness, jealousy, strife, fear—if they are within us, they will surface during fasting. At first we will rationalize that our anger is due to our hunger; then we will realize that we are angry because the spirit of anger is within us. We can rejoice in this knowledge because we know that healing is available through the power of Christ” (from A Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster, p. 55).

The Invitation to a Holy Lent, which we heard on Ash Wednesday, highlights fasting as an intentional practice of Lent. The point of fasting is not to earn points with God or fulfill an obligation. The point is to make room for God within our cluttered selves and amid a cluttered world. Ash Wednesday and Good Friday have traditionally been days of fasting, and our prayer book designates them as such. There are different types of fasts. One might choose a modified fast, where one full meal is consumed in a day, drinking only water throughout the day. If one does not have liturgical duties on either of those days or work obligations that could be impaired by a rigid fast, one might choose to eat nothing during the day. In any case, severe fasts must be taken with caution and preparation, especially if one has medical conditions that would make fasting physically dangerous.

There are also other kinds of fasts that are common in Lent. A longstanding custom within Anglo-Catholic circles (and still in Roman Catholic circles) is to avoid flesh meat on Fridays. A practice that is traditional throughout the year is to abstain from any food or drink (except water) at least an hour before consuming the Body and Blood of Christ at Mass. I recognize that we live in an age that tends to dismiss these practices as “old-fashioned,” but I believe that there is great merit in these spiritual practices. They all remind us that we don’t live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. St. Augustine of Hippo understood this when he observed that our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God. God alone can fill the empty void in our lives, and the spiritual practice of fasting helps us see that no amount of food or retail therapy can truly satisfy that void in our lives.

In a technological age, we might even benefit from digital fasts. How much time do we spend reaching for our smartphones when we have a minute to spare in the line at the grocery store or are bored? What if that minute was spent in prayer or in reminding ourselves of how much God is in love with each of us? Fasting can include so many things.

Whatever spiritual practices you’re considering this Lent, remember that they have one purpose alone: to open ourselves to God more fully. Practices will not win us favor; we have no need for that. We are already favored in God’s eyes. Practices will reveal our sinful proclivities and besetting sins more clearly. And at the end of the day, hopefully we will see that all of those things we think we so desperately need are just stale bread. What we truly need is the living word that comes from the mouth of God.

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

The Week of February 25, 2024

Prayer may seem like the most obvious thing in the world to a person of faith, and yet it may seem, too, like the most difficult thing imaginable. In my experience, most people feel ill-equipped to pray, for whatever reason. They might simply have a narrow view of what prayer is. There is much worry about praying in the right way. And during difficult times, it may seem like there are no words for prayer.

Prayer is one of the spiritual practices named in the “Invitation to a Holy Lent,” which we heard on Ash Wednesday. Lent may be a season in which you’re feeling especially called to deepen your prayer life. It’s certainly a fitting season to focus on one’s prayer life. If much or all of your prayer happens in the context of public worship, Lent could be a time in which to explore “private” prayer (although prayer is never really private!). The good news is that there are many ways to pray. Prayer is less about getting it right than about being in conversation with God. And to learn how to pray, you have to start doing it.

But let’s say that you are struggling with how to pray. Our Lord himself offers direct advice: “Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened” (Luke 11:9-10). If you are struggling to pray, begin by asking God for something! There’s certainly merit in being careful about trying to manipulate God through prayer (God doesn’t need it, and it’s not how prayer works). But this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t ask for things. Wise asking might not be as specific as “God, take away my cancer,” but rather, and still directly, “God, heal me.” Or “Lord, I’m deeply anxious; help me.” Name what is on your heart, but leave it open for God to work his inscrutable answer out in his own way. What seems like a scorpion to us, might, in fact, be an egg (again, see Luke 11:12). Of course, God already knows the secrets of our hearts, but when we ask God for something, we enter into a particular kind of relationship with God. In doing so, we are changed, and we begin to discover how we are inextricably bound to God and one another.

At Good Shepherd, our own witness to active prayer with words is the Daily Office. Monday through Friday, the Angelus bell rings and Morning Prayer is prayed at 9 a.m. and Evening Prayer at 5:30 p.m. Morning Prayer is also said on Saturdays. These services are livestreamed, and they last no more than thirty minutes. The Daily Office is not always “interesting.” It may, indeed, seem boring at times. The point of the Office is not to stimulate our feelings or emotions; the point of the Office is to live out a persistent witness to prayer. The Church, in the Daily Office, intercedes faithfully and almost perfunctorily (but no less effectively) for the world. In over three years of praying the Office here at Good Shepherd, I have seen many, many answers to prayers, usually surprising, “delayed,” and uncontrollable. It’s yet proof that God doesn’t operate as one of us in our finite sphere but with us and for us as the Source of all life and being. (For more on this, see a wonderful book by Mark McIntosh and Frank Griswold, Seeds of Faith, which we are using in our Pilgrims in Christ formation class.)

If, however, your prayer is full of words, consider praying silently by simply being in the presence of God. One of the best books I know on this is Into the Silent Land, by Martin Laird, a former neighbor of Good Shepherd and an Augustinian priest who teaches at Villanova University. And in our very midst, we have parishioner Donald McCown, who teaches about contemplative prayer professionally and leads a weekly Wednesday evening contemplative prayer group at Good Shepherd (7 p.m.). Maybe silent, wordless prayer is what is most enriching for you this Lent.

There are ample opportunities this Lent to explore prayer. Try a Daily Office or Stations of the Cross. Make the Mass weekly (if not more frequently) part of your life, even and especially when you don’t feel like going. Remember, prayer is not really about feelings. In particular, I draw your attention to “A Lenten Quiet Day of Visio Divina,” to be led by Donald McCown on Saturday, March 2, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and featuring liturgical art curated by Davis d’Ambly, a renowned liturgical artist and Friend of this parish. This Quiet Day will be a beautiful way to “enter into the silent land.”

As always, I’m available to discuss your life of prayer with you, and if you need further reading suggestions, I would be happy to help you as well. May this Lent be a time of knowing the Spirit, who, as St. Paul reminds us, is already praying within us.

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

The Week of February 18, 2024

During this past week’s Ash Wednesday liturgy, I, as the Celebrant, invited the congregation to a holy Lent using a bidding found in the Book of Common Prayer. I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God's holy Word (p. 265). The Church’s long tradition highlights five spiritual practices for a holy Lent. For the next five weeks, I will focus on each of these five spiritual practices. My hope is that these practices will help you in your own Lenten journey.

Self-examination and repentance coexist as a unified practice, and you may very well associate this practice most specifically with Lent, however appropriate it may be throughout the Church year. But in reflecting on self-examination and repentance, I want to home in on Christ’s great gift of reconciliation. In the bosom of the Church, we encounter this gift in sacramental form in the Reconciliation of a Penitent (BCP, p. 447). This sacrament is sometimes called auricular or private confession (although it’s really not private since it involves two people gathered in the Name of Christ). And while a hearty embrace of this sacrament has yet to grow among Episcopalians and Anglicans, it has always been a part of our tradition. The earliest Anglican prayer books enjoined those troubled in conscience to unburden themselves through confession to a “wise and discerning priest.” But we Episcopalians have a superb gift in our very catholic prayer book, which offers two forms for the Reconciliation of a Penitent. These forms appear for the first time in the history of American prayer books with the book of 1979.

For those of us who grew up in the Roman Catholic tradition, and who perhaps had difficult experiences with sacramental confession, I invite you to reconsider the sacrament through an Anglican lens. I have always found the Anglican emphasis in sacramental confession to be on thanksgiving for God’s gift of forgiveness. Rather than requiring an “act of contrition” after God’s absolution has been declared, Anglican confessors will usually offer a prayer or psalm to pray as an act of thanksgiving for the freedom of forgiveness. Once God has forgiven, there’s nothing more we need to do except give thanks! Remember, we can’t earn our forgiveness, so our job is, after repentance, to accept it!

