Salt & Light

The Gospel reading for the Daily Prayer of the Church today comes from Matthew where we read:

 

‘Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

 

‘You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.

 

‘You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven. (Mt. 5:11-16).

 

Jesus tells us: “You are salt and light.”  How are we salt and light?  People know that we believe in Jesus and in his dying for us while we were sinners thereby giving us life when we treat others as people who have been redeemed by Christ.  How does that look? Feed the poor, clothe the naked, give water to the thirsty.  In England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has paved the way for the Church to be linked with credits unions where Church volunteers would work with financial cooperatives.  His goal is to help those who are in financial difficulty who go to pay day loan lenders who charge extremely high interest rates. When they go there, those in financial trouble get into more trouble and further behind.  The Church is even teaching those in financial trouble how to manage their money.  It is working in the parish Church in Louth, Lincolnshire.  The Church is helping people to break the cycle of debt and to be free.  In the modern world, that is what it looks like.

 

Let us pray: Gracious God you ate with sinners, with those who were shunned by the world.  Send your Holy Spirit to open our eyes to see how we can be salt and light to the world as we spread the Good News of salvation in Jesus Christ.  Amen.

 

Please remember everyone on our Prayer List, but especially, Robert, Gladys, Shirley, Lee , all of those suffering from cancer, all of the families of the victims of the shootings at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., and the victims of the terrible rains in Mexico where people have been left with nothing.

 

CALENDAR REMINDERS

 

The BBQ at Grace is back!  After being interrupted by Ike, the tradition is back again.  Saturday, 12 October 2013 from 11-3.  There will be a silent auction  with all sorts of wonderful items including James Avery jewelry and a bird watching cruise.  Come and support our brothers and sisters at Grace Episcopal Church.

 

St. Vincent’s House Day, Saturday, 28 September at 10 a.m. at St. Vincent’s House with Bishop Fisher and continuing on Sunday, 29 September, with the celebration of the Eucharist at St. Augustine’s at 9 a.m. followed by breakfast.

 

Adult Christian Formation: this Sunday at 11 a.m.-the ethical consideration of stem cell research.

 

Your servant in Christ,

 

Fr. Chester J. Makowski+

St. Augustine of Hippo Episcopal Church

Galveston, Texas 77550 

Reformer: The Rev. Edward Pusey

 

Today the Church remembers and honors someone who wanted to get back to the practices of the Early Church and to the Church’s more universal roots, Edward Pusey (1800-1882), a priest, an Oxford professor, and a member of the Oxford Movement.  Pusey was competent in Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic, and was Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford, from 1828 until his death.

 

Over time, the liturgy had the Eucharist in the deep background.  People did not go to Holy Communion that often.  The leaders of the Oxford Movement wanted to reinvigorate the Church by going back to more frequent reception of Holy Communion.  James Kiefer writes: “Then, in the 1830's, several lecturers at Oxford University, reading their copies of the Book of Common Prayer, noticed that this was not the intended state of affairs. The Prayer Book provided for a sermon at the Liturgy, but not at Morning Prayer, for the taking of a collection at the Liturgy, but not at Morning Prayer. In every way it was clear that the compilers of the Prayer Book had intended the Liturgy to be the principal service on every Sunday and Feast Day. So the lecturers got busy and wrote a series of pamphlets explaining this and various related points to their readers. They called the pamphlets Tracts for the Times, by Residents in Oxford, and the public referred to them as The Oxford Tracts.”

 

At first, it met with little acceptance.  However, within time it certainly caught on and led to many denominations, including the Roman Catholics, on paying more attention to the liturgy.

 

If you go to Oxford today, you will find a chapel named after Edward Pusey where they celebrate Morning Prayer, the Eucharist and Evening Prayer each day.

 

Let us pray:  Grant, O God, that in all time of our testing we may know your presence and obey your will; that, following the examples of your servant Edward Bouverie Pusey, we may with integrity and courage accomplish what you give us to do, and endure what you give us to bear; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

 

Please remember everyone on our Prayer List, but especially, Robert, Gladys, Shirley, Lee , all of those suffering from cancer, and all of the families of the victims of the shootings at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C.

 

CALENDAR REMINDERS

 

St. Vincent’s House Day, Saturday, 28 September at 10 a.m. at St. Vincent’s House with Bishop Fisher and continuing on Sunday, 29 September, with the celebration of the Eucharist at St. Augustine’s at 9 a.m. followed by breakfast.

 

Adult Christian Formation: this Sunday at 11 a.m.-the ethical consideration of stem cell research.

 

Your servant in Christ,

 

Fr. Chester J. Makowski+

St. Augustine of Hippo Episcopal Church

Galveston, Texas 77550 

God's Wisdom Is Not the World's Wisdom

The appointed Epistle reading for today’s Daily Prayer is taken from Paul’s first letter to the Church in Corinth where Paul reminds us that God’s ways are not the ways of the world:

 

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

 

Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.’ (1 Cor. 1:20-31).

 

To be sure, the Early Church was a mixed bag of rich and poor, but it was particularly attractive to those who the world considered to be of little importance, for example, the poor, slaves, women and children.  Paul preached the Good News of Jesus that redemption was open to all; it made no difference who you were.  In fact, Jesus himself was not a man of wealth and he died the death of a criminal being crucified.  In the eyes of the wise and powerful, God’s approach seemed absurd.  Why would God save creation through the death of someone on a instrument of execution?  God’s values and not the world’s values.  God values everyone, no matter that their station in life might, or might not, be.

 

Let us pray:  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.

 

Please remember everyone on our Prayer List, but especially, Robert, Gladys, Shirley, Lee and all of the families of the victims of the shootings at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C.

 

CALENDAR REMINDERS

 

St. Vincent’s House Day, Saturday, 28 September at 10 a.m. at St. Vincent’s House with Bishop Fisher and continuing on Sunday, 29 September, with the celebration of the Eucharist at St. Augustine’s at 9 a.m. followed by breakfast.

 

Adult Christian Formation: this Sunday at 11 a.m.-the ethical consideration of stem cell research.

 

Your servant in Christ,

 

Fr. Chester J. Makowski+

St. Augustine of Hippo Episcopal Church

Galveston, Texas 77550

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