The Good News of St. John’s

Coming Up at St. John’s

 

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From Bishop Co-Adjutor Matt Heyd On Tuesday, September 5 the Diocese of New York began weekday online morning prayer at 8 am via Zoom. The 30 minute service offers an opportunity for us to join together daily in shared prayer— the foundation of our Anglican tradition and our lives as Christians. We’ll use the 1979 Book of Common Prayer Rite II Morning Prayer liturgy. The service includes different leaders as officiants and features diverse voices to offer brief daily reflections. This liturgy offers an additional possibility for connection across the 10 counties and nearly 200 congregations of the Diocese of New York. The Holy Spirit moves at ground level— and connects us to each other. You can find the Zoom link for Tuesday here. You’ll be invited to register when you join. Everyone’s invited! My hope is that Morning Prayer will widely engage voices from across our diocese and will be intercultural in its expression.   I’ll support the service along with postulants and candidates preparing for ordination in our Diocese. Thanks to Canon Victor Conrado for helping imagine this new service and to Alito Orsini for coordinating. Grace and Peace, Bishop Matt Matthew Heyd Bishop Coadjutor

 

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The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, NYC

Dear Ones,

Let’s talk about cathedrals… stay with me here.

The Episcopal Church has a structure that is similar, in some ways, to the Roman Catholic Church – we have bishops (but no archbishops and no pope), we have dioceses, and we have cathedrals. Each congregation is a part of a larger collection of congregations (diocese) and each diocese has a bishop who oversees and supports the mission of that diocese. The cathedral is named as such because the word “cathedra” is Latin for “seat.” The cathedral, then, is the seat of the bishop.

Our diocese is the Episcopal Diocese of New York which covers Staten Island, Manhattan, Bronx, Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, Orange, Sullivan, Dutchess, and Putnam counties. Our current bishop is Andy Dietsche who will retire in January and our new bishop is Matt Heyd who will be installed in February at our cathedral.

So, now we get to talk about our cathedral. On Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan, is the largest Gothic cathedral in the world – St. John the Divine, the cathedral of the Episcopal Diocese of New York. They are a part of our common life as a diocese – a kind of center, if you will. They have a congregation that worships together, just like we do, but they are also our cathedral. They, like the bishop and the bishop’s staff, are here to support our lives as congregations. It’s a stunning place to visit.

One of the ways they are reaching out to all of us is to collect prayers from us. These prayers will then become an art installation called Divine Pathways. Artist Anne Patterson will install 1,000 ribbons in the nave (sanctuary) of the cathedral for 9 months and on these ribbons will be written all the prayers.

As the wind blows through these ribbons, it will be a symbol of all our collected prayers being lifted up to God.

Jocelyn Bergen has volunteered to collect thoughts/words for the prayer from St. John’s Kingston. You don’t have to craft a beautiful prayer – it can just be a word or two or three, something for our common life as St. John’s Kingston. What do we desire? What do we need? For what would we like to offer our thanks? How does God’s glory manifest in our common life?

From now until Sept 17, please email Jocelyn directly at jocelyn@zephyr-interactive.com with your thoughts/words of prayer for St. John’s. She will collect them and make sure that our collective prayer gets to the cathedral. So, on one of those 1,000 ribbons will be our words, our prayer, our collective heart.

As a congregation, we will plan a trip to St. John the Divine in the spring, not only to view the installation, but also to experience the beauty and awe of our collective spiritual home as a diocesan family. I look forward to reading our collective prayer and finding ways to include it in our worship life here too.

I hope you will spend some time considering what our congregational prayer might be and reach out to Jocelyn with your words. Also, please thank her for helping us to participate as a congregation.

In God’s love and mine,
Rev. Michelle

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Announcements for September 10
The Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost