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In This Issue
Photos
Parish Notes
The Propers
Last Sunday's Sermon

Upcoming Events


Saturday, August 9:
Ben Nindel's funeral

Tuesday, August 19:
Vestry Meeting

Sunday, August 24:
"Stuff the Truck"

Altar at Easter 2013

       

Birthdays

August

2   Mark Mills

2   Jim Ellis

2   Grace Payne

2   Olamide Thomas

8   Bich-Thuy Diep

9   Victoria Kennedy

11   Jonathan Burgess

15   Heather Stefl

15   Christofer Johnson-Harbers

16   Dang Pham

23   Carrie McCall  

24   Frank Harbers


September 

1   Felix Spinelli

1  MyChi Haan

4   Laura Kennedy

8   Lucille Selby

8   Nghia Dao

10   Rachel Burgess

11   Oanh Phan

13   Debbie Clark

13   Doan Huynh Tucker

13   Michael Knowles

14   Thanh Nguyen

18   Pauline Leonard

23   Hannah Knowles

24   Deani Coker

24  Margot Deanna Miller

28   William Houston

29   Justice Lebo

30   Michael Spinelli

 

 

Our Prayer List

We remember in our prayer:

 

Cathy Anderson, Dee Bailey, Kari Boeskov, Brandon, Rachel Burgess, Jane Chapman, Marie Cosimano, Tim Clary, Dorothy Connelly, John Davis, Michael Dickinson, Loretta Dougherty, Steve Escobar, Nance Finegan, Luis Garay, Carolyn Gawarecki, Louise Gibney, Jean Graham, Katherine Hafele, Margaret Ellis Harris, Alek Hensley, Leslie Hogan, Cindy Hogman, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Michael Horn,  Lindsay Johns, Gray Johnson, Jamie Kaplon, Laura Kennedy, Quinn Kimball, Alice King, Michael Knowles, Ashley Kolitz, Peter Kosutic, Susan Lawrence, Thai Lee, Bruce Lineker, Evelyn Morgan, Danielle Morgan, Que Nguyen, Chick Nixon, Mary Esther Obremskey, Tom Olander, Olive Oliver, Jim Owens, Gary Owens, Cathy Riley-Hall, William Ross, Fern Shuck, Irene Skowron, Josh Smithers, Inez Stanton, Candi Stewart, Patrick Stefl, Barbara Stefl, Kara Stryker, Walter Sushko, George Thomas, Elizabeth Trigg, Tammy Vanphung, Michael Weekes, Warren Weinstein, The Crowley Family, The Westfall Family, Meredith Wiech, Bernard Williams, Rev. Letha Wilson-Barnard, Rudy Zimpel.

               ____ 

 

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 Winnie Lebo at

thelebos@verizon.net  or call her at 703-536-2075.  Also, should a name need be removed from the list, please let Winnie know promptly, and give the reason.  

 

 

Saint Patrick's Ministers 

The Ministers of Saint Patrick's Church are the People of this Parish

 

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 

The Vision of St. Patrick's

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.

   

Previous Issues of the Epistle
Please click here if you wish to see the previous issues of The Epistle

St. Patrick's Organized for Missions and Ministry 

 

SAINT PATRICK'S ORGANIZED

FOR MISSIONS AND MINISTRY

 
Vestry Committee:
Senior Warden: Kathy Oliver; Junior Warden:  Bill Houston;
Registrar: Winnie Lebo;
Treasurer:  Kathy Oliver; 

Other members of the Vestry:   Elisabeth Nguyen, Milton Thomas, Victoria Kennedy, Ann Nelson. 

