This weekend we celebrate the last Sunday in Epiphany. The Episcopal Church designates this weekend as World Mission Sunday, a time when the church comes together to focus on the global impact of our call to “seek and serve Christ in all persons” (Baptismal Covenant, BCP, p. 305). Here at St. Paul’s, we give thanks to God for the many ways that we seek and serve Christ in all persons. On a global level, through our participation in the South Florida Haiti Project, we journey together with the parish family of Bon Samaritan Episcopal Church and School in Bondeau, Haiti. Our partnership includes feeding school children, helping to provide salaries for teachers and school nurses, sponsoring healthcare missions, repairing homes damaged by natural disaster, and, hopefully soon, launching a project that will offer economic self-sustainability. On a local level, we seek and serve Christ through our many partnerships of grace. As a member church of Family Promise, we help homeless families transition into permanent, stable housing. Through our support of CROS Ministries we feed the hungry in our community. As a founding congregation of the Delray Beach Interfaith Social Services Committee, we are helping to provide critically needed social services to the working poor and homeless. Here on campus, the children and families of Paul’s Place Afterschool program are nourished and nurtured by the transforming love of Jesus Christ made manifest through the incredible work of our staff and volunteers. As we prepare to enter the season of Lent, we pause today to thank God for the blessing of our call to seek and serve Christ in all persons. We celebrate these special ministries and the many other ways, through God’s grace, that we put love into action.
In Christ,
Fr. Paul+