Sharing the Work of the People

Dear Trinity Church & friends,

Grace and Peace to you from God in Christ!  I hope this message finds you well.  Thank you, thank you for the warm welcome last Sunday.  My family and I enjoyed our first official weekend, and I am so glad that our shared adventure with you is now underway.

I spent my childhood in what may well have been the most boring Roman Catholic congregation in all of Christendom.  Even so, the beauty and mystery of the Eucharist captured me.  As a priest, I have never let loose those early memories of God meeting me across my runny nose, wandering mind, and darting eyes. I trust that God unfailingly awaits everyone in every congregation, from the most distracted to the most engaged.

As part of my homemaking at Trinity and in Boston, I will be preaching all four Sunday services for the next three weeks.  In addition to providing me a continuing orientation to Trinity’s rhythms of life, with these four consecutive sermons I hope to offer continuity, all of us sharing in a common experience during these first weeks of ministry together.

Our Episcopal liturgy is, as in the Greek, a “work of the people” intended to glorify God and to inspire the faithful.  As we connect with the Divine in our worship, so, too, do we as the Body of Christ find ourselves being bound to one another – both by our common orientation toward God, and, in response, our commonly renewed orientation toward the world.  Over time, our experiences of this connection and renewal in worship become intimate and precious to us who comprise any congregation (even that dear Roman parish of my youth): the texture of the prayer book we hold in our hands; the airy descant of our favorite hymns; the chalice’s glint of sun during the Eucharistic Prayer; the echo of heels against wood and stone as we make our way to the altar rail.  Though we say our prayers in the company of hundreds – even thousands – the liturgical experience remains deeply personal, especially when worshipping in the reassuringly familiar setting of one’s home church, at one’s favorite hour, in one’s preferred form.

For these reasons among many others, joining you in prayer is a gift I receive with great care – one I am seeking to honor with presence and attention.  Certainly, with so many competing obligations and opportunities, making a priority of Sunday worship is difficult for all of us, and, thanks be to God, Grace abounds in this as in all things.  Even so, our coming to know one another in the setting of our common prayer provides a deep and important connection, one to which I hope you will consider offering yourself in the weeks, months, and years ahead.

Godspeed,

 

The Rev. Morgan S. Allen, Rector