 

GROUPS AND ACTIVITIES

 

Altar Guild:  Lois Cascella;  
Bell Choir:  Mariko Hiller; 
Sunday Service Bulletin:  Diem Nguyen, Steve Lebo;
Offering Counters:  Bob Cascella; Diocesan Council Delegate: Bill Houston (Kathy Oliver, alternate delegate);
St. Margaret's Circle:  Ann Nelson; Telephone Chain:
Alice King; Feed the Homeless:  Elisabeth Nguyen;
Odeon Chamber Music Series:  Mariko Hiller;
Westlawn Elementary School:  Winnie Lebo;
Falls Church Community Services: Catherine Dubas;
Hypothermia Shelter Program:  Hao Nguyen; 
The Epistle Newsletter Editors: Winnie Lebo; Flea Market:
Prison Ministry: Nancy Burch;
Meals-on-Wheels: Sunrise/Bluemont:
Michael Knowles   

 

 

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August 7. 2014
Photos

Altar Flowers 
Lucille Selby and Michael Knowles

Cindy Rhoad, Dr. Richard Jones, Victoria Kennedy and Carolyn Gawarecki

Milton and Cheryl Thomas serving coffee hour
Parish Notes
-  The flowers for Sunday August 10th are given by Mark Mills.

 

-  Due to lack of supply clergy there will be morning prayer, led by Kathy Oliver, Sunday, August 10th at 10:30. 


-  Ben Nindel's funeral will be held on August 9th at Everly Funeral Home, 10565 Main Street, Fairfax, VA 22030.  There will be a viewing starting at 10am and a service at 11am at Everly.  The Reverend Tinh Trang Huynh will officiate.  Ben will be buried next to his wife, my Mom, at Fairfax Memorial Park, 9900 Braddock Road,  Fairfax, VA at noon. I will be having a get together at my house after the burial.  My address is 3829 Prince William Drive, Fairfax, VA. Everyone is welcome.
Thanks,
Grace Payne 

 

-  As the Ebola virus is escalating in West Africa, Cheryl Thomas has asked for our prayers and help in providing supplies to the medical personnel working with the sick. A list of needed supplies follows: 

Gloves
Face Mask
Hand Sanitizer
Soap
Bleach
Overalls
Medical shoes and boot covers
Alcohol Pads
Cotton
Scrubs
Wipes
Etc
These supplies are being sent out weekly. Please bring supplies to church and leave them in the box in the narthex. If you wish to make a monetary donation, please make checks payable to Saint Patrick's Episcopal Church with "Ebola relief" in the memo.

- Please bring non-perishable food and paper products for the FCS "Stuff The Truck" effort. We'll stuff our donations in the truck on August 24th. For more information, contact Catherine Dubas at 571-242-2591. Thank You!

The Propers 

Sunday, August 10, 2014
This Sunday is the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

Texts: 

         


Grant to us, Lord, we pray, the spirit to think and do always those things that are right, that we, who cannot exist without you, may by you be enabled to live according to your will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.  

Last Sunday's Sermon

Given by The Rev. Dr. Richard J. Jones 

August 3, 2014

 

God's Wealth

 

Summer vacations, summer visits, and summer reunions can be glorious. God did a great thing taking solitary Adam and matching him with Eve. God did a great thing when he promised heirs to Abraham. To be supported by family and friends, to share love and care, is to be rich indeed.

 

But -- the people you are closest to, the people who know you best, the people you trust, can also be the people who hurt you most. From strangers and enemies, we don't know what to expect. From those with whom we share the deep things of life, we expect loyalty and love. Nothing is worse than when we hurt someone we love. Nothing hurts us more than to be forgotten by a friend or abandoned by an ally. What is Paul, a Jew by birth, a lover of God's Law for his whole life, to think when he sees his fellow Jews reject the One whom God himself had promised to send to make friendship flourish on earth? And what sense can anyone make of it when outsiders, people who had never wanted to be close to God, begin to occupy the places that the rightful, chosen descendants of Abraham and Jacob are turning away from? Nothing is more bewildering than to see an outsider take over the intimate space we thought was ours.

 

These hurts can tear apart a friendship. These missteps can destroy a marriage, or a sports team, or a work group -- or the people of God.

 

One cause of these breakups, and our hurting each other, and our worry about keeping the group gate closed- one reason for the failure of friendship -- is that we underestimate the wealth of God.

