Hello Everyone and welcome everyone to our cathedral. Fr. Mark, Rev. Nancy and myself are here and we are recording this on Tuesday morning. We have just renewed our ordination vows. We wanted to get together and I wanted to ask Rev. Nancy and Fr. Mark ‘what is in your hearts, as we enter the intense part of Holy Week?’
Rev. Nancy – Healing is in my heart. Not just because of my recent brief illness, but because being sick, even briefly, reminds me of my vulnerability. It reminds me of our shared journey through health and wellness as well as sickness and pain. Easter is a wonderful time to gather all of this together and offer it up into the healing message that is Easter. The ultimate healing message, Christ is Risen message. We look forward to seeing you this Sunday and through the journey up to that glorious healing day.
Fr. Mark – Building on the healing theme, thank you Rev. Nancy. Me, once I have been healed, once I have experienced a healing, my heart overflows with gratitude and this Holy Week, compared to other Holy Weeks, where I have entered Holy Week with a curiosity, a curiosity of will I be forgiven, can I forgive others. What needs to be reconciled in my life, so that I can be liberated and have a new life, as a person, as a child of God, with my family, with the relationships that I love and care for and the people that God is going to send into my life? This year, my heart is already overflowing with gratitude and that began for me with you all on Sunday morning. What a glorious occasion as we walked around the city blocks and reminded ourselves who we are to serve and to be a witness to the Good News. And so I enter this Holy Week, I’m just grateful to be with Rev. Nancy and Fr. Richard but also with you, each and every one of you, and my heart overflows, my cup overfloweth. I hope that your heart can overflow with gratitude as well.
Fr. Richard – As we did our Stations of the Cross last Friday night and we walked around the community around St. Mark’s in City Heights, and then we did it again on Sunday, Palm Sunday, we had a chance to be in our community, meeting people, being able to say hello to people as we passed by on the street and invite them to join us. We had some new faces on Sunday morning. And so my heart is full of invitation. I know that Holy Week can be full of services and tradition and can be very ‘churchy’ but Christ died for all of us, without exception. And so wherever you are on your journey of faith. If you are hearing this message for the first time, know that you are fully welcome to join us at St. Mark’s, and in any church. Jesus loves you, you are beloved as you are. And we hope that if this is where you would like to be, that you will join us in our Holy Week services and especially on Easter Sunday morning.
Blessings from all of us here at St. Mark’s.