This weekly message is far too short for me to explicate the detailed practice of sacramental confession, but I know of no better resource to aid you in understanding it than Martin Smith’s excellent book Reconciliation: Preparing for Confession in the Episcopal Church. Martin Smith is an Episcopal priest and former monk of the Society of St. John the Evangelist. I encourage you to read his short, but profound book, to learn more about confession in the Anglican tradition.

As you may know, confession is available at any time by appointment. Simply email me to set up a time that is convenient for you. You may, admittedly, have some reservations in confessing to your parish priest. Many do, but it’s a most common practice. And I must assure you that the seal of the confessional is morally absolutely. The confessional is perhaps the most vulnerable place on earth, and any responsible confessor will treat it as such, which means respecting the sincere faith required of anyone making a private confession. And any responsible confessor will also be making her or his own regular confession. Otherwise, she or he is in grave spiritual danger of succumbing to pride (wise advice learned from a former parish priest of mine).

Although the Anglican adage about confession has always been, “all may, some should, none must,” I think that the sacrament is a beautiful gift that would benefit all of us. The purpose of sacramental confession is not to fulfill an obligation or rule but to find God’s healing grace at work in our lives. For some who are easily troubled in conscience, the act of naming sins and hearing audible words of forgiveness is a tangible/visible sign of God’s grace of forgiveness. I can’t imagine that anyone wouldn’t benefit from this.

But perhaps most importantly, I know from my own personal experience that letting go is one of the most difficult things to do. It’s so easy to hang on to resentments, anger, jealousy. . you fill in the blank. . . because they give us the illusion of power and control. And although we endeavor to hold ourselves accountable for our sins, it’s usually best if someone else helps us. A thorough self-examination for sacramental confession is much more effective than anything we can do in the five seconds before a “general confession” during Mass. In the Sacrament of Reconciliation, the Church, represented by a priest (who is also a sinner), holds us accountable to our baptismal vows. The counsel of a wise priest is also important. Sometimes, we are confused about what is a sin and what is not. A confessor can be helpful here.

I’ve said before that I think most people are more than aware of their sins and shortcomings. And yet, awareness doesn’t always equate with full repentance. It certainly doesn’t equate with the freedom of healing found in experiencing God’s gift of forgiveness. If you are being held hostage to some spiritual darkness that won’t let you go, sacramental confession will help you.

The paschal mystery which underlies all our Lenten preparation for the mystery of Easter is about dying to old life and rising to a new one. This is at the heart of the resurrection. It’s at the heart of reconciliation. If you are burdened by something you’re holding on to, and if you need to experience the marvelous power of freedom from sin, sacramental confession is God’s gift to us in this life to enable it to happen. Avail yourself of it. May this Lent be for you a time of release, in which the risen Christ helps you move from Egypt into the Promised Land.

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

The Week of February 11, 2024

As we mark the beginning of the season of Lent this year with the observance of Ash Wednesday, we find a peculiar intersection of the secular calendar with the Church’s calendar. Ash Wednesday falls on Valentine’s Day. Ash Wednesday is a day of fasting and self-denial by the Church’s reckoning; Valentine’s Day is a day for chocolates and fancy meals with those we love. We are faced with a choice on February 14. Can we honor both? Or is this odd calendrical moment an opportunity to embrace some of the depth of Lent?

It’s easy to blindly associate Lent with self-examination, penitence, and repentance. And while such themes are prominent ones during Lent, they don’t offer, alone, the fullest picture of Lent. The Book of Common Prayer liturgy for Ash Wednesday contains a bidding that the priest says to the congregation, which is known as “An Invitation to a Holy Lent.” The bidding explains the traditional purpose of Lent, and while penitence, fasting, and self-discipline figure into it, they are not ends in themselves. They are practices by which the soul is opened up to God’s abundant grace that enables us to be reconciled with God and one another. Historically, during Lent, catechumens were prepared for baptism at the Great Vigil of Easter. And notorious sinners who had been separated from the Body of Christ were again reconciled to the Church.

I’m suggesting that Lent is not only about sin; it’s about love, too. It’s about the infinite, incomprehensible love of our God, who looks with great delight on a Church that, year after year, shows up on Ash Wednesday to say, “we’ve messed up. . .again. But we long to be in right relationship. . . again.” On Ash Wednesday, several of the appointed readings will remind us of a stubborn Scriptural refrain: “The Lord is full of compassion and mercy, slow to anger and of great kindness” (Psalm 103:8). This is how God’s love manifests itself. Lent is all about love, not greeting cards or emojis or balloons, but Love itself, who never gives up on us.

The great paradox of Lent is that in temporarily parting with things that are dear to us, we understand what should be dear to us. In meditating on the cost of the greatest act of love the world has ever known, we find the cross-shaped freedom of life in Christ, which alone can bring us fullness of life. On Ash Wednesday, we’re also reminded that from dust we came and unto dust we shall return. Oddly enough, this is both a recognition of our mortality and also a reminder that God “hate[s] nothing [he] has made,” as the Ash Wednesday collect tells us. We are dust and more than just dust, because God will one day raise that dust to new life in Christ.

I encourage you to embrace this Lent as an extraordinary gift. It’s a period of time in which we can reevaluate what rules us: our “loves” or true Love itself. It’s a season to put aside estrangements of any sort and find reconciliation. It’s a time not to take ourselves too seriously and yet to savor how seriously God is invested in our well-being. It’s a time to find the joy of our baptismal call to life in Christ, which can only be found—again, paradoxically—by dying to self.

If I could make one gentle suggestion, it would be this: a nice dinner out is a feast that can be easily transferred, but Ash Wednesday comes once a year. We live in a chaotic world, but the Church’s calendar gives us helpful markers to order our lives. Observing Ash Wednesday is such a marker that gives definition and solidity to our Lenten intentions. Whatever your plans may be on Ash Wednesday, you will have two opportunities to mark the beginning of a holy Lent at Good Shepherd: 8 a.m. Low (Said) Mass and 7 p.m. Sung Mass. If neither of those works for you, please find a church near your office or somewhere else that has a scheduled Ash Wednesday service that you can attend. We lose much of the richness of the salvific nature of the Church’s liturgies if we only confine our attendance to Sundays.

I suspect that most of us are painfully aware of our shortcomings, although a purposeful self-examination is crucial to being fully honest with ourselves and God. But I suspect that many of us struggle with accepting God’s infinite love for us. This may very well be the best reason to attend Mass on Ash Wednesday: to be reminded, amid our acknowledged frailty, that God desires nothing less for us than to be reconciled with him and all of creation. For God is the one who is perfectly compassionate and merciful, and infinitely patient. And Lent is all about love.

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

The Week of February 4, 2024

The second chapter of the Revelation to John begins thus: “To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands: I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance. I know that you cannot tolerate evildoers; you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them to be false. I also know that you are enduring patiently and bearing up for the sake of my name, and that you have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first” (Rev. 2:1-4). You have abandoned the love you had at first. These are chilling words. The accusation is that, despite perseverance and spiritual zealousness, love has been lost. The Ephesians have lost their way. And how easily we, too, can lose our way and abandon the love we once had.

We might frequently ask what we can offer the Church, but what if we asked, conversely, what the Church can offer us? When the Church is at her best, I’m convinced that she helps us reacquaint ourselves with that first love. What is that first love? Theologically speaking, it could be found in the innocence and joy before the Fall when God and humanity walked together blissfully in the Garden and delighted in one another. It can be found in the time before Cain murdered Abel, when we weren’t so envious of one another and so afraid. But that first love is somewhere, too, in the background of our lives. Was it the love in the first part of a relationship? Was it a love in the freedom of play as a child? Was it the ardor of first finding Christ in your life before that became tired for you? Was it the joy of learning a new instrument for the first time? I imagine that we can all think of first loves.

