From Bishop Steve – Newsletter 11.4.26

Called Together. What a great title for the Bishop Search Profile! What a good way to summarize both who we are and what we are looking for in our next bishop! Kudos to the Search and Nominating Committee for so succinctly capturing both our work of coming together as a diocese and our hopes for our life together going forward. We are one body called to follow Jesus in the world, and we hope for someone to come alongside us and join us in our work of seeking “reconciliation with God and one another in Christ,” as our Catechism puts it. I hope you will take time to read and consider the Search Profile which was posted this past Monday. It can be found HERE.

As a reminder, the deadline for proposing persons for our next bishop is November 25, 2026. That’s the day before Thanksgiving.

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This past Sunday was All Saints’ Sunday, the one major feast of the year that’s transferable to a Sunday so that we don’t miss it. In our parishes we remember those who have died in the previous year and all those who have been for us models of faithful living.

The Church teaches that we are all saints of God. Historically, there have been three classes of saints: the founders of the faith (Mary, Peter, Paul, John, etc.), those the Church has declared as saints (Augustine, Benedict, Martin Luther King, etc.), and all of us who have been baptized. Our celebration of All Saints’ reminds us that, by the grace of God, we are all connected: the faith we live today is the faith founded by the Apostles and carried forward by the heroes and martyrs of their days. Today is our turn, and by God’s grace, we live the same way.

All Saints’ also reminds that through God’s eternal love, we remain connected with all those who have gone before. They are no longer in our presence, but they are in God’s, and God continues to work with them and through them to bring them to perfect service in God’s reign. They, and we, are part of the Cloud of Witnesses that proclaims the Gospel and provides support for all the faithful. All Saints’ takes the Resurrection very seriously and proclaims that we are all part of the new life available in Christ.

That’s why we read the Beatitudes on All Saints’ Sunday. The virtues proclaimed there are not the virtues of the world at large, but the virtues by which all the saints have tried to live as members of the Body of Christ, members of the Fellowship of the Reconciled. We are called to lives of mercy, peace, justice and love, called to love people more than things, justice more than wealth. Our call is not easy, but it is the way God’s dream of a new heaven and a new earth will be achieved. And it is the dream already accomplished in Jesus Christ. The Beatitudes are in the present tense. We live those virtues now as members of Christ’s Body.

As we remember all who have been saints for us, may we consider how, by God’s grace, we can be models for those around us and those who come after us.

Blessings,
Bishop Steve