PROPER 27, YEAR A

Sunday, November 8, 2026

Sts. Matthew & Mark, Barrington, R.I.

 

Wisdom 6:12-16

I Thessalonians 4:13-18

Matthew 25:1-13

 

Today’s Gospel addresses themes of preparation and readiness. A wedding feast is about to take place. By custom, the bridegroom goes to his bride’s parents' home to sign the marriage contract, then brings his bride back in a festive procession to his house, where the celebrations begin. But for some unexplained reason, the bridegroom is delayed. The Gospel doesn’t say whether he’s delayed arriving at the bride’s parents’ house or returning to his own house. Either way, the wedding feast is delayed.

 

The bridegroom’s midnight return reveals which of the young women waiting to greet him are wise and which are foolish. “Bridesmaids,” by the way, is not the best translation. Matthew uses the Greek word here that literally means “virgins” or “maidens,” which is what I’m going to say from now on. Anticipating the possibility of just such a delay, the wise maidens have brought extra flasks of oil for their lamps; but not so the foolish maidens, who are caught with their lamps flickering out—and who at length find themselves locked out of the marriage feast.

The Church has generally interpreted this parable as referring to Christ’s Second Coming—that is, his Return at the end of the world to judge the living and the dead—and I see no good reason to depart from that line of interpretation. After our Lord’s Resurrection and Ascension, the earliest Christians expected him to return within their lifetimes to inaugurate the Kingdom of God.

 

Again and again, the Bible describes the Kingdom of God as a wedding feast, with Christ as the bridegroom, and the Church as his bride. In the parable, then, the shout at midnight: “Look! Here is the Bridegroom! Come out to meet him” evokes St. Paul in today’s reading from First Thessalonians: “For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call, and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven …”

 

But as the years went by, Christ didn’t return as soon as expected. The bridegroom was delayed. Perhaps some Christians were tempted to give up on the hope that he’d ever return, and grew slack and lax in their faith. They’d once waited eagerly, but over time some found their faith flickering and growing dim, like the lamps of the foolish maidens. 

 

The parable is both a warning and an exhortation. Even though the bridegroom seems delayed, we need to remain alert and ready. Whether or not we believe in a literal return of Christ in human history, we’ll all meet him sooner or later, one way or another. He will arrive at an unexpected hour, and there won’t be time to begin the preparations we should have been making all along. So, in today’s Collect, we pray that “we may purify ourselves as he pure; that when he comes again with power and great glory, we may be made like him in his eternal and glorious kingdom …”

 

Today's Old Testament reading suggests our need for divine wisdom. After all, wisdom, or its absence, made the difference between the wise and foolish maidens. As the reading puts it, “One who rises early to seek [Wisdom] will find her, for she will be found sitting at the gate.” This reading comes from a part of the Bible called the Wisdom literature. It treats God’s wisdom—in Greek, Sophia—as a manifestation of God’s Word, or Logos. We grow in holy wisdom by attending to God’s Word. 

 

And that is why we’re here in Church today. We all need continuing formation. All the spiritual practices of our faith—the Holy Eucharist, the Daily Offices, personal prayer, Bible study, spiritual reading, meditation, retreats, and ministry to the poor and those in need—steep us in God’s Wisdom and so prepare us for whatever crises and joys lie ahead.

 

In one of my previous parishes, a woman’s teenage sons periodically rebelled and gave her a hard time about coming to Church on Sunday. Her response was: Much as you might think you don’t need Church now, someday you’ll be grateful for a place to turn for comfort and hope when you lose your job, your health, your home, or your spouse. Otherwise, without something solid to fall back on, you’ll be tempted to lose yourself in drinking, drugs, gambling, or some other addictive form of escape. But to gain any meaningful support from your faith at that moment, you’ll need to have been practicing it all along. Otherwise, it’ll be the worst possible time to try to start learning.