The shadow side of devotion and faithfulness in the spiritual life is that they can easily grow cold. The initial fervor of returning to church after some time away can dissipate after the honeymoon. And for those who’ve never spent any time away, perhaps that first love of the mystery of faith has settled into a numb dullness. It seems that with the Ephesians, perseverance and zeal to a cause had become bland works without any spirit of delight in God. This is often where religion goes wrong. It goes wrong when our intolerance for “evildoers” becomes the foundation of our spiritual practice and masquerades as faithfulness but perpetuates anger. It goes wrong when we simply go through the motions “just because we’re supposed to” even though we have stopped longing to experience joy. It goes wrong when our reactivity against a culture that we perceive to be persecuting us is the dynamism of our “faithfulness” but there is no compassion for those who’ve lost their way.

Every day as the sun rises we have an opportunity to reclaim the love we had at first. It may be as simple as a prayer to God to help us to embrace that first love. And though the Church gives us many things (even as we can give much to the Church), what the Church can give us amid so much pain, loneliness, and listlessness, is a place to find our first love. This, I think, is at the heart of worship. It’s not difficult to find reasons to stay away from church. If we’re looking for them, we can certainly find them. But of all the promises made by other things to give us delight and joy, the truest joy of all—our first love—is found in the bosom of the Church.

And why? Because when we lose ourselves in worship in the context of a community of the faithful, we find our truest selves. We find that first love, embodied in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Worship at its best is an expression of that first love. When we worship, we should have no agenda except to be with God and to delight in God’s abiding presence. There is no ulterior motive to worship; it’s pure, unadulterated delight in God and in the fellowship of one another. No other place in the world can offer this in the same way.

If you’re lonely or aching or in a place of spiritual aridity, the Church is a place where you can recover your first love. If you’re confused or uncertain, the Church may not give you tidy answers, but she will embrace you in the arms of love. If you’re weary of the changes and chances of the world in which we live, the Church will not eliminate your problems but will give you the constancy of Christ’s love and the comfort of the Holy Spirit.

At Good Shepherd, I see glimpses of this first love in so many ways: in your faces as you sing the great hymns of faith, when we all face East and profess our faith in the words of the Nicene Creed, in the happy children playing in the children’s corner and running up to Communion, in the utter delight of coffee hour and parish potlucks, and in the care and concern you have for one another. Hang on to these glimpses of the first love. And keep coming back time and again to the Source of that love, the God who always draws us into his open arms.

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

The Week of January 28, 2024

When I was a child, my family would occasionally gather in the living room to watch old reels of family movies projected onto the wall (I’m showing my age!). Those were always bonding moments when we could relive significant moments as a family and bask in that connectedness. Our annual parish meeting is rather like watching a video of the past year. It’s an opportunity to glance back at the previous year and celebrate all that God has done among us.

Perhaps family meetings don’t always summon the most positive of feelings. Maybe you associate them with resolving problems or needing to hash something out. In the case of our parish “family meeting” (i.e., our annual parish meeting), such is not the case! Our parish bylaws state that a business meeting must be held each year, and we typically do so at the end of January. This Sunday, January 28, we will hold our annual parish meeting after Sung Mass.

I hope you will attend. As I’ve been saying in the announcements at Mass, the annual meeting is really a joyous occasion. While there is some business to conduct, the meeting is primarily an opportunity for us to gather as a parish family for conversation, reflecting on the joys and challenges of the past year and looking ahead with hope to a new year. We will elect new members of the parish vestry (the governing board of the parish that holds fiduciary responsibility). We will also elect lay delegates to the annual diocesan convention, as well as lay delegates to local deanery meetings (a deanery is a geographical collection of parishes within the diocese).

But what is most exciting to me about the annual meeting is rejoicing in how God has been vividly at work at Good Shepherd in 2023. I strongly urge you to read our annual parish report, which has been the collaborative effort of staff and those in leadership positions. Reading this report is like watching a video of the past year at Good Shepherd. So much has happened, thanks to the marvelous grace of God and the faithfulness of so many people.

If you are an eligible voter, please review the biographical information about candidates for the elections at the meeting. Elections are not contested, but your vote is essential. If you are not an eligible voter, I do hope you will still come to the meeting. This meeting is for everyone. And the annual meeting is about far more than elections. Your presence is crucial as we move forward in ministry together. Our parish meeting is really a loving conversation.

Although I have offered a written report in the annual report, I will offer additional reflections at the parish meeting, and you will also hear from others in leadership. Brett Hart, the parish treasurer, will give a summary of our financial situation and introduce the vestry-approved 2024 budget, also found in the annual report. You will get the most out of the meeting if you are able to review materials ahead of time. There will be time for your questions as well.

The meeting will be held in the church, so if you’re attending Sung Mass, please hang around, and vestry members will distribute materials for the meeting. If you normally attend the 8 a.m. Low Mass, I hope you will come back for the annual meeting. Lunch will follow the meeting in the retreat house (thanks to Jack and Jeannette Burnam), and this will be yet another opportunity to engage in fellowship with one another. Additionally, Jonathan Adams, one of our parishioners, will be present with a laptop to assist each of you in updating your contact and personal information in Realm, our parish database. Please do this sometime over lunch or before you leave for the day!

I have said more about this in my rector’s report, but I’ll say it again: each of you is integral to the growth and health of Good Shepherd. No one is exempt from this! We’ve all been given specific gifts for ministry by God, and this parish (and the wider Church) is not what it can be without your gifts and presence. I’m looking forward to seeing you on Sunday!

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

The Week of January 21, 2024

As I have gotten older, I have begun to pay closer attention to people and occurrences in my life. I have come to believe that if I’m actively at prayer, then my spiritual perception is somehow being heightened by God. There is not always a direct correlation between a specific prayer and an ensuing connection with a person or event. Rather, prayer serves as a general spiritual foundation for making wise, godly decisions. For this reason, I increasingly pay attention to what is happening around me, because often, God is speaking to me through people and what those outside the Church call “coincidences.” Sometimes, what God is saying to us at first seems like a challenge or an obstacle. Patience and perseverance can shift the narrative to see that what once seemed to be a difficulty is actually an opportunity.

As many of you know, in 2016, Good Shepherd began renting space in the Parish House (the building that faces Lancaster Avenue and that borders the circle drive in front of the church) to the Six:Eight Vineyard Church. In 2019, the lease with Six:Eight was extended and expanded to include rental of the entire Parish House. This meant that Good Shepherd had to vacate its parish offices, formation rooms, and fellowship space (Kemper Hall). When I arrived as rector in 2020, we moved the parish offices to the former rectory (now the retreat house), and since then, we have used the retreat house for office space (including my office) and children’s and adult formation. It’s also where we hold Sunday coffee hour most of the year. If you’ve been to coffee hour and fellowship events recently (or attended last year’s annual parish meeting), you will know that we’re outgrowing the retreat house space for parish events. This is a good problem to have!

Last month, Six:Eight Vineyard Church notified us that they would not be extending their lease in the Parish House (the lease offered an option of renewing for another three years). Sadly, Six:Eight has closed its doors, so I ask that you please pray for that congregation’s former members as they try to find new spiritual homes. Although Six:Eight has already held its final service, our lease with the church does not officially end until May 31, 2024.

Since we received notice from Six:Eight last month, I have been praying about this situation, and the vestry and I have talked a lot about it. We are discerning how to secure new rental partners for the Parish House so that we can continue to receive needed rental revenue to support ministry at Good Shepherd. At first glance, this moment in time can seem like a formidable challenge. Having to secure new rental partners and determining the best means to do so are not easy tasks. And yet, I also believe that God is calling us to embrace this challenge as a great opportunity. Many parishes these days see their ageing, large buildings as albatrosses hanging around their necks. But at Good Shepherd, we have (at least, recently) treated our buildings as incredible resources. Once property is sold, it can never be recovered, and thank goodness, during its difficult years, Good Shepherd didn’t choose to sell any buildings on the campus. Looking at our property with Gospel eyes, we can more easily realize that God has given us a marvelous gift of space to steward and use for ministry and mission. So, the question now is, how will we do so?

