The Episcopal Church in Western Washington
Palm Sunday begins one of the most sacred times in our tradition: Holy Week. All of our preparation, prayers, learning and discipline over the season of Lent serves to prepare us to get close to this week: this mystery that is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God-with-us. Early on in Christian tradition, the mothers and fathers of the church decided that we would mark our time each year by remembering the life of Jesus in our church calendar.
Bishop Rickel’s Advent Message Happy New Year, everyone! It may seem a bit early to you, but in the church, Advent begins the New Year. That’s when we say, “Happy New Year.” Advent marks the end of the longest “season,” if you will, in our church year, Ordinary Time. Ordinary Time is just nearly half the entire calendar year, about six months long. By now you know, I really like the rhythms of our liturgical calendar. We have Ordinary Time,
ASH WEDNESDAY AND LENT “Eternal Lord of love, behold your Church walking once more the pilgrim way of Lent . . .” (The Hymnal 1982 # 149) As the hymn above suggests, Lent is a communal pilgrimage, a journey of the whole Church following Jesus on the road to Jerusalem, to his Passion and death, and to his resurrection, under the watchful, loving protection of God. Lent is traditionally the time of preparation for baptism at the Easter Vigil, and
Today we remember the lives of two remarkable men in the history of the Episcopal Church – the Rev. Thomas Gallaudet and the Rev. Henry Winter Syle. Gallaudet established the first deaf Epsicopal congregation and Syle, one of Gallaudet’s students, was the first deaf Episcopal priest. Both men lived out the church’s calling to respond to human need with loving service and to transform the unjust structures of our society. From a young age, Gallaudet’s father had wanted to become
Today we celebrate the Feast of Florence Nightingale, the nurse and social reformer who helped revolutionize patient care and is widely recognized as the founder of modern nursing. Though her views on religion were unorthodox, she became a member of the Church of England later in life and devoted herself to serving God. At seventeen, she wrote in her diary that “God spoke to me and called me to his service,” though she had no clear picture of how that