A Day to Remember

 

This is the 12^th anniversary of the attacks of 9/11.  This morning I am leaving New York City for Boston from Penn Station.  This day is much like that day 12 years ago.  The sky is clear.  The traffic on the streets is building as cabs and buses bring workers to their employment.  Penn Station is filled with people living their daily lives.  Some are going to work; some are folks traveling to see loved ones, or perhaps to see a bit of the world.  But on this day, there is that underlying tension in New York City, that remembrance of how an ordinary morning can change in an instant from the mundane to the horrific when hate prevails and unleashes deadly destruction.  On that day 12 years ago, our nation changed.

 

At St. Bartholomew Episcopal Church on Park Avenue in New York City at noon today, firefighters, choirs, and people from the city and other places will come together to remember and to pray for all of those who lost loved ones on that day, and to pray for healing in New York City; Shankesville, Pennsylvania; Washington, D.C.; the nation and for the world.  Join with them in your prayers today.

 

Let us pray: Eternal God, in whose perfect kingdom no sword is drawn but the sword of righteousness, no strength known but the strength of love: So mightily spread abroad your Spirit, that all peoples may be gathered under the banner of the Prince of Peace, as children of one Father; to whom be dominion and glory, now and for ever. Amen.

 

CALENDAR REMINDERS & OPPORTUNITIES FOR MINISTRY

 

Back to Church Sunday is this Sunday, 15 September!  This is an Anglican Communion wide event.  Please invite someone to Church that Sunday.  We will also be having a baptism.

 

Adult Christian Education: we will resume the ethics series on the 15^th of September.

 

William Temple Cooking Teams: All 3 parishes on the Island are forming teams to cook one Wednesday a month for the William Temple students.  Trinity will have 2 teams and Grace and St. Augustine will each have a team.  William Temple will provide the food, and we provide the cooking.  I will have a sign-up sheet in Sutton Hall.

 

Please remember everyone on our Prayer List, especially Lee and Gladys.

 

Your servant in Christ,

 

Fr. Chester J. Makowski+

St. Augustine of Hippo Episcopal Church

Galveston, Texas 77550

The Rev. Alexander Crummell, Founder of the Union of Black Episcopalians

 

Today the Episcopal Church remembers the founder of the Union of Black Episcopalians, the Rev. Alexander Crummell.  James Kiefer writes:

Alexander Crummell was born in New York City in 1819, and wished to study for the priesthood, but received many rebuffs because he was black. He was ordained in the Diocese of Massachusetts in 1844, when he was 25 years old, but was excluded from a meeting of priests of the diocese, and decided to go to England. After graduating from Cambridge, he went to Liberia, an African country founded under American auspices for the repatriation of freed slaves. Crummell hoped to see established in Liberia a black Christian republic, combining the best of European and African culture, and led by a Western-educated black bishop. He visited the United States and urged blacks to join him in Liberia and to swell the ranks of the church there. His work in Liberia ran into opposition and indifference, and he returned to the United States, where he undertook the founding and strengthening of urban black congregations that would provide worship, education, and social services for their communities. When some bishops proposed a separate missionary district for black parishes, he organized a group, now known as the Union of Black Episcopalians, to fight the proposal.

Let us pray: Almighty and everlasting God, we thank you for your servant Alexander Crummell, whom you called to preach the Gospel to those who were far off and to those who were near. Raise up in this and every land evangelists and heralds of your kingdom, that your Church may proclaim the unsearchable riches of our Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

CALENDAR REMINDERS & OPPORTUNITIES FOR MINISTRY

Back to Church Sunday is this Sunday, 15 September!  This is an Anglican Communion wide event.  Please invite someone to Church that Sunday.  We will also be having a baptism.

Adult Christian Education: we will resume the ethics series on the 15^th of September.

William Temple Cooking Teams: All 3 parishes on the Island are forming teams to cook one Wednesday a month for the William Temple students.  Trinity will have 2 teams and Grace and St. Augustine will each have a team.  William Temple will provide the food, and we provide the cooking.  I will have a sign-up sheet in Sutton Hall.

Please remember everyone on our Prayer List, especially Lee.

Your servant in Christ,

Fr. Chester J. Makowski+

St. Augustine of Hippo Episcopal Church
Galveston, Texas 77550

Perspective

The Epistle today is taken from the end of the 4^th chapter of James and the beginning of the 5^th chapter:

 

Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.’ Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.’ As it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin.

 

Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. Your riches have rotted, and your clothes are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure for the last days. Listen! The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts on a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you. (James 4:13-5:6).

 

I don’t know how your week has been, but this last week, I have been to the funeral of a woman in her 50s and have visited the sick who were hospitalized.  I have been to meetings, driven about 600 miles, listened to the news on the radio about Syria and the stabbings at Spring High School, have been concerned with the cares of the world and making plans and neglecting prayer. 

