Dear Cathedral Family,
Although summer is still very much with us, the beginning of August next week will bring us closer to the beginning of a new school year. We will soon be blessing students and their backpacks and beginning our new program year here at Christ Church Cathedral. Our annual Operation Backpack will have a slightly different focus this year, as it is led by Deacon Pratt Paterson.
Deacon Pratt will preach this Sunday, which also happens to be Wilmer Hall Sunday throughout the diocese. He will be sharing more with us about his ministry as a vocational deacon and how his ministry will lead our cathedral community into new ways of being present to the world around us. He will also, of course, share more about the growing ministry of Wilmer Hall in the wider Mobile community.
Next week contains two opportunities for gathering to learn more about the history of the Church. Monday evening at 6 p.m., we will host a screening of the new documentary about the Philadelphia Eleven, followed by conversation about the history of women’s ordination in the Episcopal Church. Monday marks the 50th anniversary of those first women’s ordinations, and we will welcome Episcopalians from around our diocese to this Cathedral event. Then on Wednesday, July 31, the Dean’s Summer Read of N.T. Wright’s “Paul: A Biography” will continue its discussion Paul and the early history of Christian communities; the group meets both in person and via Zoom.
In our reading this Sunday from Paul’s letter to the community in Ephesus, Paul writes to encourage the young Church to live up to its destiny as the Body of Christ. He prays for them to be strengthened by the Spirit, for Christ to dwell in their hearts, and for them to know how broad, long, high, and deep is the love of Christ.
We pray for the same things to be true for us in our time, as well.
Faithfully,
Beverly+
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