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Upcoming Events
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Saturday, Oct. 13
Community Fall Festival, 9:30 AM ~ 2:30 PM. (Rain date: Oct. 20th)
Sunday, Oct. 21
Odeon Concert. Attacca Quartet, 4 PM
Saturday, Oct 27
Anna Chanu's Girl Scout Gold Award project, in church, 8 AM ~ 12 PM
Sunday, Oct 28
Holy Baptism -- Christian Benjamin
Sunday, Nov 4
Stewardship Month begins
Tuesday, Nov 13
Commissions, 6:30 PM
Vestry, 7:30 PM
Saturday, Nov 17
Piano Masterclass, 1:00 PM ~ 3:00 PM
Sunday, Nov 18
Odeon Concert. Mr. Peter Takacs, pianist.
4 PM
Thursday, Nov. 22 Thanksgiving Day Service, 10:30 AM Potluck after church Sunday, Nov 25 Stewardship Sunday Sunday, Dec. 9 Bishop Johnston's Visitation, 10:30 AM, Potluck Sunday, Dec. 16 Annual Meeting Wednesday, Dec. 19 Blue Christmas Service, 7:30 PM Sunday, Dec. 23 Greening the church Monday, Dec. 24 Christmas Eve Services TBA |
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St. Pat's FaceBook
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- Saint Patrick's is now on FaceBook! You are invited to join us at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Saint-Patricks-Episcopal-Church/496902677004642?ref=hl
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Birthdays
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October
12 Jean Wetrich
14 Hong Van Phan
16 Joe Hiller
17 Natalie Dang-Ellis
17 Jorden Benjamin
22 Emmeline Pizzola
22 Matthew Pizzola
22 Tess Miller
23 Paul Los, Jr.
27 Victoria Coker-
Gunter
28 Harriette Benjamin
30 Carolyn
Gawarecki
31 Margaret Mills
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Our Prayer List
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We remember in our prayer:
Maria Ash, Harry Benson, Kari Boeskov, Mary Anne Bogie, Hoang Thi Ngoc Bich, Mary Carper, Thomas Cascella, Marie Cosimano, Tim Clary, Dorothy Connelly, John Davis, Donald DeVaughn, Michael Dickinson, Loretta Dougherty, The Edsall Family, Mary Farmer, The Faubion Family, Nance Finegan, Luis Garay, Thomas Garner, Anne Goodwin, Jean Graham, Katie Grosse, Nick Giuliani, Katherine Hafele, Anne & Thomas Edsall, Margaret Ellis Harris, Eldon Paul Henry, Betty and Bill Henderson, Alek Hensley, Leslie Hogan, Cindy Hogman, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Michael Horn, Mary Isibel, Lindsay Johns, Gray and Bob Johnson, Jamie Kaplon, Robert Kelley, Quinn Kimball, Jeffry King, Susan Lawrence, Joe Magrogan, Colleen Mavrikas, Kylee Mei and her families, Margaret Mills, Evelyn Morgan, Que Nguyen, Chick Nixon, Olive Oliver, Jim Owens, Gary Owens, Joann Piper, Faith Poole, William Ross, Bill Sitler, Irene Skowron, Josh Smithers, Candi Stewart, Barbara Stefl, Kara Stryker, Walter Sushko, Steven Talbert, George Thomas, Clara Torres, George Torres, Thelma Trout, Nhon Thanh Vo Michael Weekes, Warren Weinstein, The Westfall Family, Paula Wiech, Meredith Wiech, Donna Wolfe, Peter Kosutic.
We pray for all US personnel serving overseas, especially Garway Thomas and Cate Johnson. We pray also for the orphans and those who care for them at Abba Home in Pakistan, and for all orphans in the world. ____ Note: If you have a loved one or friend who needs prayer please call the church and leave a message at 703-532-5656, or write to Tinh+ at stpats3241@gmail.com or call him at 703-405-9571. Also, should a name need be removed from the list, please let Tinh+ know promptly, and give the reason. |
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Saint Patrick's Ministers
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The Ministers of Saint Patrick's Church are the People of this Parish
supported by
The Reverend
Tinh Trang Huynh, Rector
The Reverend
Toua Vang,
Seminarian Deacon
Ms. Kerry Hual
Director of Youth and Children's Ministry
Ms. Mariko Hiller,
Music Director
Ms. Rachel Burgess,
Nursery Care
We serve our Lord as part of the Diocese of Virginia
led by
our chief pastors
The Rt. Rev. Shannon Sherwood Johnston, Bishop
The Rt. Rev. Susan Goff
Bishop Suffragan
and
The Rt. Rev. Ted Gulick,
Assistant Bishop
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The Vision of St. Patrick's
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Saint Patrick's Episcopal Church is a community of care, called to be Christ-centered and multicultural in worship, Christian education and action to proclaim Christ's love to the world.