 

Then this morning, James, puts things into perspective: “‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.’ Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”  Sometimes, we forget what life is about and whose we are.  James reminds us that we ought to say: “If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.” Everything else, neglecting to remember who God is and what he has done for us through Jesus Christ, is nothing more than boasting in our arrogance, and all such boasting is evil. Even more, says James, anyone who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin.  Things done and things left undone.

 

I invite you today to remember whose you are and that in God we live, more and have our being. 

 

Let us pray on this Friday:  Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

 

CALENDAR REMINDERS & OPPORTUNITIES FOR MINISTRY

 

Lee Runion: As many of you may know, Lee has been at UTMB after suffering a stroke.  He has been discharged from the hospital. It is time for our Church family to do a little cooking for Lee!  Lee is on a low sodium/low fat diet, on doctor's orders. Let's co-ordinate to take care of his dietary needs taking turns to bring him soups, sandwiches and fruit. We'll have a sign-up sheet in Church this Sunday. Lee is recovering, so please keep calls and visits to a minimum, but most of all, please keep him in your prayers especially for healing and restoration of the vision he's lost at present.

 

Children’s Christian Formation begins this Sunday!  It will be held during the service.  The children will leave right after the collect and will return during the exchange of the peace.  Thank you to Stacy, Sammy and Hugh for spearheading this ministry.

 

Back to Church Sunday is 15 September!  This is an Anglican Communion wide event.  Please invite someone to Church that Sunday.  We will also be having a baptism.

 

Adult Christian Education: we will resume the ethics series on the 15^th of September.

 

William Temple Cooking Teams: All 3 parishes on the Island are forming teams to cook one Wednesday a month for the William Temple students.  Trinity will have 2 teams and Grace and St. Augustine will each have a team.  William Temple will provide the food, and we provide the cooking.  I will have a sign-up sheet in Sutton Hall.

 

Please remember everyone on our Prayer List.

 

Your servant in Christ,

 

Fr. Chester J. Makowski+

St. Augustine of Hippo Episcopal Church

Galveston, Texas 77550

Bishop Charles Chapman Grafton

Today the Episcopal Church remembers and celebrates the life and ministry of Charles Chapman Grafton who was born on 12 April 1830 in Boston, Massachusetts, and died on this day in 1912.  He served as the second Bishop of the Diocese of Fond du Lac, and was a supporter of the Oxford Movement, an affiliation of Anglicans that led sought to revive the Church’s connection to the Patristic period (the first 400 or so years of the Church) and the Anglican Church’s universal (that is what the word “catholic” means) roots.

 

Grafton was consecrated by William E. McLaren of Chicago, Alexander Burgess of Quincy, and George F. Seymour of Springfield on 15 December 1875 at St. Paul’s Cathedral in Fond du Lac. Grafton founded the Anglican religious order Sisterhood of the Holy Nativity and was a founding member of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, an Anglican religious order for men wherein the members live under a rule of life and, at profession, make monastic vows of poverty, celibacy and obedience. SSJE was founded in 1866 at Cowley, Oxford, England.

 

Let us pray:  Loving God, you called Charles Chapman Grafton to be a bishop in your Church and endowed him with a burning zeal for souls: Grant that, following his example, we may ever live for the extension of your kingdom, that your glory may be the chief end of our lives, your will the law of our conduct, your love the motive of our actions, and Christ’s life the model and mold of our own; through the same Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, throughout all ages. Amen.

 

CALENDAR REMINDERS

 

Adult Christian Education every Sunday at 11:00 a.m.: Contemporary Moral Issues.

  

Sunday, 8 September we will: (1) begin Sunday School for the children, and (2) bless all of those participating in EFM which is being facilitated by Tammie Taylor.

 

Sunday, 15 September 2013: Invite Someone to Church Sunday.  The Anglican Communion will be doing this all over the world.  Be a part of it!

  

Please remember everyone on our Prayer List especially Jim Reagan, Robert, all of those who are starting college and will be away from home for the first time, and for all of those who are suffering from addictions.  Let us pray: O blessed Lord, you ministered to all who came to you: Look with compassion upon all who through addiction have lost their health and freedom. Restore to them the assurance of your unfailing mercy; remove from them the fears that beset them; strengthen them in the work of their recovery; and to those who care for them, give patient understanding and persevering love. Amen.

Your servant in Christ,

 

The Rev. Chester J. Makowski

St. Augustine of Hippo Episcopal Church

Galveston, Texas 77550

God Hears Our Cry

One of the appointed Psalms for the Daily Prayer of the Church today is Psalm 18, and the first 6 verses give us much to pray over:

 

I love you, O Lord, my strength.

The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer,

   my God, my rock in whom I take refuge,

   my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.

I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised;

   so I shall be saved from my enemies.

The cords of death encompassed me;

   the torrents of perdition assailed me;

the cords of Sheol entangled me;

   the snares of death confronted me.

In my distress I called upon the Lord;

   to my God I cried for help.

From his temple he heard my voice,

   and my cry to him reached his ears.

