My family moved from Virginia Beach to Fairfax County, Virginia, in the summer of 1966. That fall, I entered seventh grade. Being so close to Washington, D.C., the National Gallery of Art is a place for school trips. I started Spanish that year and continued with it in college. I’m sure it was in my senior year that our teacher took our small class to see Spanish art at the National Gallery. El Greco’s painting of Saint Martin and the Beggar, depicting the story of him cutting his cloak in half and giving it to a man in need, is one of the National Gallery’s treasures. That would have been in 1971 or 1972. I was in a public high school. Religion wasn’t entirely absent from history and literature classes.

Michael Walsh is an English Roman Catholic author, historian, and an archivist at London University. He was formerly a Jesuit. Some years ago, I picked up his book The Conclave: A Sometimes Secret and Occasionally Bloody History of Papal Elections. He starts with some straightforward historical facts. He writes, “ ‘Pope’ simply means ‘father’ . . . it comes from the Greek ‘papas’. In the Western . . . Church it was used of bishops from the third century onward . . . from the eighth century onward the Bishop of Rome began to use it of themselves in official documents, and in the eleventh century Pope Gregory VII demanded that in the West the term should be applied only to Bishops of Rome, and to no one else.[1]

One of the teachings in the Western Church that’s challenging for me is original sin, at least in the form generally discussed since the time of Augustine. Essentially, it speaks of a stain on humanity that traces its origin to the fall in Eden and includes some sense of guilt transmitted across generations since the beginning of humanity.

Today’s gospel lesson belongs to Matthew alone. It is one of a series of parables on watchfulness told by Jesus in Jerusalem. They begin in Matthew with Jesus’ words, “From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near . . . So also, when you see all these things, you know that [the Son of man] is near . . . Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away till all these things take place.”[1] Today’s parable is the third of five; the last two are for the next two Sundays, the final Sundays of this church year.

Today’s gospel lesson, from the most powerful narrative of John’s gospel, the Raising of Lazarus, the question whose answer matters most is asked and answered: “Jesus said to [Martha], “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, he who is coming into the world.”

For a month now, I’ve been trying to remember a scene from, I think, a movie. An older man, who knows he is dying, says very gently to a younger person, if memory serves, “Death is nothing to be afraid of. We are all going to die”—if that rings a bell for anyone, please let me know where I might have picked it up.

For a month now, I’ve been trying to remember a scene from, I think, a movie. An older man, who knows he is dying, says very gently to a younger person, if memory serves, “Death is nothing to be afraid of. We are all going to die”—if that rings a bell for anyone, please let me know where I might have picked it up.

Today’s short gospel lesson is part of a larger story. It’s early in John’s gospel, the beginning of chapter 5, “Jesus’ Healing Work on a Sabbath.”[1] Jesus is in Jerusalem for a feast. He walks by a pool whose waters are believed to be healing if one were placed in the pool when the water has been stirred up. Raymond Brown wondered if it were fed by an intermittent spring.[2] Jesus focuses on an invalid and asks him, “Do you want to be healed?”[3] He never makes it to the water. Jesus’ next words to him are, “Rise, take up your pallet, and walk.”[4]

Philippi was an inland city in northern Greece, founded in the fourth century before the Christian Era. The Battle of Philippi fought on the plains west of the city is where Mark Antony and Julius Caesar’s, heir Octavius, later Caesar Augustus, defeated the assassins Brutus and Cassius’s army in the year forty-two Before the Christian Era. After the battle, the city became a Roman colony where soldiers were settled. It was governed under Roman law. It was a place of commerce. Greek and Latin were spoken. Here, Paul, accompanied by Silas and Timothy, gathered the first church community in Europe.[1]

James Hannington was consecrated to be a missionary bishop for Eastern Equatorial Africa of the Church of England. Learning of his arrival on Buganda’s border, a region of the country we know as Uganda, they were captured when they arrived on October 21, 1885.[1] He was killed by spear eight days later.[2]

Lesser Feasts and Fasts is the name of the book the church uses to celebrate optional weekday commemorations; it also has material about the non-optional “Fixed Holy Days.”[1] Since the beginning of the pandemic and the advent of live-streaming, I have been writing out sermons for weekdays. Many biographical and historical sketches in Lesser Feasts and Fasts are substandard in terms of content and accuracy.

Last Sunday, the question for Jesus was, “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?”[1] Today, the story continues. Jesus and his disciples are still in the temple. The crowds include scribes, Pharisees, and Jesus’ disciples. The next question for Jesus is, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?”[2] The law in question, of course, is the Torah, the Law of Moses. In it are 248 commandments and 365 prohibitions.[3]Of course, there have been discussions for thousands of years about understanding and the relative importance of 613 different commandments.

In January 1981, I had an internship for six weeks at the parish where I would end up serving for two years after graduation from seminary, the Church of the Incarnation in Dallas. The 1928 Prayer Book was still in use at the main Sunday service. Holy Communion was celebrated on the first Sunday of the month. The other Sundays were Morning Prayer and Sermon.

This comment in the entry for Saint Luke the Evangelist in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church caught my attention: Origen [the theologian who lived c. 185 to c. 254] is the first to identify Luke with the ‘brother’ of 2 Cor. 8:18, a view followed by the Anglican Collect for this feast.”[1] But the name Luke is not found in Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians. There is only one mention of a man named Luke in Paul’s seven letters whose authorship by Paul himself is widely undisputed, where Paul lists Luke as a “fellow worker.”[2]

In the Spanish language there are two entirely different verbs used to say that something “is.” “Maria is from New York.” “Maria is in New York”: same verb in English, two different verbs in Spanish. And Spanish speakers know the difference, and they look at you strangely when you don’t.

Henry Martyn and Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky shared gifts for missionary work. They were also gifted linguists and translators. On October 16, 1831, Martyn died in Tokat, now in Armenia, then a part of the Ottoman Empire. Schereschewsky died on October 15, 1906, in Tokyo.

On Friday after the noonday Mass, I was in my office gathering my things together, still in a post-Eucharistic state of bliss. I looked out the window at a pair of pigeons that had been there all morning. Before the Mass, I had watched them groom each other’s feathers. Now, some other pigeons stopped by for what appeared to be a bit of a pigeon party. But, there was no social distancing.

Adolph Adam was a German scholar. He died in 2005.[1] For many years he was professor of practical theology, liturgy, and homiletics at the University of Mainz.[2] I’ve had a copy of his book, The Liturgical Year: its history & its meaning after the reform of the liturgy[3] since it came out in 1981, while I was in seminary. This morning I got it out to remind myself about the tradition of remembering the Virgin Mary on Saturdays when there were no other celebrations. But first I looked up, may I say, a snarky, disrespectful reference about the color of vestments for these Saturday celebrations here at Saint Mary’s. It’s in Newbury Halsted Frost Read’s 1931 book, The Story of St. Mary’s. Frost became a member of the board of trustees in 1929. When he died in February 1950, he was secretary and treasurer of Saint Mary’s.

Sometimes what is omitted by the church’s lectionaries is interesting. Among the passages not appointed to be read from Paul’s second earliest letter, Galatians, are the verses that follow Paul’s words, “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.”[1]