 

Another example: A youngster in the Sunday School class once asked the teacher: “Isn’t it hypocritical to say the Lord’s Prayer by rote every Sunday when we don’t really mean it or even think about what we’re saying?” “Not at all,” the teacher replied. “Think of it as a time of training. We teach you to memorize the Lord’s Prayer, to know it by heart, because one day, when you find that you really need to pray more than anything else, you’ll at least have the words to get started.”

 

But the practice of our faith isn’t just preparation for the bad times, the inevitable moments of crisis in our lives, but even more for the good times. How much more able we are to enter into the joy of a baptism or a wedding, for example, when we’re already accustomed to being in Church, understand what’s going on, and know the responses, symbolism, and customs!

 

Most of all, however, the practice of our faith prepares us for the joy of heaven itself. There, we shall be caught up in the continual praise and adoration of the Blessed Trinity. Here, Sunday by Sunday, our worship gives us the opportunity to practice for that. If we hope to spend eternity with God in heaven, it’s a good idea to spend some time every Sunday in Church, and every day in prayer, getting to know him now!

 

The Bridegroom is coming. He may be delayed, but he’ll arrive in the end. We can be ready to meet him if, by divine Wisdom, we attend to God’s Word and practice the spiritual disciplines that keep our lamps burning brightly. Then, when he comes, we shall enter into the never-ending joy of the wedding feast celebrating the spiritual union of Christ, the divine Bridegroom, with the Church, his Bride.

 

ALL SOULS’ DAY

Monday, November 2, 2026

Sts. Matthew & Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

When I made my first trip to England as an adult in my twenties, I was struck by the sheer number of memorials in the cathedrals and churches I visited. The interior walls and walkways were typically lined with busts and statues, reliefs, plaques, and inscriptions that extolled the accomplishments and virtues of deceased parishioners and local dignitaries. Nowhere more than in Westminster Abbey, where so many of the nation’s heroes, statesmen, poets, and artists are commemorated with a proliferation of lavish monuments that take up almost every bit of free space in that vast building.

 

On All Souls’ Day, it seems fitting to reflect on this impulse to memorialize the departed. Why do we do it? Such offerings fulfill deep-seated human needs.

 

To begin with, they express our emotions of sorrow and mourning. In England, many Victorian monuments in churches and graveyards feature weeping angels, winged hourglasses, broken vases, and other symbols of loss and desolation. One gets the impression that such monuments memorialize the grief of the living as much as the memory of the dead.

 

Memorial offerings also express thanksgiving for the lives of the departed. This is especially true of secular monuments erected to public figures, such as the Washington Monument and the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials in Washington, DC. Here in Church, people likewise offer memorial gifts in thanksgiving for the ways departed loved ones enriched the lives of their families, friends, parish, and community.

 

Most of all, perhaps, these memorial offerings express the natural human desire to ensure that the deceased will be remembered and not forgotten. The literal meaning of the word “memorial,” after all, is an aid to memory, a reminder, a stimulus to remembrance: lest we forget. We offer these memorials so that those who see them will call to mind those for whom they were given. 

 

Sometimes it works, keeping the memory alive for many generations, long after no one remembers those being memorialized. The beautiful window over the altar calls to mind our founder, the Rev. William Chapin, the Rector of St. John’s, Barrington, who built this church as St. Matthew’s Chapel in 1891. He died in 1921, thirty years later. No one now alive here ever met him, yet we still honor his memory.

 

So, to recapitulate, we offer memorial gifts in response to the human need to express our mourning and grief, to express our gratitude for the lives of the deceased, and to keep their memories alive for generations to come. All this is perfectly natural and entirely good. And yet—everything I’ve described so far can be done just as well by atheists and agnostics as by people of faith.

 

All Souls' Day reminds us that as Christians, we have the opportunity to do more. In addition to memorializing the dead, we can pray for them. This practice rests on the conviction that although the departed are no longer visibly with us, they’re still alive in Christ.

 

The doctrine of the Communion of Saints teaches us that in Christ we have fellowship with the living and the dead. Just as we pray for one another here on earth, so the saints in heaven pray for us. Both they and we pray for the souls of the faithful departed who are still on the way between this world and the world to come. We have assurance that, in God’s providence, our prayers truly benefit the departed on their continuing journey toward heaven. And we have the hope that, after our time comes, the Church members we’ve left behind on earth will pray for us as well.

 

Bereavement is painful. When someone in our community loses a loved one, it’s often hard to know what to say. We want to say something so it doesn’t seem like we don’t care, yet we’re reluctant to say anything that might feel too intrusive. Our society’s therapeutic culture responds to almost every life event by focusing on how we feel. But people who’ve been recently bereaved often tell me that the last thing they need is well-meaning people prying into how they’re processing their loss, or worse, telling them how they must be feeling about it.

 

The good news is that our Christian tradition offers us a very different language for speaking about death. When we talk with someone who’s just lost a loved one, beyond conventional sentiments like “I’m very sorry for your loss,” we can also say, “I will pray for her and for you as well.” That need not be a sanctimonious platitude—as long as we follow through and offer the prayers we promise! In my experience, ninety-nine percent of people are touched, grateful, and even comforted to be told that we’re praying for their departed loved ones, regardless of their religious beliefs or lack thereof.

 

Now, of course, we pray for the departed not merely to offer a comforting word to the bereaved, but because we believe such prayers are intrinsically worthwhile. My point is simply that if we take the Church’s teaching and practice concerning prayers for the dead seriously, we gain a whole new language that’s clearly countercultural and remarkably effective at offering solace and comfort.

 

Today, we gather to offer the Holy Eucharist for all the faithful departed. All Souls Day reminds us that, as Christians, we’re called not only to memorialize the dead and celebrate their lives but also to pray for them. Throughout the year, whenever we notice a memorial gift given in loving memory of someone who has departed this life—even something as simple as flowers at the altar—we do well to pray that they may rest in peace.

ALL SAINTS DAY

Sunday, November 1, 2026

Sts. Matthew & Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

Who are the saints? The word saint comes from the Latin sanctus, which translates the Greek hagios, and the Hebrew qadosh. In all three languages, the word means holy or sacred. So, the saints are simply the holy ones: holy women and holy men.

 

But what is holiness? Well, the word “holy” has two overlapping meanings. First, it means “set apart,” “sacred,” or “other”—the opposite of ordinary, everyday, or mundane. And second, it means “morally and spiritually pure.” 

 

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, God himself is the holy one. In Isaiah’s vision in the Temple, the seraphim fly to and fro, calling out, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.” You see those words inscribed on that shelf, or gradine, there behind the altar. God is the very definition of holiness: completely transcendent and other, in the world but not of it, and completely pure, untainted by any shadow of evil or corruption.

 

All holiness comes from God. In Christianity, we recognize holy people, holy places, and holy things. I’ll say more about holy people presently. Holy places include, but are not limited to, consecrated churches, shrines, and other sacred spaces—thin places where we can feel God’s nearness. As the Lord said to Moses at the burning bush: “Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy ground” (Exodus 3:5). Holy things include the objects set apart and blessed for use in worship and devotion, such as sacred icons, statues, vestments, and the vessels for Holy Communion.

 

But what makes a person holy? The first point to get clear is that we cannot achieve sainthood by our own efforts. Only God can make us holy. A saint may be defined as someone who reflects, and even channels, something of God’s holiness. In the presence of a saint, we experience something of God’s presence and nearness.

 

And how does God make saints? How does God make people holy? I’d like to propose an answer in three parts, corresponding to what might be called three degrees of holiness.

 

First, all human beings are holy simply because God created them. Shocking as that statement may seem, it’s basic Christian doctrine. The inalienable dignity of the human person derives from creation in the image of God. Human life itself is sacred.

 

We do well to linger for a moment on the implications of this basic truth. No matter what our race, religion, nationality, or social class, all human beings are holy because we’ve been created in God’s image. As sons and daughters of the same Father in heaven, we’re all brothers and sisters.

 

One of our baptismal vows is to "respect the dignity of every human being." We have no excuse to regard other individuals or groups with scorn or contempt. No matter how lowly, humble, or even despicable someone may seem in the world’s eyes, we must remind ourselves that every person we meet bears the divine image and is therefore worthy of all reverence and respect. So this is the first degree of holiness. All human beings are holy simply because God created them.

 

But we cannot leave matters there. By our sin and rebellion against God, we have distorted and obscured the divine image within us. It’s still there, but it needs to be restored and brought back to light. 

 

And so we come to the second degree of holiness. By his life, death, and resurrection, Christ reconciles us to God. In theological terms, this is sometimes called justification by grace through faith. Through the faith and repentance normally associated with Holy Baptism, God accounts us righteous even when we’re still sinners. In view of Christ’s infinite merits, God doesn’t hold our sins against us. So we become forgiven sinners, on the road to heaven, even though we still have a long way to go before we reach the perfection for which God created us.

 

The New Testament speaks of the saints in precisely this sense: to describe the ordinary baptized members of the local Christian assembly. For this reason, the Sunday after All Saints is one of the four great baptismal days of the Church year—days when it’s particularly appropriate to administer the Sacrament of Holy Baptism and renew our baptismal promises. In this way, we remember that God has restored us to holiness in baptism, and that through its grace we’re all called to become saints.

 

And that brings us to the third degree of holiness. The Holy Spirit makes us holy as we persevere in fulfilling our baptismal promises throughout our lives. On All Saints Day, we celebrate the lives of countless Christian men and women who show us, by example, what a holy life looks like. And the saints in heaven are those holy men and women in whom the Holy Spirit has perfected the work of sanctification begun in this earthly life.

 

I want to emphasize that sainthood in this sense is not an unattainable ideal. Sometimes people attempt to excuse their faults by saying, “Well, after all, I’m no saint.” Nonetheless, we’re all called to become saints. Many whom we celebrate as saints experienced all-too-human struggles with doubt and temptation, as we all have. But that does not make them any less holy. The call to sainthood is simply to become ever more fully what we already are as baptized members of the Body of Christ. Again, we cannot achieve this holiness by our own efforts; rather, the Holy Spirit achieves it in us with our consent and cooperation over a lifetime—but not without repeated struggles, setbacks, failures, and fresh starts.

 

So, we have three degrees of holiness, associated with creation, redemption, and sanctification, respectively. Now, notice how these three degrees of holiness correspond to the three Persons of the Holy Trinity. God the Father makes us holy by creating us in the divine image. God the Son makes us holy by redeeming us through his life, death, and resurrection. And God the Holy Spirit makes us holy by indwelling us and sanctifying us through the Church's worship, sacraments, life, and community. Yet these three, creation, redemption, and sanctification, are all the same work of the one Triune God. 

 

On this All-Saints’ Day, then, we rejoice that we’re all called to be saints. The assembly of the saints in heaven—the blessed Virgin Mary, the holy patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs, and all other God’s righteous servants, known to us and unknown—awaits the day when we’ll take our places among them. They show us who we’re called to become. And we give praise, thanks, worship, and glory to God the Holy Trinity, who creates, redeems, and sanctifies us precisely to make us his holy ones.

PROPER 25, YEAR A

Sunday, October 25, 2026

Sts. Matthew & Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

Matthew 22:34-36

 

For the past five weeks, the Sunday Gospel readings have come from the section of St. Matthew’s Gospel in which Jesus is in the Temple after his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The chief priests and elders have been challenging him with difficult questions meant to trip him up and make him look foolish, and he’s responded with a series of memorable parables and sayings.

 

Today, this back-and-forth reaches its climax when one of the Pharisees, a lawyer, asks Jesus, “Which commandment in the Law is the greatest?” The Jewish Law, or Torah, was generally reckoned to have 613 commandments. The legal scholars known as the scribes devoted their lives to studying how these commandments related to one another in specific, concrete situations. Among the rabbis, a common question was which commandment might serve as the key to all the rest, summing up and interpreting their meaning.