 

When you read the Psalms, you will encounter every form of human emotion, from depression and grief to joy and exultation.  The Psalmist tells us that in our distress, when life seems to be closing in on us and death is near, God is there to hear us, and in Jesus, he also is there personally with us, suffering alongside with us.

 

CALENDAR REMINDERS

 

Adult Christian Education every Sunday at 11:00 a.m.: Contemporary Moral Issues.

  

Sunday, 8 September we will: (1) begin Sunday School for the children, and (2) bless all of those participating in EFM which is being facilitated by Tammie Taylor.

 

Sunday, 15 September 2013: Invite Someone to Church Sunday.  The Anglican Communion will be doing this all over the world.  Be a part of it!

  

Please remember everyone on our Prayer List especially Jim Reagan, Robert, all of those who are starting college and will be away from home for the first time, and for all of those who are suffering from addictions.  Let us pray: O blessed Lord, you ministered to all who came to you: Look with compassion upon all who through addiction have lost their health and freedom. Restore to them the assurance of your unfailing mercy; remove from them the fears that beset them; strengthen them in the work of their recovery; and to those who care for them, give patient understanding and persevering love. Amen.

Your servant in Christ,

 

The Rev. Chester J. Makowski

St. Augustine of Hippo Episcopal Church

Galveston, Texas 77550

Two Men, A Single Dream

Today is the 50^th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, as well as the commemoration of St. Augustine of Hippo (which we celebrated Sunday). 

 

Augustine, born in North Africa in 354, was one of the greatest theologians of Western Christianity, who spent his youth seeking after truth through every crazy avenue available only to determine much later in life that all of his restlessness was calmed once he came to know Christ so that he could write: “Lord, our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”  From then on, he spent the remainder or his life as a priest and Bishop of Hippo proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ.  Augustine knew that left to our own devices, we would fail; therefore, we needed God’s grace in order to become true followers of Jesus.  Augustine dreamt of a world where all people followed Jesus, where there was, in the words of St. Paul, no master or slave, all were equally loved by God. 

 

Some 1600 years later, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had the same kind of dream, a dream rooted in Scripture, where in the words of the Old Testament, the lion lays down with the lamb (Isaiah 11:6), and there is no longer Jew or Greek, master or slave, but all people are treated equally (Galatians 3:28).  Two men, a similar dream, one God.

 

Let us pray:  Lord God, the light of the minds that know you, the life of the souls that love you, and the strength of the hearts that serve you: Help us, following the example of your servant Augustine of Hippo, so to know you that we may truly love you, and so to love you that we may fully serve you, whom to serve is perfect freedom; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

 

Your servant in Christ,

 

The Rev. Chester J. Makowski+

St. Augustine of Hippo Episcopal Church

Galveston, Texas 77550

Ministry to the Deaf

 

The Rev. H.W. Syle

 

Today the Episcopal Church honors the life and ministry of 2 missionaries, missionaries to the deaf, Thomas Gallaudet and Henry Winter Syle. 

 

Thomas Gallaudet was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1822. His mother, Sophia was deaf, and his father, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, was the co-founder of the first institution for the education of the deaf in North America, and was its first principal. The school was known as the "Connecticut Asylum (at Hartford) for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons," but it is now known as the American School for the Deaf.  Although his father wanted to become an Episcopal priest, he did not; rather, dedicating his life to the education of the deaf.  Thomas did become an Episcopal priest being ordained in 1851.  In 1852, he established St. Ann’s Church in New York City which ministered to deaf persons by having services in sign language. Gallaudet died on this day in 1902.

 

Henry Winter Syle was born on 9 November 1846 in Shanghai, China, and was deaf from childhood.  When he moved to the U.S., he was one of Fr. Thomas Gallaudet’s parishioners. Syle attended Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, St. John's College in Cambridge, England, and Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Fr. Gallaudet encouraged Syle to become a priest. On 14 October 1884, Syle became the first deaf person to be ordained by the Episcopal Church in the United States. He established a congregation for the deaf in 1888 and died on 6 January 1890.

 

Let us pray:  O loving God, whose will it is that everyone should come to you and be saved: We bless your Holy Name for your servants Thomas Gallaudet and Henry Winter Syle, whose labors with and for those who are deaf we commemorate today; and we pray that you will continually move your Church to respond in love to the needs of all people; through Jesus Christ, who opened the ears of the deaf, and who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

 

CALENDAR REMINDERS

 

Adult Christian Education every Sunday at 11:00 a.m.: Contemporary Moral Issues.

  

Sunday, 8 September we will: (1) begin Sunday School for the children, and (2) bless all of those participating in EFM which is being facilitated by Tammie Taylor.

 

Sunday, 15 September 2013: Invite Someone to Church Sunday.  The Anglican Communion will be doing this all over the world.  Be a part of it!

  

Please remember everyone on our Prayer List especially Jim Reagan and all of those who are starting college and will be away from home for the first time.

 

Your servant in Christ,

 

The Rev. Chester J. Makowski

St. Augustine of Hippo Episcopal Church

Galveston, Texas 77550