At our parish annual meeting on January 28, you will hear more about plans for the Parish House space. At the moment, we intend to move our parish offices and formation rooms back to the Parish House after May 31. This means that three additional guestrooms will open in the retreat house. The larger question for the Parish House is how the remainder of the space will be used for ministry and mission. This is the work of prayerful discernment. And because, by canon law, our church property legally belongs to the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania (for whom we hold it in trust), any long-term rental arrangements in the Parish House will need to be vetted and approved by the offices of the diocese.

The availability of the Parish House space for us at this moment in our life together is not insignificant. As we’ve continued to grow, we’ve begun to imagine what we could do with such beautiful space for the parish’s ongoing visioning for ministry. God is speaking to us through the events of the past month or so. God will continue to communicate with us. Your prayers, your attention, and your spiritual awareness are needed to support the work of the vestry and me in this time of discernment. I hope you will plan to be present at the annual meeting on Sunday, January 28 after Sung Mass to hear more about how you can be a part of our prayerful discernment of the future of ministry at Good Shepherd.

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

The Week of January 14, 2024

It’s not uncommon within parish ministry transitions for music to be the vehicle of stability. I know of many parishes that experienced conflict or difficult clergy transitions in which the music ministry and its musician leader were the primary sources of stability. Yes, God was at work, guiding it all, but God was doing so through music. Good Shepherd, Rosemont, is no exception. In the past decade as the parish transitioned from challenges into new life, our music ministry under the direction of Matthew Glandorf was a source of vitality in the parish. And the parish vestry rightly decided that to compromise funding and support of music would be destructive to the parish’s future. I am continually thankful for the parish’s leadership and their commitment to supporting music at Good Shepherd.

We’ve just emerged from a brief time of transition in our music ministry after Matt Glandorf’s move to Germany. Last Sunday, we gave thanks for Jack Burnam’s fantastic work in leading our music program through a time of transition. And this Sunday, we welcome our new Organist and Director of Music, Robert McCormick.

Our call of Robert as our next musician is a significant moment in our parish life. The music search committee and vestry recognized that through music, Good Shepherd is poised to expand its ministry in remarkable ways. Indeed, in this parish, music is not superfluous; it is integral to our life together in God. Robert will soon be discerning ways to grow the Parish Choir through the addition of capable adult volunteers, and this spring, he will be laying the groundwork for a children’s chorister program to begin in the fall. Through such programming, music can become an evangelical (in the best sense of the word, that is, good news!) witness from out of this parish.

Robert brings enormous gifts, not just of musicianship but also of liturgical intelligence, pastoral sensitivity, administration, and importantly, of community building within choirs. In his previous positions, he has grown children’s chorister programs to robust levels and led adult choirs that were highly integrated within the lives of those parishes. Robert is known not only for his exceptional musicianship and choir-training but also for his gift of improvisation, an essential skill in Anglo-Catholic parishes. Robert has already planned to play an organ recital at Good Shepherd on Sunday, March 10 at 3 p.m., so please mark your calendars. This recital will be a fundraiser for our music program.

You can read more about Robert in our parish email, but I hope you will plan to be present this Sunday as we welcome Robert to our parish staff. Please join us at coffee hour as well, and then stay for adult formation with Dr. Ellen Charry.

I am grateful to our music search committee and vestry, who shepherded the parish through our music transition. This is an incredibly exciting time for Good Shepherd, and may our witness to the community and world be strengthened and heightened through God’s marvelous gift of music!

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

The Week of January 7, 2024

Last April, shortly after Easter, our former Organist and Choirmaster Matt Glandorf told me that he had accepted a church music position in Germany. Just a few days later, I emailed Jack Burnam to ask if he might be willing to serve as Interim Organist and Choirmaster through the remainder of the calendar year. Thankfully, Jack said yes! In the past few months, Jack has brought many gifts to us, including his depth of experience in church music, musicianship, thoughtfulness, vast musical knowledge, and devotion to the Christian faith.

Personally, it was a real relief to me to be able to focus on the search for a new Director of Music and know that the music ministry was in incredibly capable hands. But more than that, I found myself enjoying immensely serving in ministry with Jack. I would look forward to Tuesday Evening Prayer, when I knew that Jack would pray with me after being in the office, as well as Thursday Evening Prayer. And with Jack’s presence at Good Shepherd, we had the added bonus of getting his wife, Jeannette’s, presence, too. I feel like they’ve become a part of this church family, and I hope they do as well.

This Sunday will mark the end of Jack’s time as Interim Organist and Choirmaster. Our new Organist and Director of Music, Robert McCormick, will begin his duties next week. As a small gesture of gratitude for all that Jack has done for us, we will have a special celebration after Sung Mass this Sunday, including a light lunch and cake. Although we will have some kind of precipitation this weekend (which may be more rain than snow), if it’s safe for you, I hope you will plan to be at Mass on Sunday (The Baptism of Our Lord Jesus Christ) as we say thank you to Jack. We will not say goodbye, because I expect (and hope!) we’ll continue to see Jack and Jeannette.

And thankfully, we have two more services with Jack. On Friday, January 5, we will celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany on its eve. Epiphany is one of seven principal feasts of the Church year (in other words, it’s a big deal). I strongly encourage you to attend Mass at 7 p.m., which will include a procession and the blessing of chalk for marking doors at home, an Epiphany custom. In typical Anglo-Catholic fashion, at Good Shepherd, we celebrate certain feasts with gusto, which is increasingly rare in the Church. It’s a great privilege to be able to pause amid our ordinary lives and celebrate God’s time breaking into ours. After Mass, we will enjoy a potluck supper in the retreat house. Sign up to bring a dish here. If you haven’t yet attended one of our potlucks, you’re missing out! They’re lively social occasions and the food is delicious (i.e., not just your usual array of church casseroles and jello salads).

I look forward to seeing you this weekend as we celebrate the close of Christmastide and give thanks for Jack’s marvelous service through music at Good Shepherd.

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

The Week of December 31, 2023

Following the 6 p.m. Mass on Christmas Eve, I noticed that only a handful of people had exited the church following the organ voluntary. When I went back inside after greeting a few people at the door, I noticed that many of those in attendance were still standing around in the pews and aisles, engaged in festive conversation. No one seemed to want to leave. Everyone looked happy. It was a fitting conclusion to a beautiful Mass, with glorious music from the choir and organ, a procession, and the comforting words from holy Scripture that the good news always meets us in the darkness.

If you ask me, that scene after Christmas Mass is a vivid symbol of what our life together in worship and community should be like. The inside of the church should be a place where we feel drawn, like an insect to light, to adore almighty God, have the Word of God broken open for us, and feast on the Body and Blood of Christ. I hope everyone in that church took something of that evening’s palpable joy out into the world with them.

I cherish the fact that Good Shepherd is a genuinely happy place. The sense of happiness on Christmas Eve spilled over into the intimate Mass on Christmas Day, as we sang more carols and heard the great Prologue from John’s Gospel. And the joy of Christmas isn’t over. The Church celebrates this joy right up until Epiphany on January 6, and the Church’s calendar of feasts is the primary means by which we enter into this joy, as well as into the mystery of our faith, which teaches us that joy is also wrapped up with sorrow, like a newborn baby in a manger, wrapped in clothes that eerily resembled his future graveclothes. Indeed, true joy is only known in the midst of earthly travail. The good news is that Christ comes to us in all that grieves and afflicts us.