 

Estimating is different from actually counting, or tasting. Even if you are good at mathematics, I wonder whether you would agree that once you get to numbers that are bigger than the number of our fingers and our toes, numbers get a little fuzzy, a little abstract. One, two, and three are numbers I can grasp. But one million? A million may be a real number, but I can't touch it or taste it. I can believe in a million eggs, but a million eggs don't interest me at breakfast the way two boiled eggs do.

 

Estimating large quantities is an interesting business. I suggest that we are inclined to overestimate some things and underestimate others.

 

Part of our hurt over broken friendships and over civil wars that will not end - part of our distress -- comes from our fear that we will end up with nothing. We fight because we fear. We fear there will not be enough. Not enough food. Not enough fairness. Not enough love. When it comes to dire possibilities, we estimate high.

 

Estimating seems also to be hard in the area of promised blessing or wealth. When God promised our childless ancestor Abraham that out of him would come offspring, old age and human experience made the promise hard for Abraham to grasp. The promise was almost too big to get hold of. The number of stars visible in a clear desert sky is so large it is hard to estimate high enough. Abraham's estimate was limited by his eyesight. Yet the starmaking capacity of God was not limited.

 

In St. Paul's lumpy community of people who had seen Jesus killed and then alive again, it was hard for them to estimate adequately the extent of God's power to make alive. They had seen a new thing in meeting Jesus alive again after dying. But it was hard for them to estimate the capacity of God to make a mixed Jewish and Gentile people alive in a whole new way.

 

The family of God, today as in the days of the converted apostle Paul, still suffers pain, alongside the friends and families and firms and nations who suffer when breakup comes. Intimacy makes us vulnerable. We fear losing everything.

If this uneasiness arises from fear that there will not be enough shoulders, or that there will be too many hands and mouths, then we are underestimating the most important thing.

 

God is bigger. God is better. God is richer than we can imagine. God's capacity to enrich us, the human race whom he created, is on a different scale from any human endeavor. God's productive power is greater than any human product.

 

Do we think the problem is limited love? Do we think there will not be enough of God for both us and them? Do we fear that when the will is read, our share might turn out to be leftover small change?

 

Some people stay outside the intimate family of God by their own choice. Some stand outside the gate of God because they have been treated inhumanly by their fellow humans. Some people lack a fixed address in God's city simply because God's timing is inexplicable. We don't understand why now seems to be the time of deep enjoyment for some but not yet the time of enjoyment for others.   Some just cannot let their estimating imagination expand far enough to take in the mystery

 

But we do have clues.

 

When I lived in Guayaquil, Ecuador in the 1970s, there were frequent shortages of food in the neighborhood supermarket. Sometimes there was no milk, but there was butter. At other times there was no butter, but there was milk. I knew that if you separated cream from milk and beat the cream long enough it could turn into butter. But my wife discovered that if you did the right things to butter, butter could turn back into cream. I have no idea how she did it. I understand neither chemistry nor cooking. Just as I don't understand why some people get separated from the blended community of God's powerful love and stay separate.

 

But I know that somehow in Guayaquil we had some wonderful cream - sometimes with our dessert it was even whipped cream.

 

The riches God wants to serve up are like whipped cream. We do not know why sometimes there are splits and absences among the people whom God brings together to love and serve him. We do not know why they are blockages in the supply line, or short deliveries. But we can, with St. Paul, let our estimating capacity be enlarged. We can trust that God's unimaginable promises will be kept. In some fashion, in God's own good and surprising time, God will blend us into the goodness of his abundance.

 

If you have ever tasted his whipped cream, you know that God's richness is greater than anything we could have picked from a menu. If we can recall that taste, we can trust that God's power to supply is greater than anything we fear. We can trust that God's power to supply is greater than anything we crave.

 

For his inestimable riches, thanks be to God.


 



 

May God bless and keep you, and may God grant us peace.  

Please pray for Saint Patrick's throughout the process of transition 

 

Saint Patrick's Episcopal Church

Falls Church, Virginia