 

In response, our Lord joins two texts from the Torah: the first from Deuteronomy 6:5, known as the Shema and recited daily by pious Jews: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might”; the second from Leviticus 19:18, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” In the Book of Common Prayer, these words are known as the Summary of the Law.

 

Our Lord’s answer is similar to those offered by other rabbis. The Talmud relates that in the first century BC, a prospective convert to Judaism asked the great teacher Hillel to teach him the entire Torah while standing on one leg. Hillel replied: “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary. Go forth and study.”

 

The genius and originality of our Lord’s answer lie less in his choice of these two texts than in his combining and juxtaposing them. As far as we know, no rabbi ever combined these two commandments this way. Love the Lord your God. Love your neighbor as yourself.

 

As the Church reflected on these two phrases over the centuries, it discerned a threefold standard for measuring spiritual and moral progress in the Christian life: love of God, love of neighbor, and love of self.

 

The Church’s spiritual tradition recommends examining our conscience at the end of each day and on other occasions, such as during Lent or when preparing to make our confession. Some traditional guides to the examination of conscience are organized around these three headings: In what ways have I failed to love God? In what ways have I failed to love my neighbor? In what ways have I failed to love myself? Conversely, in positive terms: How well have I succeeded in loving God, my neighbor, and myself?

 

What does it mean to love God? In the classical Christian understanding, love is less an emotion than an orientation of our whole being toward another. As Jesus says in today’s Gospel, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”

 

In certain forms of prayer, as we reflect on God’s goodness and generosity, we may be stirred to emotional outbursts of praise and thanksgiving. Such sentiments certainly express love, but loving God goes much deeper and broader than that. One definition I find helpful is that loving God means seeking his honor and glory above all things, which in turn means seeking to understand and fulfill his will for our lives. By this definition, simply making the effort to be here, to come to church and say our prayers, is a key expression of our love for God, even if it’s only a beginning.

 

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” This means the measure and standard of how to love our neighbors is how we love ourselves. That raises the question of what it truly means to love ourselves. Genuine self-love is not selfishness, self-centeredness, self-regard, or self-indulgence; it is the opposite. In the Christian sense, self-love means learning to see ourselves as God sees us: creatures of infinite worth whom God created for eternal life. 

 

The most important thing we can ever know about ourselves is that God loves us. For this reason, self-hatred and self-loathing have no place in authentic Christian spirituality. We’re called to hate our sins, yes, but they’re not who we really are; instead, they’re what prevent us from becoming all that God has created us to be. To love ourselves, then, means to desire and seek all that makes for our true good and indeed for our eternal salvation. And again, the more we realize how much God loves us, the more we gain the ability to love ourselves this way.

 

Loving our neighbors begins with recognizing, respecting, and honoring God’s image in our fellow human beings. It may be a cliché, but it’s true that we don’t necessarily have to like others to love them. (Although it’s preferable to both like and love them.) 

 

Typically, the Bible uses the word “neighbor” to refer to those we’re not related to, especially strangers and sojourners. It’s natural enough to love fellow members of our family, community, or nation. But here, Jesus calls us to a love grounded in our common humanity. He calls us to love even those with whom we don’t have much in common: members of other nations, ethnic groups, social classes, political parties, or ideological persuasions. Something to keep in mind as we approach the midterm elections. We should absolutely vote our conscience and try to elect those we think should be running things. But let’s not fall into the trap of hating or despising those with whom we disagree politically.

 

Loving our neighbors as ourselves means seeking their objective good, both in this life and in eternity. Again, we gain the ability to do so as we learn to see our neighbors as God sees them: creatures of infinite worth, destined for eternal life in God’s presence.

 

Although we’re no longer bound by the ceremonial and civic precepts of the Jewish Law, the Church offers us many moral laws and guidelines for living the Christian life. Yet the three principles our Lord sets forth in today’s Gospel are the key to interpreting them all: Love God. Love your neighbor. Love yourself. 

