Grace and peace. St. Patrick’s is an Episcopal parish in the Diocese of Washington. Episcopal means under the direction of a bishop. So, we are a church under the authority of a bishop. Our Diocesan Bishop is the Rt. Rev. Mariann Budde. Bishop Mariann oversees 88 parishes in her diocese. She obviously cannot be at all of them every Sunday. Generally, she visits each parish once every three years. It has been a little longer this time because her visit last year was scheduled for what was the first week of the pandemic. It, therefore, got postponed to this Sunday. Bishop Mariann will worship with us (outdoors and online) and be our preacher. After the service, she will lead a discussion on our Lenten book, Love is the Way by Presiding Bishop Michael Curry (this discussion will be outdoors for those in-person and in our virtual coffee hour room on Zoom for those at home).
This Sunday is also when we traditionally celebrate St. Patrick (as it is the Sunday before March 17). Our tradition is to gather, after worship, for a feast of shepherd’s pie, stew, and macaroni and cheese. Due to the continuing pandemic, we will not be able to gather in the traditional way, but we will be sharing a wonderful meal made by local caterer Mindy’s and picked up from St. Patrick’s or delivered to parishioner homes. We will also be sharing the feast with our neighbors at the fire station and with a low-income apartment building on MacArthur Blvd.
I want you to know that I do believe that God is at work in this community even in this unusual moment in history. We have held together and have reached out into the community in new and adaptive ways (listen to the sermon I offered last Sunday).
I hope that you will join us in-person or online to celebrate with our bishop this Sunday at 10am. REMINDER: This Sunday at 2am, clocks shift forward one hour in order to save daylight from something. It might seem like an hour earlier, but we will begin our service at 10am DST.
Faithfully,
Blessings,
kurt@stpatrickschurchdc.org
703-522-2726
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