Trinity Stories

Dear Friends,

In a few days, it will be Christmas once again. This year, everyone is coming home to Granville for Christmas – everyone except one son-in-law whose work in the New York financial world requires him to be in the city as 2024 comes to a close. To keep track of all the comings and goings, Terry and I have put together a color-coded calendar. If I read it correctly, everyone will be together for at least a few hours on December 26 – adult children, grandchildren, dogs . . . all in one place filled with happy chaos.

Our third child, Kate, and her husband, Mike, are expecting their first child in April. I haven’t seen Kate in person since her pregnancy began, but the photos she’s sent leave no doubt that she is “with child” as they used to say.

The Gospel for the Fourth Sunday of Advent – this week’s Gospel – is the story of not one, but two pregnant women – cousins – meeting. One of the women is Elizabeth, who will give birth to John the Baptist. The other is Mary, whose son, Jesus, will be born in humble circumstances in Bethlehem. I’m grateful that we acknowledge and honor Mary now in The Episcopal Church. It wasn’t the case when I was growing up – probably a resistance to seeming “too Romish.” Restoring her as an important figure during Advent is just right, it seems to me. Birth is inevitably preceded by a time of preparation, and the birth of Jesus is no different.

Just as a “pregnant pause” is a moment of hesitation that creates a sense of anticipation, so does a human pregnancy create a sense of expectation. Such is the case for Mary, who is known by many titles: Madonna, Theotokas (God-bearer), Star of the Sea, Queen of Heaven. The simplest and most profound of them is Our Lady – or in French, Notre Dame.

The Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris recently reopened after the catastrophic fire of 2019. One of the stories that came out of its re-opening was of Thomas Weinbeck, a land and environment manager from Bourgogne. His family had come to Parish to celebrate a friend’s birthday and had made it to the cathedral after visiting the city’s catacombs. “We didn’t even know there would be a Mass!” he said. I was particularly taken with what their friend, Annabell Kasynski, had to say about her experience, “To be honest, I also came to pray a little, even though I don’t really believe in it. There’s always hope that there may be someone up there, and this is not just any place, so maybe in here He’ll hear me.”

I suppose you could interpret her statement in many different ways, but the way I choose to read it is that there may be something waiting to be born in her. “There’s always hope that there may be someone up there. . . “ That hope, however tiny, has the potential to give birth to a full and rich faith.

If you see yourself at all in Annabell Kasynski, then this coming Sunday, with its theme of waiting for someone or something to be born, is especially for you. Please join us as we make our final preparations for the coming of Jesus.

Blessings,
Stephen

Dear Friends,

The season of Advent is always four Sundays long – the four Sundays before Christmas. However, the season’s actual number of days varies depending on which day of the week Christmas falls. This year Advent began on December 1 – one of the shorter observances of the season. Maybe this is why I feel like I’m running out of time. When I dropped some items off this past Wednesday morning at the dry cleaners, the person at the counter asked, “Are you ready for Christmas?” I’m sure he asks every customer the same question, but it stopped me in my tracks. Well. . . . no, I’m not.

An article from a couple of years ago by Tish Harrison Warren had the title: “I’m Not Ready for Christmas. I Need to Take a Minute.” Ms. Warren wrote that she could not force herself to dive into all the festivities and holiday cheer that these December days so often demand of us. “I need a season to notice, reflect on and grieve what we collectively and I individually have walked through this year (and the past few years, really). I need to take stock of where I am and how I got here,” she says. So, she continued, she was particularly glad for the season of Advent – this precious time of spiritual preparation for Christmas.

I am, too. Aren’t you?

Tish Harrison Warren continued, “We recall that we require ransom and rescue. Another year has gone by and we still live in a world in need of mending. We have learned anew through these long years that a virus can suddenly change our lives, that our illusions of control and predictability are fragile and faulty, that lies are often mistaken as truth, that we cannot keep ourselves or those we love from pain, that the wreckage of poverty, injustice and darkness persist. This is the very world of heartbreak, Christians say each year, into which Christ came and will come again.” Christ came and will come again. In between, we wait and watch and hope.

I’m not ready for Christmas. I need a minute. But I will be better prepared if I set aside some time for reflection and prayer. I invite you to join me in preparing during these remaining Advent days, so that when we celebrate Christmas, our celebrations will be rich and full of joy.

Blessings,
Stephen Applegate

Dear Friends,

Clergy are notorious bibliophiles. We buy books. We are given books as gifts. And we inherit books from older priests or their surviving spouses. We read a lot of the books that we have – or at least parts of them. The rest of the books serve as backdrops in our offices; as we sit in front of them, they make us appear more learned than perhaps we really are. Back in the day, clergy had “studies” where they read and contemplated. One of the gifts my father gave me after I was ordained was a hand-carved wooden sign that reads, “Parson’s Study.” Now, more often than not, we clergy have “offices,” suggesting that what we do is more managerial than it is pastoral. Since words matter, the change in terminology is worth pondering.

Over the last several years, I’ve drastically reduced my library. Part of the reason is that I move every year or two, and books are heavy! Part of the reason is that I no longer kid myself that I’m going to read or refer to most of them. The books I have kept are the ones I go back to again and again.

Every Advent, I take one particular book down from the shelf and read an excerpt from it every day. The book’s title is Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas. Just like Advent calendars, Watch for the Light gives me something to open every day – short pieces by some of the great spiritual writers. Some are from the distant past, like St. Bernard of Clairvaux and John Donne, and some are from more recent times, like Kathleen Norris and Madeleine L’Engle.

One of my favorites is by J.B. Phillips called “The Dangers of Advent.” Phillips was an Anglican clergyman and a pioneering Bible translator best known for his The New Testament in Modern English, a translation that had its start during World War II, while he was vicar of the Church of the Good Shepherd in London. He found the young people in his church did not understand the King James Version of the Bible, so he used the time he spent in the bomb shelters during the London Blitz to begin a translation of the New Testament into modern English.

Here’s how “The Dangers of Advent” begins: “By far the most important and significant event in the whole course of human history will be celebrated, with or without understanding, at the end of this season, Advent. The towering miracle of God’s visit to this planet on which we live will be glossed over, brushed aside or rendered impotent by over-familiarity.”

Further on the in article, he continues, “The particular danger which faces us as Christmas approaches is unlikely to be contempt for the sacred season, but nevertheless our familiarity with it may easily produce in us a kind of indifference.”

Indifference due to over-familiarity. I don’t know if that’s a problem for you. I know it sometimes is for me. So I count on J.B. Phillips to remind me every Advent that the coming of Jesus at Christmas is – in his words – a “towering miracle.”

“The Dangers of Advent” is too long a piece for me to include here. So, in addition to the brief snippets I’ve already shared, let me close this Dear Friends letter with the words Phillips uses to close his article. He writes: “. . . behind all our fun and games at Christmastime, we should not try to escape a sense of awe, almost a sense of fright, at what God has done. We must never allow anything to blind us to the true significance of what happened at Bethlehem so long ago. Nothing can alter the fact that we live on a visited planet.”

We live on a visited planet. What an extraordinary thing to realize! I can’t possibly become overly familiar with the idea, or indifferent to it either. How about you?

Blessings,
Stephen Applegate

Dear Friends,

The season of Advent begins this coming Sunday, December 1, with the first of the four Sundays of Advent. The season provides time and space for the coming of Christ as we celebrate his first coming at Christmas and anticipate his second coming at some future unknown date – the time when, as the Nicene Creed says, “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.”

Read several of Paul’s letters to the churches he founded, and you’ll quickly see how the first Christians were standing, as it were, on tiptoes. They expected Jesus to return at almost any moment and looked forward to that time with joyous anticipation. They saw themselves living in an in-between-time; the awareness of this inspired them to share the Good News with as many people as possible, to serve the world in which they found themselves, and to risk everything since they believed they would be called upon right away to give an account of the gifts God had given them.

Two thousand years, and then some, have passed since the early church waited with eager longing for the return of their Lord and Savior. Quite understandably, people found it harder and harder to wait for Christ’s return. The church settled down for the long haul and created institutions and orders of ministry that could sustain the faithful for a longer journey than they had anticipated. So, with the exception of a few believers, most of us don’t stand on our tiptoes in anticipation of the Second Coming. That’s why, it seems to me, the season of Advent is so valuable. For four weeks out of fifty-two, we recapture some of the joyous anticipation of those first Christians.

I will admit that most of the joyous anticipation this time of the year seems more directed to the celebration of the first coming – Christmas – than to the second coming. But I believe we can anticipate more than one thing at a time – and I hope we’ll try.

What might that look like? Here’s a suggestion. Take some time each day of Advent and remember a time when you waited excitedly for something – perhaps the birth of a child or grandchild, the return of your college student after a semester away, a service member’s homecoming after a deployment, how about the arrival of Trinity’s new rector sometime early in 2025 – you get the idea – and then ask yourself this question, “how would I live my life differently if I was waiting excitedly for God to come into my life?”

I look forward to observing Advent joyfully with you again this year. How will you be transformed while you wait?

Blessings,
Stephen Applegate