This Sunday, we will sing yet more carols and continue the celebration of Christmas. I also hope that you will make a point of attending Low Mass on the Feast of the Holy Name, January 1, at 9:30 a.m. The Major Holy Days of Christmastide are part of how we enter into the mystery of this season, and at Good Shepherd, we honor the prayer book’s intention of celebrating these days with the ultimate act of thanksgiving, the Mass. And please mark your calendars for a Procession and Sung Mass on the Eve of the Feast of the Epiphany, January 5 at 7 p.m., as we close out the Christmas season. A potluck will follow in the retreat house. I’m deeply grateful for all who helped decorate the church for Christmas and served in liturgical ministries, as well as to Jack Burnam and the choir for the marvelous music.

May God bless you and your family in these remaining days of Christmas. The seasonal blessing at the end of Mass during Christmastide says it best: “May Christ, who by his Incarnation gathered into one things earthly and heavenly, fill you with joy and peace.”

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

The Week of December 24, 2023

As I write these words, it is the shortest day of the year, December 21, the winter solstice. The sun is just beginning to break on the horizon, although it’s almost 7 a.m. And I can’t help but think of the timeless words of the Christmas carol “O little town of Bethlehem”: “In thy dark streets shineth the everlasting Light.” It’s tempting to sentimentalize these words, but they are deeper than meets the eye.

The author of this hymn was Phillips Brooks (1835-1893), an Episcopal priest and rector of the Church of the Holy Trinity, Rittenhouse Square, a parish in our diocese, when he penned the words to the beloved carol in 1868. Brooks was visiting the Holy Land while on sabbatical, and during his visit to Bethlehem, he was inspired to author this hymn. But in the background of Brooks’ cozy words was the Civil War. Brooks had been a forceful champion of abolition. Indeed, Brooks had struggled with the evils of slavery since his days as a seminarian at Virginia Theological Seminary (my alma mater as well). When Brooks was a student, slaves would have lived on campus. The words of “O little town of Bethlehem” are not simply a product of Romanticism. Consider these words in verse three: “No ear may hear His coming, but in this world of sin, where meek souls will receive Him still, the dear Christ enters in.”

The fourth verse captures something of the hope that Brooks saw in Christmas: “Where children pure and happy pray to the blessed Child, where misery cries out to Thee, Son of the mother mild [“undefiled” in the original!]; where charity stands watching and faith holds wide the door, the dark night wakes, the glory breaks, and Christmas comes once more.” It’s those final words of verse four that epitomize the gift of Christmas. “The dark night wakes, the glory breaks.” Each year Christmas comes to remind us that this feast is more than sentimental Christmas pageants. While “no ear may hear his coming,” salvation does come to us, quietly, intimately, yet powerfully, in a small baby. Daily, the risen Christ comes to us, and “the dark night wakes” and “the glory breaks.”

Undoubtedly, we are living in a dark time with echoes of Brooks’ own day. This is the story of human history. But thankfully, “Christmas comes once more.” Amid the gift wrapping, the anxiety of families, the season of flu and COVID, the outbreak of yet another war, and the political instability, “Christmas comes once more.” It comes to remind us that our truest identity is found in a Savior born as a baby to refugee parents in a manger under the threat of a ruthless empire. And no matter how many empires have wreaked their havoc in human history, “Christmas comes again once more.”

Despite the bedecked streets and stores and Christmas muzak, Christmas will begin on the eve of December 25. And at Good Shepherd, it will last for twelve days. Perhaps the light of Christmas can break into your darkness, whatever that may be, by settling into these twelve days. The day after Christmas, we celebrate the first martyr, St. Stephen, reminding us that although the light shines, darkness is always around. But the light is greater. I encourage you to attend Masses on the three Major Holy Days after Christmas (see our schedule). Leave your tree up through Epiphany, and do join us for Procession & Mass on the Eve of the Epiphany, January 5, at 7 p.m., as we celebrate the close of Christmas.

Amid all the uncertainty that our world brings, I pray that this Christmas will be light in the darkness for you. Thank you to all who are helping with decorating and liturgies for Christmas at Good Shepherd. And I’m especially grateful for our wonderful staff, who are working so hard during this time of year. May the blessing of the Christ Child be with you and your family, whether you are currently in light or in darkness. However you may feel, wherever you may be, know that unfailingly, “The dark night wakes, the glory breaks, and Christmas comes once more.” Thanks be to God.

O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray;
Cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell;
Oh, come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel!

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

The Week of December 17, 2023

In seminary, my liturgics professor, the Rev. Dr. James Farwell, said in one class that all theology is poetry. That statement has stayed with me for years. Far from undermining the truth behind theology or relativizing it, Dr. Farwell was reminding my class of the power of words and the literary art in trying (however vainly) to speak of the ultimate truth of God, which defies description in human words. Words matter, but in the realm of theology, the multivalent meanings of words especially matter. When we attempt to speak of God, we attempt to speak of a mystery beyond our understanding, and yet we try. We must try.

Have you ever noticed the poetry of the imagery present even within the creeds that we say weekly? We proclaim that Jesus is “Light from Light” and “is seated at the right hand of the Father.” The Holy Spirit is “the giver of life.” In these imagistic phrases, we are trying to say something utterly true about one God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit within the confines of human language. The best theologians, in my mind, are those who understand poetry. It is a difficult endeavor indeed to speak of God and avoid an unimaginative, over-literalization of human language (which often leads to heresy) and a rigid orthodoxy that is devoid of any literary art.

The Anglican tradition is far from the only strand of Christianity that values poetry, but when I think of Anglicanism I inevitably think of poetry. The poetic tradition within the English language is a who’s who list of Anglicans: John Donne, Thomas Traherne, W.H. Auden, T.S. Eliot, and of course, George Herbert, to name a few. I think that poetry is especially compatible with Anglicanism because our via media or “middle way,” at its best, strives for a humility when speaking about God. There is latent within this a sense of via negativa or "negative theology”: who God is is found most powerfully in what we can’t say about God.

Scripture itself is full of poetry—not just the genres themselves, but the use of words and echoes of the Old Testament within the New and hymns of God’s majesty inserted into other kinds of texts. Liturgies are poetic, where time is not linear and where we encounter Scripture much differently than how we might meet it in a Bible study. Some of the best sermons I know are poetic. Christians are fairly inept at understanding the power by which the Holy Spirit fires our imaginations to lead us into all truth. Truth is too powerful to be confined to our fallible human constructs.

It seems fitting that for this year’s Advent Quiet Day we explore the poetry of George Herbert (1593-1633), an Anglican priest, renowned orator, musician, and astounding poet. Herbert’s poetry is deeply theological and also deeply musical (the best poetry is!). Words light up with unexpected resonances, and the verses sing. And yet within this beauty of language are deep truths of God and the human soul in relation to God. One can sense that Herbert was all too aware of his frailty and sinfulness, and he wrestles with this in his poetry. But he always arrives at the truth that so often evades our consciousness: God’s mercy, forgiveness, and love are persistent in trying to meet us. And often, relishing our own frailty and sinfulness is a form of pride that prevents us from being close to God, almost deliberately so [see his poem “Love (III”].

As we pray through the fleeting days of this Advent, I invite you to consider attending tomorrow’s Advent Quiet Day. Parishioner Donald McCown will explore poems of Herbert and offer instruction in entering into a state of contemplative awareness. And Sarah Cunningham, a world-renowned viol player affiliated with our Main Line Early Music Concert series, will perform viol music of Tobias Hume (c. 1549-1645) a rough contemporary of Herbert’s. This year’s Advent Quiet Day is a gift in a season of busyness to slow down, breathe, and pray through the art of poetry and music. Mass will be offered in the middle of the day, and our day will be flanked by Morning and Evening Prayer. Simple breakfast fare and lunch will be provided.

I hope to see some of you on Saturday, and may these final days of Advent be an opportunity for you to encounter the poetry of God

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

The Week of December 10, 2023

This past week, a guest has been making an individual retreat in our retreat house. He traveled from Brooklyn to spend a week praying, resting, and writing on our campus. He has been joining me for the Daily Office regularly, and it has been wonderful to have the company. After Morning Prayer one day, he said that once he arrived at the retreat house and came to Sunday Mass, he suddenly understood what our retreat house is about. “You’re inviting people into the prayer life of a parish,” he said excitedly. “That’s right,” I replied. I was thrilled that someone “got” what the retreat house is designed to do without my having to explain it.

I’m not surprised that this particular guest “got it.” He is a seasoned visitor to monasteries and someone for whom the regular rhythm of prayer in a particular community is the backbone of a time of retreat. Since we opened the Rosemont Community Retreat House, we have been inviting others into the corporate prayer life of our parish. Every day of the week (with occasional exceptions) the church is open for public prayer of some sort. My hope is that over time we can reestablish the daily Mass, which has traditionally been the heartbeat of Anglo-Catholic parishes. The only reason we don’t have a daily Mass at present is that we don’t yet have enough people attending daily Masses to ensure that Mass can proceed (in the Anglican tradition, a priest must have a congregation to say Mass).

I also hope that as our parish grows, we may come to embrace our collective Rule of Life more extensively. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing if there were at least one other person besides the officiant for Morning or Evening Prayer? I wonder if some of you might consider taking one of the Offices during the week, or perhaps a Low (Said) Mass, and making it part of your own Rule of Life. Already, some in this parish are committing to either a Mass or Morning or Evening Prayer on a certain day of the week. Perhaps this could be part of an Advent New Year’s resolution!

We should not underestimate the power of this public witness to prayer within the Church. At Good Shepherd, I’m convinced that we have realized unconsciously far more of the fruits of this prayer than we would know. It is part of the Church’s duty to keep this stream of ordered prayer going. The Daily Office is a gift, because it can be prayed by anyone, anywhere. I don’t doubt for a minute that the vibrancy astir at Good Shepherd is directly related to our constant stream of shared prayer: Daily Office, Mass, and private prayer. Praying is not magically summoning God to bless us; it’s attuning our own hearts and minds to God’s will. When we do this, amazing things happen. You often can’t connect prayer to its fruit in a direct causal way, but I believe that we are always experiencing the fruit of prayer, whether we realize it or not. There is tremendous power in one or two persons praying the Daily Office on a regular basis in one place.

The heart of our retreat house ministry is to invite others into a holy place of prayer. But as I reflect on it, the retreat house also embodies every one of the pillars of our common life, which I enumerated in my weekly message back in August. The retreat house is 1) grounded in worship, 2) provides formation and is the current physical location for formation in the parish, 3) touches music and the arts through various retreats centered around those disciplines, 4) is itself an outreach ministry (our primary one), and 5) is a place of continuing fellowship.

We’ve only begun to scratch the surface of the ministry we will continue to see in the Rosemont Community Retreat House. For now, will you help us spread the word? With the generous help of the media center of the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania, we now have a promotional video about our retreat house that can be shared online. You can still purchase retreat house “swag,” and part of those proceeds will go directly to support the retreat house. You can even adopt a room!

And as we begin to close out 2023, please mark your calendars for our annual parish meeting on Sunday, January 28, 2024, held after Sung Mass. During that meeting, the vestry will introduce us to a series of future parish visioning conversations, centered around the pillars of our parish life, as we look to expand ministry in the future. These conversations will also equip us to devise new mission and visioning statements for the parish.

In the meantime, I’d love to see you at Morning or Evening Prayer on a weekday (or pray with us online!) Or come to our weekday Masses on Major Holy Days, Thursdays at 6 p.m., or Fridays at 8 a.m. There is one thing you can assume about Good Shepherd: we’re always open for prayer!

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

The Week of December 3, 2023

One of my favorite collects in the Book of Common Prayer is found in the ordination rite, the Solemn Liturgy for Good Friday, and also in the Great Vigil of Easter: “O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look favorably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquility the plan of salvation; let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.” In particular, my skin tingles at the hope that “things which had grown old are being made new.” This is what we celebrate with the season of Advent.

Of course, the ultimate time of newness in the Christian year is at Easter, but Advent begins a new Church/liturgical year. We might make New Year’s resolutions on January 1, but as Christians, perhaps the First Sunday of Advent is the time for us to make such resolutions.

We signal this newness in various ways within the liturgy as Advent begins. We move into a new cycle of Sunday lectionary readings (this year, journeying through the Gospel according to Mark on most Sundays). We also begin a new cycle of lectionary readings for the Daily Office (Morning and Evening Prayer). We hear the prophets’ call to repentance and renewal of life. The liturgical color shifts to violet, and the Gloria in excelsis is omitted at Sunday Masses. During Advent at Good Shepherd, we will move to Eucharistic Prayer B for the canon of the Mass. This prayer incorporates more incarnational imagery, allowing for a broader understanding of salvation encompassing the cross and the saving deeds of Jesus’s earthly ministry.

As we celebrate the newness of a new liturgical year, at Sung Mass this Sunday, we will also welcome nine new members to Good Shepherd, using a brief rite found in the Book of Occasional Services (2022). These nine members have recently transferred their membership to Good Shepherd, either by letter of transfer from another parish or by indicating that they would like their baptism recorded in our parish register. While we have many active members at Good Shepherd who might not be officially listed in our parish register (and for whom we are so grateful!), for canonical requirements and annual parochial report purposes, active baptized members are defined as follows by the Episcopal Church canons.

“All persons who have received the Sacrament of Holy Baptism with water in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, whether in this Church or in another Christian Church, and whose Baptisms have been duly recorded in this Church,” are members thereof. (Canon I.17.1)

Note: A person’s baptism, when duly recorded in the Register of Church Membership and Rites (also known as the Parish Register or Church Register) of the recording congregation, is his/her record of membership in the Episcopal Church.

Many of you are already active baptized members, so consider yourself welcomed! But from henceforward, I would like us to regularly welcome new active baptized members in the context of the Sunday Mass, and this Sunday, we will welcome those who have transferred in during 2023. If you are interested in either baptism or transferring your membership to Good Shepherd, please speak to me.

Part of celebrating the beginning of a new liturgical year involves taking on certain practices to enter into the Advent spirit of preparation, repentance, and waiting with joyful expectation for Christ’s coming at Christmas, daily coming into our lives, and Second Coming at the end of time. I invite you to consider attending our annual Service of Advent Lessons and Carols on Sunday, December 10 at 3 p.m. to explore Advent themes through music and Scripture. A reception will follow in the retreat house. And on Saturday, December 16, we are offering an Advent Quiet Day of Prayer and Reflection featuring the poetry of George Herbert (1593 - 1633), led by parishioner Donald McCown, with viol music by world-renowned gambist Sarah Cunningham from Main Line Early Music. Register here.

The season of Advent is always an appropriate time to engage in self-examination through the Sacrament of Reconciliation. You may schedule a private confession with me at any time. Just email me or call the parish office. This sacrament is about receiving God’s gift of forgiveness with joy, which opens up space in our hearts for Christ’s daily entrance into our lives. I encourage all of you to consider making a confession during Advent, not as a punitive measure but as a means of healing grace. I recommend Martin Smith’s excellent book, Reconciliation, for anyone who has not made a confession in the Anglican tradition before. I am always delighted to talk more about the Reconciliation of a Penitent with anyone who is interested.

I will look forward to seeing you on Sunday, as we greet both new members to our parish and the newness of another Church year!

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

The Week of November 26, 2023

Growing up in the Roman Catholic Church, I was used to hearing about the Sunday “obligation” to attend Mass. The same was true for Holy Days of obligation. I have written before that I don’t find the term “obligation” especially inspiring. On the other hand, I’m deeply sympathetic to what it intends to encourage. The risk of wielding a stick (“the obligation”) in order to get people to church can create an unholy fear, so that people then treat attendance at Mass as a punch card for salvation. So, what if we reframed the idea of “obligation” in the Christian life?