 

Without this threefold love, Christian morality risks falling into petty legalism. But when this love becomes the motive for all we do as members of the Church, God’s glory will shine forth in our life together as a beacon to the world.

 

ANNIVERSARY OF THE DEDICATION

Sunday, October 18, 2026

Sts. Matthew & Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

 

For convenience, we’re commemorating this church building's dedication today, on October 18th, the Feast of St. Luke. The 115th anniversary actually occurred almost a month ago, on St. Matthew’s Day, September 21st. On that date in 1911, the Rt. Rev. James de Wolf Perry, Seventh Bishop of Rhode Island, consecrated St. Matthew’s Chapel for the worship of God, the preaching of God’s Word, and the administration of the Sacraments. Although the building had served as a mission chapel of St. John’s, Barrington, for twenty years, since 1891, the rule was that a church building could not be consecrated until the mortgage was paid off and the congregation owned it outright. St. Matthew’s Chapel remained a mission of St. John’s until 1924, when it became a mission of the Diocese. In 1959, it attained parish status as Saint Matthew’s, West Barrington. In 2012, upon merging with St. Mark’s, Riverside, it officially became Sts. Matthew and Mark. 

 

The dedication festival gives us an opportunity to reflect on the broader significance of church buildings. In 1975, Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, addressed the celebration of the Millennium Anniversary of the Cathedral of Mainz in Germany. In what follows, I draw on some of his reflections. 

 

Unlike some religions, the Christian faith is not centered on any one shrine, temple, or holy place. The religion of the Old Testament centered on the Temple in Jerusalem. Today’s reading from First Kings recounts King Solomon’s dedication of the Temple when it was first built, and today’s Psalm expresses the joy pilgrims felt as they entered the sacred precincts to worship God in his Temple: “How dear to me is your dwelling, O Lord of hosts; my heart has a desire and longing for the courts of the Lord ...” 

 

Christianity has many holy places and pilgrimage sites; the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem and St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome are among the most prominent. Yet the New Testament largely focuses on the Church as a spiritual temple built of living stones—faithful Christian people—with Christ as the chief cornerstone. As St. Peter puts it in today’s epistle: “like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”

 

Still, in practical terms, the early Christians needed places of worship. Initially, they met in each other’s homes, but they soon began building and setting apart buildings to celebrate God’s Word and Sacraments. Thus, the word “church” has two senses: on the one hand, the Body of Christ, a spiritual house built of living stones; on the other, houses built of stone, brick, and wood where the faithful gather to worship.

 

But Christian churches are far more than functional meeting places. At the heart of Christian faith lies the principle of Incarnation: The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. In Christian art and architecture, the Word of God transforms material things into signs of God’s presence. A church building’s beauty points to the future transformation of God’s whole creation in heavenly glory.

 

Based on these reflections, Ratzinger offered four key observations.

 

First, whatever its artistic and architectural merits, a church building derives its true life and power from the faith of the community that gathers within its walls. This becomes evident when visiting churches, shrines, cathedrals, and abbeys while traveling. A church that is no longer home to a living community of faith has, in effect, become a museum: a sad memorial to a past that is no more. 

 

Secondly, many churches derive an aura of holiness from the faith and prayers of past generations. Moreover, traditional styles of church architecture, design, and decoration testify to the faith’s unity and continuity over the centuries. 

 

For example, when William Walker designed this church in 1891, he was making not only an aesthetic statement but also a theological one. When churches are built to look like churches—rather than conference centers, libraries, or assembly halls—they visibly express the hope that their congregations’ faith and worship will be true to the universal Church in all times and places. Because this space looks a bit old-fashioned and churchy, it calls us to unity in the faith with all those who’ve gone before us.

 

Thirdly, churches must be a home to all the faithful everywhere. That is, the church building cannot become the exclusive preserve of the local parish family, no matter how warm and intimate its life together; nor can the active congregation claim exclusive ownership of the building. The church must remain an open place where strangers, visitors, foreigners, and exiles can find welcome and refuge, a home away from home.

 

This imperative came home to me on September 11, 2001, the day of the World Trade Center disaster. At the time, I was rector of S. Stephen’s Church in Providence, in the midst of Brown University. After a student buzzed the office on the intercom to ask to enter the church, I realized many more people would likely want to come in. So I opened the church doors and spent the day sitting in the narthex, watching a steady trickle of people come in to sit quietly, pray, or light a candle. I had never seen most of them before, and I would never see many of them again, but in that moment of crisis, they instinctively sought the church as a place of refuge and sanctuary. That day I realized, as never before, that a church is a spiritual landmark not only for its congregation but also for its surrounding neighborhood. To be faithful to our mission, we need to find ways to open our doors as much as possible, both literally and figuratively.

 

Fourthly, Ratzinger writes that setting apart houses for God not only divinizes but also humanizes our environment. To make his point, he asks us to imagine what the landscape of our cities, towns, and villages would look like if we removed all the churches. “It would,” he writes, “become a desert of utility in which the heart would probably stop beating. Where people just want to inhabit the earth by themselves, it becomes uninhabitable.” 

 

To expand on this point, I feel a sense of warmth whenever I drive down Wampanoag Trail to get here, and I come round the bend, and the White Church’s spire comes into view over the waters of the Hundred Acre Cove. My usual route takes me past two more Barrington churches before I arrive here. They are not churches of my denomination or tradition, but they are visible signs of God’s presence in this world and in this town. They signify that people in this community have taken the trouble to build and set apart houses for God: places where people can gather to encounter the living God’s presence and activity among them. The good news is that when we make a home for God in this world, he will make a home for us—both in this world and in the world to come.

 

SOCIETY OF MARY ANNUAL MASS

Saturday, October 17, 2026

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Troy, NY

 

 

Interest in and devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary are growing in the Episcopal Church and across the wider Anglican world. It’s no longer just an Anglo-Catholic thing. Parishes of all kinds of churchmanship have Rosary groups and Walsingham cells. 

 

In this context, I find it interesting to see which aspects of our Lady resonate most with writers and preachers who’ve recently discovered her. Often, their focus is on Mary’s response to the angel’s message at the Annunciation. Her humility, trust, obedience, and active cooperation with God’s plan seem to be the very model of Christian discipleship, and rightly so.

 

Nonetheless, a full and balanced Marian devotion will make room for Mary's other appearances in Scripture, Tradition, and the Church’s ongoing life. To be clear: Mary is one and the same person throughout. Yet at different times and in different places, she presents herself to us in different ways.

 

In the opening chapters of St. Luke’s Gospel, she’s the Virgin of Nazareth. In the nineteenth chapter of St. John’s Gospel, she’s the Sorrowful Mother at the foot of the cross. In the first chapter of Acts, she becomes the Mother of the Church, praying with the disciples in the Upper Room for the Holy Spirit’s descent. Finally, at the end of her earthly life, she falls asleep and is taken up, body and soul, to reign as Queen of heaven.

 

We Anglicans are fond of the Latin phrase lex orandi, lex credendi, “the law of prayer is the law of belief.” It suggests that the prayers and collects in our liturgies and devotions best express our distinctive doctrines. But I’ve recently become aware of another Latin saying: lex cantandi, lex credendi, “the law of singing (or chanting) is the law of belief.” In other words, our best hymns and anthems also powerfully express what we believe. I suspect many people in the pews learn more theology from the hymns they sing than from sermons, Bible studies, or Christian education classes.