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About St. Patrick's Church
| Saint Patrick's was founded in 1953 as a mission church from the Falls Church. The congregation met for the first time on January 3, 1954 in the cafeteria of the Graham Road School. The building was completed in 1956. Members of St. Pat's have been known for their involvement in outreach ministries since the very early days of the parish. In 1995, Saint Patrick's became an Anglo-Vietnamese church, a mission of the Diocese of Virginia, and has become more and more multicultural. In January of 2012, Saint Patrick's full parish status was restored and recognized at the 217th Annual Council meeting of the Diocese. Some of us say that St. Pat's is like a window through which we can see God's love. Other parishioners suggest St. Pat's is a "safe haven" for all who seek peace, a quiet place for those who want to find rest. Many in the congregation mention caring is what makes St. Patrick's special to them. Our vision statement reflects what we are in our hearts: St. Patrick's Episcopal Church is a community of care called to be Christ-centered and multicultural in worship, Christian education and action to proclaim Christ's love to the world."
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Saint Patrick's
Website
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You are invited to visit our website. Please click here .
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| Previous Issues of the Epistle | Please click here if you wish to see the previous issues of The Epistle
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St. Patrick's Organized for Missions and Ministry
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Vestry Committee: Senior Warden: Tom Auld; Junior Warden: Vivian Benjamin; Registrar: Winnie Lebo; Treasurer: Kathy Oliver; Other members of the Vestry: Victoria Kennedy, Jocelyne Miller, Pierre Chanu, Chris Nicholson.
GROUPS AND ACTIVITIES
Altar Guild: Lois Cascella; Bell Choir: Mariko Hiller; Church Office: Lois Cascella; Offering Counters: Bob Cascella; Youth Ministry: Maggie Spinelli; Region VIII Representative: Felix Spinelli; Diocesan Council Delegate: Amelia Nicholson; St. Margaret's Circle: Ann Nelson; Telephone Chain: Alice King; Feed the Homeless: Amelia Nicholson; Odeon Chamber Music Series: Mariko Hiller; Westlawn Elementary School: Winnie Lebo; Falls Church Community Services: Catherine Dubas; Hypothermia Shelter Program: Felix Spinelli; Church Women United: Amelia Nicholson. The Epistle Newsletter Editors: Winnie Lebo and Cindy Rhoad; Flea Market: Chris Nicholson
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Parish Notes
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- Come to the Fall Community Festival this Saturday, October 13th, 9:30 AM ~ 2:30 PM!
 Car trunk sale: pay $20.00 for the parking spot, sell them from your car trunk and keep your money. Donation for Saint Patrick's white elephant table are welcome. Bring them as you come to the Festival. Please do not bring furniture!!!
Those wishing to donate clothes may bring them either today or tomorrow (Friday). Pleave the donations at the front door if there is no one at church to receive them. As we need the time to sort through the clothes, please bring them prior to the festival. All donations, with the exception of undergarments, are welcome.
- Bake sale for Fall Festival. We need bake sale items for the Fall Festival, and we hope that we will receive many of them for the event. Please bring them to the church this Saturday around 9:00 AM. The best baked goods would be cupcakes, cookies, brownies and other small items. Cakes and pies too, but we think most people will choose small items rather than a cake or pie. Thank you so much for your generosity.
- Stewardship month and Annual Meeting. The stewardship month at Saint Patrick's will begin on Sunday Nov 4th, and Stewardship Sunday is November 25th. Our Annual Meeting will be held on Sunday, December 16th, and there will be an election of new vestry members. To serve on the vestry, one should be a confirmed Episcopalian and a communicant in good standing, and known to the Treasurer. The term is three years. If you feel called to serve on the Vestry, please speak with Tinh+. - Introducing Bernard Yung, Seminarian at Saint Patrick's for Mid-Atlantic Parish Training. Starting this Sunday, October 14, Mr. Bernard Yung, a third-year student of the Virginia Seminary, will be at Saint Patrick's for the eight-week internship program. Bernard will be working from the church office, doing pastoral visitation and participating in parish activities. Please welcome Bernard when you see him at church on Sunday.