I want to reframe it, not dispense with it, because I believe that duties and practices (which include attendance at Mass) are essential to the Christian life. I believe that the Church in certain corners of the world is experiencing some spiritual atrophy after decades of eschewing demands on Christian discipleship. Perhaps we have not taken seriously enough the necessity of duty and obligation. Simply put: to be a Christian means to be faithful in doing certain things, whether prayer, works of charity and mercy, but most importantly, in attending church. This is not works righteousness because we don’t do things to earn anything. We do them because they visibly express our spiritual posture as followers of the risen Christ.

I’d rather call Sundays and Holy Days days of rejoicing, for that’s really what they are. In an ideal universe, we would get up on a Sunday and leap out of bed because we’re so excited to go to church. But although I’m an idealist, I’m also practical. And I know that each of us has days where we’re just not “feeling it.” The beauty of Christian discipleship is that we need not feel guilty if we’re not “feeling it.” We just know what we need to do: say our prayers, go to church, treat people with kindness, live generously. Sometimes doing those things (especially when we don’t “feel it”) will transform us and get us out of our ruts of malaise or apathy. And often the fruit of what we do is realized in some mysterious way in our lives, later when we least expect it.

Years ago, when I was serving as a musician in a church, I was greeted each day when I showed up for work by an office volunteer, who answered the phone each Wednesday and helped with tasks. She showed up faithfully each week for her volunteer shift, but she never came to church on the Lord’s Day. She said something to the effect of “I can worship God elsewhere.” She was lovely and dedicated in her own way, but I disagreed with her understanding of Christian worship. One is a Christian simply by virtue of being baptized; that is a fact. But to live as a Christian, one must always be connected to a worshipping community to be held accountable to one’s baptismal promises. And while it’s true that there are non-Christians who are more Christlike than Christians who attend Mass every week, this doesn’t mean that we are excused from going to church. Sunday worship is the center of our lives. We can be good people without the Mass, but to forego the Mass means foregoing the spiritual benefits and grace of the sacrament of the altar, which works on us objectively regardless of our feelings. It’s not a magic pill or a vaccine; it’s a mysterious and certain source of grace. And if we also subjectively begin to understand its significance in our lives, then hopefully we are changed, too.

As we move towards a new liturgical year with the start of the season of Advent on December 3, I invite us all to consider making the Lord’s Day (and Holy Days, also called “red letter days”) the heart of our lives of faith. Try it. Try stretching yourself to attend even when you don’t “feel it.” I suspect you will be changed, not out of fear, but out of love.

I have begun to see that the joy many of us experience at coffee hour (or potlucks) following Masses is more than just “fellowship.” That joy springs from a deep bond of love that forms among us when we routinely worship together. Coffee hour is almost a visible extension of the joy fostered and bred during each Mass. Consider the Mass as the source of your life’s joy. The Mass is primarily an act of thanksgiving. When you get out of bed each Sunday (or on Major Holy Days), take a minute to think of all for which you’re grateful. Then go to Mass, because it’s the epitome of thanksgiving.

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

The Week of November 19, 2023

Every Sunday in children’s formation (Sunday School), we open our time together with prayer. Our way of praying is a way that I have borrowed from my previous time as choral director at St. James School in Philadelphia. We say “please, God” and “thank you, God” prayers. On one level, this is a simplistic way of praying, but it is also a way to teach children that the first step in praying is simply to talk with God. Over time, prayer can be deepened. But what I find interesting about these Sunday morning prayers with children is that the “thank you, God” prayers are usually more abundant and come more easily than the “please, God” prayers. As I ponder this a bit more, this is theologically correct. Whether we are aware of it or not, all movements toward prayer are—even if unconsciously—impulses from a place of gratitude. The gratitude that moves one toward prayer might be an instinctive awareness of God’s ability and willingness to act and respond to prayer, and this can be true of our most impassioned laments.

Something that is not entirely true from the word “Mass” is that the Mass is primarily an act of thanksgiving. While the average person has no idea that “Eucharist,” which is synonymous with “Mass,” comes from the Greek word for thanksgiving (eucharisteo), the term “Eucharist” does more directly point to the Mass as a corporate act of giving thanks. When Mass is no more than an “obligation,” thanksgiving is crowded out. And yet, when we have no sense of our obligation to be at Mass, we are also losing something, too. Perhaps when we are finding it difficult to hang onto the expectation of observing the Lord’s Day, we would benefit from a gentle recollection that attendance at Mass (even if we don’t “feel” it) is principally an act of gratitude.

For me, this is most visibly felt at the beginning of each Sunday Mass. We move corporately towards God’s altar with singing, and then as we all face east, we begin with the opening acclamation: “Blessed be God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” We start by blessing God, or put another way, acknowledging the awesome majesty of God. This is an act of thanksgiving. The rest of the Mass flows from this. It flows into our daily life, when we look out our window at dusk during this time of year to see a beautiful color in the sky or when we experience some act of kindness from another person or even when we recognize that some disappointment in our life reminds us gently of our utter reliance on God.

There is something to be gained from an annual pause in the life of a nation to give thanks. The Thanksgiving holiday is such a blessed relief from some of the anxiety and social pressures that come with late December. The Thanksgiving holiday can be eucharistic for us if we allow it to be.

Hardly a day passes when I am not consciously grateful for some great blessing in ministry at Good Shepherd. I hope you find this to be true as well. Such conscious gratitude can occur even when the world around us seems to be crumbling down or in our moments of deepest despair. I am grateful for all of you, for your connection to this parish, and for your prayerful and financial support of its ministry. I’m grateful for our excellent and hard-working staff. I’m grateful for the privilege of serving as your rector.

On Monday, November 20, we will celebrate Thanksgiving as a parish a bit early, as I will be away over the holiday and many of you may be traveling, too. We will have a liturgical act of thanksgiving with Low (Said) Mass at 6 p.m. in the Lady Chapel. Afterwards, we’ll gather in the retreat house for a potluck supper. Please bring a dish from your family’s heritage (I’ll bring something Cajun!), or just bring anything at all. You don’t even have to make it yourself! You can sign up here. Monday evening will be an opportunity for all of us to give thanks together and enjoy each other’s company.

If you are traveling over the next week, may God bless your travels. I ask us all to keep in mind those who will not have food or shelter this Thanksgiving and to include them in our prayers. And even in the midst of war, daily violence, health challenges, and the many very real concerns of this life, may we always know that there is ample reason and time to give thanks. Thanks be to God for such boundless love, mercy, and compassion shown to us!

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

The Week of November 12, 2023

The offertory is the hinge point of the Mass. It is not just the midpoint of the Mass but the moment, theologically speaking, when we move from receiving to giving. We could, for instance, hear the word of God proclaimed and broken open in the first half and then leave, satisfied that we have received some kind of edification and need no more. Or we could ignore the first part of the Mass and then show up at the offertory to receive the sacramental grace of the Eucharist. But, of course, neither of those approaches is sufficient or appropriate. We need both halves; they function as a complete entity, for the Mass is the Mass because of both. We need to hear God’s word proclaimed and then we need to respond to that word proclaimed by offering fruits of the earth (bread and wine), money, and our selves back to God so that God may sanctify them for the life of the world. We have received the spiritual fruits of hearing God’s word proclaimed, and our only proper response is to give back to God what God has given us, to be blessed and then shared again with the world. From God all things proceed, and to God they will return.

Contrary to popular belief, the offertory of the Mass finds its deepest meaning far beyond the offering of collection plates filled with money. The offertory is, theologically, about returning to God what is God’s: bread, wine, our very “souls and bodies,” and of course, money. We might say that the offertory of the Mass embodies the spiritual practice of giving.