 

One excellent hymn for teaching Marian theology is number 278 in The Hymnal 1982. The first verse begins: “Sing we of the blessed Mother, who received the angel’s word, and obedient to the summons, bore in love the infant Lord …” The second verse brings us to Calvary: “Sing we too, of Mary’s sorrows, of the sword that pierced her through, when beneath the cross of Jesus, she his weight of suffering knew …” The third verse brings us to the Resurrection and Pentecost: “Sing again the joys of Mary, when she saw the risen Lord, and in prayer with Christ’s apostles, waited on his promised word …” Finally, the fourth verse points us to heaven: “Sing the chiefest joy of Mary, when on earth her work was done, and the Lord of all creation, brought her to his heavenly home …”

 

The popular devotion known as the Holy Rosary likewise directs our attention to different aspects of Mary’s role in the drama of salvation. In its traditional form, it guides us through fifteen episodes from the lives of Mary and Jesus, grouped into three sets of five: the Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious Mysteries. Praying the Rosary helps us experience these mysteries from the perspective of Mary’s participation in her Son’s life and mission.

 

In the early eighteenth century, the French priest and writer St. Louis de Montfort wrote in his book The Secret of the Rosary that the Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious Mysteries correspond to an ancient understanding of the three ways of the spiritual life. Beginning around the fourth century, writers such as Evagrius Pontus and the Pseudo-Dionysius observed that progress toward spiritual maturity often follows a recognizable three-stage pattern. St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure developed this idea in the medieval period, and St. John of the Cross elaborated on it in the sixteenth century.

 

The traditional names for the three stages are the Purgative Way, the Illuminative Way, and the Unitive Way.

 

Those in the first stage are known as “beginners.” This is the stage of initial conversion: turning away from sin and toward Christ. Overall, it’s a joyful time, marked by spiritual experiences of joy and delight. 

 

Those in the second stage are known as “proficients.” The transition to this stage often takes the form of a crisis, a period of darkness and discouragement as the consolations and delights of the first stage fade and seem lost. The soul learns to persevere in the spiritual disciplines by following Christ on the Way of the Cross. In this stage, we deepen our knowledge of the mysteries of sin and redemption, death, resurrection, and the hope of eternal life. (In 1959, Martin Thornton titled one of his classic books Christian Proficiency because he believed most Anglican parishioners seeking spiritual direction are in this second stage.)

 

Those in the third stage are traditionally known as “the perfect”—not because they’re literally perfect or sinless, but because God’s love is perfecting them. The transition into this stage is often marked by an even more intense spiritual crisis, in which the soul may lose sight of its former theological certainties but nonetheless gradually becomes aware of God’s presence within, at the innermost core of its being. In this stage, we’re often drawn to silent contemplative prayer to experience a direct union with God beyond words and images. (An anonymous fourteenth-century English author described this in the title of the book, The Cloud of Unknowing.)

 

Most Christian spiritual writers emphasize that these three stages don’t always follow a linear sequence. Sometimes we experience all three simultaneously. Sometimes we find ourselves zigzagging back and forth, circling around and around, spiraling up and down among them. 

 

St. Louis de Montfort related the mysteries of the Holy Rosary to these stages of the spiritual life. The Joyful Mysteries help us in the early stages, reminding us of the joy we feel when Christ first enters our lives. The Sorrowful Mysteries teach us to persevere in the Christian disciplines and follow the Way of the Cross. The Glorious Mysteries point us toward union with God and with one another, to which we’re all called as baptized Christians.

 

To avoid misunderstanding, I’m not saying we should pray only the mysteries of the Holy Rosary that seem to match the stage of spiritual life we think we’re in. For one thing, we’re likely to get that wrong, and we really need to discuss that sort of question with a competent spiritual director. I am saying that a healthy Marian spirituality will be balanced, focusing our attention on all aspects of Mary’s life, mission, and role in God’s plan of salvation: joyful, sorrowful, and glorious. And the mysteries will speak to us differently, depending on where we are in our spiritual journey. 

 

In recent years, certain segments of the Church  emphasizing what they call “radical hospitality” have popularized the cliché: “Whoever you are, and wherever you are in your journey, there’s a place at the table for you.” My point in this sermon is best expressed by modifying that saying as follows: Whoever you are, and wherever you are in your spiritual journey, there’s a mystery of the Holy Rosary that can speak directly to you. For there, the Blessed Virgin Mary will meet you where you are and lead you to her Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.