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Last Sunday's Sermon
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Proper 22 - Year B -- Sunday, October 7, 2012
Text: Genesis 2:18-24; Hebrews 1:1-14, 2:5-12; Mark 10:2-6 -- The Rev. Dr. Richard J. Jones
It Was Not So From The Beginning
 Despite the power of their new names -- "I am now husband; I am now wife";
Despite the deep power of marriage --
To give us mutual joy
To be the cinder blocks out of which we build family, neighborhood networks, nation;
Despite all the weight and worth of marriage --
We know from sad experience -- perhaps personal experience -- that even a God-given unity can be broken.
The Jewish law, in the person of Moses, allowed a man to write his wife a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.
"Yes," says Jesus. "Because of your hardness of heart Moses wrote this commandment for you. But it was not so from the beginning. In creation God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his mother and his father and be joined to his wife. Leave home, and then cleave to another person. And the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate."
With God's help we make things.
All by ourselves, without his help, we are able to break things.
Now some things are made to be broken -- like a pin~ata.
Some things are constructed so that they break apart neatly and easily:
- a 3-piece outfit lets you remove the jacket when you get too warm.
- a tangerine allows us easily to discard the skin and enjoy the meat.
But there are other things where the breaking means
- damage
- trauma
- things cannot again be what they were meant to be.
The name that was ours, which we once carried so comfortably, just doesn't fit us anymore. Our names and our selves are broken.
Into this world of broken cinder blocks, of names we can no longer wear, comes the Designer and Creator and Owner of all our constructions. He comes in person. He comes in human form. As one of us, he is subject to all the breakage that human flesh is heir to. He comes, fully human, knowing the hardheartedness and hardheadedness of human beings. At the same time this fully human man bears the exact image of the Designer-Creator-Enlivener of all that is. He is a flawless expression of the very being of God. This one human being is what the rest of us were created from the beginning to be.
In Jesus there is no gap between what the Father intends and what the Son of God also wills. The earthly name he was given when he was circumcised, the name Jesus, means He who saves his people. This is a name he deserves. He lives into it and lives it out. Jesus is all that he is meant to be, because he chooses to do what the Designer and Creator and Owner from the beginning intended.
What does the obedience of Jesus do for our disobedience? What does Jesus' living up to his name do for our shortfall? What does Jesus' enduring this world's violence do for the raw wounds inflicted by our unreliability?
The excellence of Jesus in his saving living and dying does two things for us.
He accomplishes what we could not. He fulfills all that human nature is capable of. What God intended from the beginning by way of human faithfulness, obedience, and joy Jesus lived out -- and absorbed the cost.
Jesus was betrayed by a friend, abandoned by people who had said they were joining him for life. Jesus was mocked for refusing to deny his rightful authority as a king, and as Son of God. The worst damage that human rage and selfishness can inflict was received by Jesus in his flesh. He bore it. He bore it up. He bore it away.
And because Jesus was true to his name, God has raised him up from death to his rightful power. When he had made purification for sins, paid the cost of the damage we do, Jesus sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
So the damage we do has been paid for. The breakage and tearing that we have suffered is known at the throne of God. A model of faithfulness has been established and validated where we can see it and take heart.
These are the results from the example and the teaching, from the victorious dying and the demanding word of Jesus.
On the negative side, in Jesus' victorious dying, we have reason to believe that our betrayals and our being betrayed, our wounding and our being wounded by people we love, all this bad debt of broken promises and names dishonored -- God for Christ's sake has forgiven.
On the positive side, not all the battering and meanness we were capable of was enough to frustrate the design of God. We can offend and disappoint God horribly, but we cannot defeat God.
God will unite what he intends to unite. Despite our defective cinder blocks and our worst tantrums, God will maintain the integrity of his construction. Whatever damage we have inflicted God has covered. We couldn't make it right. He could. He did. And he will.
How then shall we live? We will not live up to our names by our own power. But by the power of the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead, we will take another look at the construction plan which God drew up for us. What God has designed for us from the beginning is still our plan. We may be behind schedule, bu the construction site of the rest of our lives is still ready for us to return to work. In the power of the Holy Spirit, we return to our jobs to make something beautiful, useful, and worth offering up for God's inspection. We return to the cinder blocks of our promises to erect again the structure that rests on our own reliability, but on God's reliability.
Michael Vergason, the landscape architect who is planning the new chapel at Virginia Seminary to replace the one a fire destroyed in 2010 told us last week of his plan for the old bricks that can be saved from the ruined building. All the bricks that are intact will be scraped clean of old mortar. They will be reused, a reminder of our connection to the worship of God that for 130 years was offered in the now-ruined chapel. Some of these bricks will be laid to form a pathway.
God had something in mind from the beginning for us. God has not changed his name or his plan. God intends to fulfill his original intentions through the ordering of our lives.
His design for our lives in that unity should overcome estrangement. His design is that the two shall become one flesh. Amen.
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