Bishop Marc

Bishop Marc's Christmas Prayer

nobody@vox.com(Bishop Marc) — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 14:14:18 -0800

Loving God, we people are always trying to find our way home. Unlike the other creatures with whom we share life on this Earth, we sometimes forget that this is what we want and need. Beneath our anxiety, our activities, some part of which cover our anxieties, beneath the things we say are important to us, there is an inner knowledge of our need to be home at last. During the sunny times of the year, we are usually able to stay unaware of this need. But now, with less and less sunlight, we become clearer about wanting to be home. I think, God, that our being here in the Diocese of California today, surrounded in the increasing darkness by visions of Advent and Christmas, with people we love and with people we don’t know but whom we may have realized we love as well, that this is part of our search for home, for you, our truest and best home, our heart. Hear our prayer, and know that we pray for all humanity and the Earth itself.

Amen.

May the Sun of Righteousness light your paths in this season,
May the Prince of Peace be born in your midst,
May the One in whom we hope bring all things to their fullness
and may the blessing of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit be upon you and remain with you forever.

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Eucharist in Remembrance of All the Dead in Iraq

nobody@vox.com(Bishop Marc) — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 19:15:02 -0800

Requiem Eucharist

In the Eucharist we are aware that to a living God, all live, all are remembered — even those who are from a human point of view, dead.

At the Eucharistic table we become aware of this divine reality, that while humans may forget the dead — and may indeed willfully forget them — God remembers them. In the Iraq wars the numbers of those who have died mounts, and is staggering. While even the numbers of the dead are unknown to many of us, our faith teaches us that God does not forget them.

In the Eucharist on December 7th, we enter into an act of remembering — part of the sacrament of the Eucharist as we always celebrate it. We place our faith in a God of peace, a God of justice, a God who regards the plight of the poor, a God who remembers the forgotten.

Those who join us in the Eucharist on December 7th join in an act of prayer and remembrance, in the spirit of God's peace.

Join Marc Andrus, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of California, members of the Episcopal Peace Fellowship, and other peaceful people of faith to memorialize all who have died as a result of U.S. led hostilities in Iraq.
A procession will leave San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral (California and Taylor streets) at 12:30 p.m., and the Eucharist will begin at 1:00 p.m. at the Federal Building.
Bring placards, timbrals, and tambourines, and join us for this peaceful procession and Eucharist.

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Living Faithfully in a Fragmented World

nobody@vox.com(Bishop Marc) — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 19:20:53 -0800

Living Faithfully in a Fragmented World: Lessons for the Church from Macintyre's After Virtue (Chris

Jonathan R. Wilson

Living Faithfully in a Fragmented World is this month’s reading in the Virtual Cloister. A slight volume of ecclesiology, Jonathan Wilson's book has had a disproportionately large effect, birthing a potent movement called the New Monasticism. Perhaps this outgrowth of the thought put forward in Living Faithfully is an entry into appreciating the book itself.

The New Monasticism is what might be called the result of a phenomenological reduction performed on the Old Monasticism: young Christians, looking intently at traditional monasticism, see an essence that is intentional community, with other aspects that might be viewed as accidents, or unnecessary to the essence.

The focus on intentional community provides a counterpoint and alternative, and perhaps a rebuke of a world Wilson describes as fragmented.

Fragmentation is not to be confused with diversity, according to Wilson. Diversity assumes coherent self-identifying and identifiable communities, seeking to find ways to relate, one community to another. A fragmented world, on the other hand, is one lacking in coherence, and marked by isolation.

Traditional monasticism, in late antiquity and the middle ages, has been credited with salvaging civilization in the wake of a wrecked empire.

Can intentional Christian communities provide something parallel in our fragmented world now? This is a question worth our considering together.

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