Over the past two months, you have been hearing and reading a lot about giving, more specifically, about giving of your financial resources to support ministry at Good Shepherd, as well as of your time and talent. The parish Advancement Committee has urged us all to give sacrificially. We usually think of sacrifice as something negative or painful. It can be. But the root of the word sacrifice is the Latin sacrificium, which suggests something more along the lines of setting things apart to be made holy or sacred. In that view, then, the giving of our financial resources, time, and talent is a visible and tangible offering of who we are to God. Moreover, it is giving back to God what God has first given us. We don’t make sacrifices to appease God’s wrath; we make them because those things that God has given us become distorted in our frail hands that operate in a world of sin. We must constantly give our gifts back to God so that they can be reordered and then shared again with the world to put it back together anew. Our giving to God plays a part in the world’s healing by God’s hand.

Sacrificial giving (I mean this as more than just giving what is convenient) is a spiritual practice. Spiritual practices are not always popular to talk about and do, but they are crucial to Christian discipleship. It’s not always a joy to pray or go to church, but to be a Christian in an authentic way, we have to do both. Sacrificial giving is no different. I would argue that in our modern world, sacrificial giving is one of the most important spiritual practices in which we can engage because it requires that we put God, and God alone, at the center of our lives. And this is incredibly difficult in a world obsessed with clinging to money. Sacrificial giving necessitates a profound spiritual reorientation.

To tithe (say, give 10% of one’s net income to God’s mission in the world) or to give sacrificially means that we choose to give to God first and then figure everything else out. Any financial planner will tell you this is absurd, but there you have it. (I also know that if you tell your financial planner that you intend to do this, they can also advise you how to make it all work accordingly.) This means that we sacrifice other things to make room for God, and this usually highlights those things that have become idols for us. I have found in my own attempts to give sacrificially, that I have come to rely more on God, which is the purpose of sacrificial giving as a spiritual practice. And although the risk required to give sacrificial giving at first seems scary, over time, it proves to be not so bad after all. God really does provide.

A spiritual practice like sacrificial giving is not foolproof. One can tithe and not be spiritually transformed, especially if the money given has strings attached to it. But true sacrificial giving always aims to be free giving, with no strings attached and with no illusion that the money is given with any ulterior motive. But perhaps above all, the spiritual practice of sacrificial giving frees us from sinful anxiety, and I suspect that anxiety is the predominant reason that people are scared to move from giving to sacrificial giving. They believe the world’s lies that there isn’t enough. If I give too much to God and the Church, I’ll not have enough for retirement or my children’s education or for my own well-being. Sacrificial giving asks us to take a bold leap of faith to trust that with God there is always enough.

I believe that the two most difficult things to relinquish are resentments and money. Holding on to both gives us a sense of power, but it’s a false sense of power. We learn in Christ that true power comes from self-emptying, not from self-filling. Sacrificial giving is a spiritual movement towards this self-emptying (kenotic) power of Christ.

There are many reasons why I feel comfortable encouraging you to give generously and sacrificially to God’s ministry at Good Shepherd. Your money will go to good use, because daily, lives are being transformed through this parish. This parish, of course, needs your financial support to survive and sustain its vision and God’s mission in this place. By giving, you are also supporting a place that is offering something to you in return. But most of all, I know that giving sacrificially is good for our souls. We don’t give to sway God’s hand in our favor. We don’t give to get to heaven. We give because it is the only true response to God’s inestimable love for us and for his boundless gifts to us. This is the meaning of the offertory: the more we are aware of what God has given us, the less we will want to hold back from returning to God.

This Sunday is Commitment Sunday. I invite all of you to practice or begin to move towards sacrificial giving. A gift of any amount can constitute a pledge. If you have already pledged online, please bring a physical pledge card to Mass to place in the offertory collection plate as a visible sign of your gift to God’s work at Good Shepherd. If you have lost your pledge card, there are plenty of extras at the church. If you can’t make it to Mass on Sunday, please mail your card to the church and pledge online.

We have already seen incredible generosity in this year’s campaign; thank you! I’m hopeful that we will reach our goal of $170K, and perhaps we will exceed it. The greatest thing about sacrificial giving is that it is ultimately liberating. When we are struggling with hope or despair or trust in God, the best remedy is to give—give generously. And then we will begin to understand just how generous God has been with us.

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle

The Week of November 5, 2023

As Christians, we say that we are truly free. We claim that in Christ, our sins are forgiven, death no longer has dominion over us, and we are moved from a realm of captivity into a place of utter freedom, living exclusively under the rule of our Lord Jesus Christ. Those who do not profess any kind of belief in God wonder at how we might claim to be free when we have so many rules to follow and duties that come with being Christian. This, of course, is the great paradox: by submitting ourselves to the Lordship of Christ, we are truly and mysteriously free.

This is especially apparent to me when I consider the life of prayer. Prayer, on the surface, seems like one more thing to do. To some extent, this is exactly right. To be a good Christian and to be faithful, we must take some action. We have to do things. We have to make time to say our prayers. We have to make the effort to go to church. We have to take steps to care for our neighbor. These all require effort, and it’s hard work. But after we take that initial step, moving past “I don’t feel like it,” we then find that we are utterly free.

In prayer, I’m reminded that although I have shown up to pray and made the effort to be present to God, that is all I have had to do and that is all I can do. It is then God who acts. Prayer is really about how we let God shape us; it’s less about what we do, aside from showing up to pray. St. Paul’s words in the Letter to the Romans are encouraging when we have no words to pray: “the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words” (Romans 8:26). What is more freeing than that?

What is more freeing than to show up at particular hours of the day to be with God and let the Holy Spirit pray within us? What is more freeing than to show up for Mass, even if we are feeling apathetic, depressed, or spiritually arid, and yet know that the power of prayer is not dependent on our feelings? What is more freeing than to know that to receive the fruit of prayer we don’t have to have the right words or the latest novel way of praying or the right frame of mind? We don’t have to check boxes or get everything exactly right. Showing up is what’s important. Prayer, quite apart from what we usually imagine, is not so much about how we feel. Prayer is an action and an effort of the heart. All we need to do to pray is be present with and to God and let the Spirit pray within us. This is not, of course, to say that feelings and emotions aren’t important. They can be wonderful gifts from God in our prayer lives. It’s simply to say that prayer is frequently quite effective even when we feel nothing.

If you ask me, this is utter freedom. In a world that always demands more and more of us, that measures our success by how innovative we are, prayer is simple, perhaps mechanical at times, and it might even seem boring. But it doesn’t matter: it’s what we do. That’s why the modern sentiment and acceptable excuse “I don’t feel like it” is irrelevant (and perhaps disastrous) to a life of prayer. All God needs is our presence and our hearts for prayer to bear fruit in the world. It ultimately doesn’t matter how we feel.

And this is why day after day, the doors at Good Shepherd are open for prayer. It doesn’t matter if it’s one officiant leading the Daily Office and livestreaming to the internet. It doesn’t matter if only two show up for Mass. It doesn’t matter how tired we are when we show up or if the Scripture readings for the day speak in any way to us. Something ineffable is happening in the life of God to us, probably most acutely when we are unaware of it. Whether it’s twenty or sixty people in the pews, prayer happens and is efficacious because God is God and because people show up to make themselves available to God. The lifeblood of our parish church, and of every Christian church, is this constant, dependable, rhythmic, unchanging commitment to prayer.

Maybe the most freeing thing of all is that we don’t need to feel differently after prayer. We most likely will not be aware of an immediate change in ourselves or a sudden burst of inspiration right after praying. But what we will find is that at some point, when we least expect it, the fruit of some arid period of prayer weeks before will suddenly be made known. This is beyond our control, and this is marvelously freeing. This thing we call prayer is about our showing up and leaving the rest to God. And what good news that is!

Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle