Saint Stephen's Church

News and events for

the week of May 28th

The Day of Pentecost:

Whitsunday

Pentecost illumination from a Book of Hours, Belgium, c. 1440.

Dear Friends,

This Sunday is many things at S. Stephen's. Primarily it is the feast of Pentecost, marking the end of the Great Fifty Days of Easter. In our secular culture, it is also Memorial Day weekend, when we honor and mourn those U.S. military personnel who died while serving in the Armed Forces.

It is also Commencement Weekend at Brown University. And so I encourage you to come to the 8:00 Low Mass in the Lady Chapel to make your Communion on this Major Feast of the Church. At that time of the morning it will be much easier to park near the parish building. Getting to Sung Mass at 10:00 will not be impossible, but it will take a little more time and planning ahead. If you park in the church driveway, please pull in as far as possible to allow others to park behind you.

Pentecost is, of course, when we celebrate the fulfillment of Jesus' promise to not leave the Disciples comfortless after his Ascension to the Father. It is the Day that the Disciples, waiting in Jerusalem as instructed, receive the gift of the Holy Spirit descending upon them, and the life of the Church beginning in earnest.

As Western Christians, we have a very malnourished theology and language around the Holy Spirit compared with our Eastern Rite brothers and sisters. Efforts in the early Church to combat various heresies that wanted to deny or lessen the divinity of the Son sometimes led to a weakening or neglect of the co-equal-ness of the Spirit with the Father and the Son.

I suspect that when we talk about feeling the presence of the Divine in our lives, we are often more likely to use the terms "God," "Jesus," or "Christ." It is, after all, easier to imagine a close spiritual companion that has a face and or a name, and Jesus indeed shows us the face of God. But I wonder if it isn't really the presence of the Holy Spirit that we're feeling in those moments.

I have two thoughts on why perhaps we don't more readily identify that feeling as the Holy Spirit:

1) We simply have a malnourished theology of the centrality of the Sprit in our corporate and personal spiritual lives, which tends to want to see it contained within the Sacraments of the Church at the hands of ordained clergy.

2) Other Christian traditions which have gone to the other extreme in prioritizing the visible presence of the Spirit as the primary sign of God's activity (i.e. Holiness and Pentecostal traditions) wrongly limit the Spirit to ecstatic shouts, intense emotions, and energetic motions.

While one sign of the Spirit is and should be joyfulness, it is a mistake to think that the Spirit is not present with us in pain and sadness as well... or even just ordinary, contemplative moments.

We all, by virtue of our Baptisms and our membership in Christ's Body, have the Holy Spirit. Or rather, the Holy Spirit has us. And it guides and comforts, cheers and directs, in all life's ups and downs and everything in between. So I encourage you, in your personal prayers or when you have a "God moment" at S. Stephen's, to name that as the Spirit moving in and through you, and be thankful.

Yours in the love of that same Holy Spirit which binds all the Church in One,

Fr. Benjamin+

Laura Saetveit Miles (Brown '03) sang in the St Stephen's choir under James Busby from 1999-2004, where she met her husband Randolph Miles (RISD MA '04). She went on to complete graduate degrees at Cambridge and Yale (singing along the way) and has been professor of British literature at the University of Bergen, Norway, since 2013. Her research specialties are medieval visionary and mystical texts, monastic literary traditions, Marian studies, women's writing, and gender and queer theory. Randolph and Laura have a 12-yr old daughter Astrid who was baptised in 2011 at Christ Church New Haven, where her parents were singing in the choir at the time.

Click the link below for more information about the lecture. All are welcome!

https://events.brown.edu/medieval/event/251497-the-program-in-medieval-studies-alumni-reunion

There were some oddities in the statements mailed out in the past few weeks, and we believe we have figured out the issue with the software program that generates these statements. Of course, still free to let us know, but we will have them corrected the next time they are sent out at the end of June.

On Sunday, June 4, Trinity Sunday, we will recognize and honor all our Sunday School students for the work they've done this year, and Kate Lester, who has taken on Sunday School entirely by herself this past year.

Please consider volunteering one Sunday a month to help teach Sunday School when it resumes in the Fall. If you have any questions, reach out to the Rector or to Kate Lester the next time you see her.

May 28 - The Day of Pentecost: Whitsunday

Morning Prayer & Low Mass 8:00 am

Sung Mass 10:00 am

Coffee Hour 11:00 am

Commencement Exercises in Nave 1:00 pm

May 29 - Monday

Memorial Day

Summer Weekday Mass Schedule begins

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May 30 - Tuesday

Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

(anticipated of May 31)

Noonday Prayer 12 noon

Low Mass 12:10 pm

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June 1 - Thursday

Justin, Martyr at Rome, c. 167

Noonday Prayer 12 noon

Low Mass 12:10 pm

June 3 - Saturday

The Martyrs of Uganda

Morning Prayer 9:30 am

Low Mass 10:00 am

Holy Rosary 10:30 am

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June 4 - Trinity Sunday

Morning Prayer & Low Mass 8:00 am

Sunday School 9:55 (final session before Summer Break)

Solemn Mass & Te Deum 10:00 am

Coffee Hour 11:30 am

Prayers have been requested for: James Busby, Charles Calverley, Fr. Norman Catir, Zulie Catir, Nancy Colby, Trudy Egan, Fr. Harrington Gordon, Maris Haynes, Katherine Hayslip, Bruce Lennihan, Sharon Lloyd Clark, Althea Norgriff, Barbara Pyles, Bryan Ripley, Louis Verdelotti, Fr. Allan Warren, Christopher Whittingham.

Ordination Anniversaries: The Rev'd Fr. Philip C. Jacobs, priestly (5/29), The Rev'd Mtr. Veronia Tierney, priestly (5/31)

Birthdays: Grant Randall (5/28)

The faithful departed: Year's Mind: Nancy Figliolini (5/28), Shirley Cook (5/29), William Justice Cowperthwaite (6/1), Rosamund Hine (6/3)

In the Anglican Cycle of Prayer, we are asked to pray for The Extra-Provincial Churches (5/28), The Diocese of Western Tanganyika, Tanzania (5/29), The Diocese of Tarime, Tanzania (5/30), The Diocese of Tasmania, Australia (5/31), The Diocese of Taungoo, Myanmar (6/1), Te Piopatanga o Te Waipounamu, New Zealand and Polynesia (6/2), The Diocese of Temotu, Melanesia (6/3).

In the Diocesan Cycle of Prayer, we are asked to pray for The Church of the Holy Spirit, Charlestown; Grace Church, Providence; and for those who have died in service to our country.

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