St. Paul's on-the-Hill Episcopal Church
 
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St. Paul's on-the-Hill Episcopal Church
1527 Senseny Road
Winchester, Virginia 22602
540-667-8110

 

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Welcome

 

February, 2012

Dear Friends and Companions in Ministry,

I hope you will be able to attend our Annual Meeting on February 5th, following the 10:30am service. We will be electing new vestry members who represent you in making decisions about the direction our church takes, what sort of ministry we choose to do, and many other matters. Your participation in their election is important. We will also have reports from our Food Pantry leaders, Scott Lang and Linda Binder, as well as reports from Pastoral Care, your Senior and Junior Wardens, and your rector. During our Annual Meeting, we consider the ministry we have shared in the last year, and we look to the future as we seek to know God’s vision for what we are to do and who we are to be as faithful followers of Christ in 2012.

Our Annual Meeting is held in the season of Epiphany, which is most appropriate. Each season of the church year gives us a focus for our attention as we seek to grow spiritually. In Epiphany, we are particularly focused on how God has been known to us in Christ and how God continues to be known in our world, in our church community, and in our personal lives.

In February, we will enter the season of Lent on Ash Wednesday, which is on February 22nd this year. Lent is a time to be refreshed by God. Our focus for these days is one of repentance and recommitment, or seeking a deeper commitment to God. If you do “give up” something for Lent, do so because it helps you think more about God during your day and/or helps you find that your are dependent on God rather than something else for your joy. Perhaps “taking something on” for Lent would be better for you than giving something up…perhaps finding a little more time in the day for Bible reading and/or prayer would be helpful to your spiritual growth. Lent, rather than being “a downer” or an empty time, is a great gift to us from God and a time to experience God’s grace anew. May God bless you with a deep and abiding knowledge of God’s love for you during the holy season of Lent.

Faithfully yours,

Hilary+

 

January, 2012

Dear Friends and Companions in Ministry,

Merry Christmas! If you are reading this newsletter before January 6th, we are still celebrating the season of Christmas. When the Youth Group and friends went caroling on December 11th, we sang “The Twelve Days of Christmas” a few times.  It can feel like it takes almost as long to sing that song as it does to move through the season, but the song makes the point—each day of the Christmas season is important. Thankfully, we have more than one day to celebrate the birth of Jesus, the gift of the incarnation, God-with-us.

 As Christians, we take our time remembering and experiencing anew the great events of our faith. The movement into the season of Epiphany flows from our experience of the Christmas season. The Epiphany refers to the experience of the wise men from the East who followed the star to find the Christ Child. The season of Epiphany gives us a chance to consider how God has been known in the past and how God is known to us in our time. During the next seven weeks, from January 6th through February 21st, we consider those moments of knowing God, of encountering the Holy in our lives. Join us on Friday January 6th, to being this wonderful season of the church year with a celebration of the Holy Eucharist at 6:00pm. All members of our Region (14), have been invited to join us for the service and the pizza party to follow.

How will we as a community of faith, the friends and members of St. Paul’s on-the-Hill—how will we know and experience God in 2012? What epiphanies will we have? Sometimes, if not often, experiences of God happen in the context of our community, through worship, fellowship, education, and helping others.  For me, every time we gather, I have an epiphany…and it is the experience of knowing that God has brought together for a reason…for many reasons: to help each other grow in faith, to support each other in the ups and downs of life, and to be God’s people in this place for the wider community. May we continue to grow together in faith, hope, and love in this new year.

I wish you everything good and God’s blessing for 2012!

 

Faithfully yours,

Hilary+

 

December, 2011

Dear Friends and Companions in Ministry,

Advent has begun! The first Sunday of Advent, November 30th, was the first day of the new Church Year. We begin the story, our story, God’s story, the story of our Salvation, once again. The liturgical season of Advent is not long, only four weeks. When we come to church in these days leading to Christmas, we enter into the peace of Advent...we see the Advent candles on our Advent wreath being lit, one on the first Sunday and then an additional one on the next three, until all four shine forth with the light that leads us to Christmas. The theological themes of Advent include the ideas of “watching” and “waiting.” As we watch and wait for Christmas, how will God touch us? How do you hope to know God during this time?  What is it for which we wait? This holy time of quiet and hushed expectation can be a time to rest in the presence of God; it can be a time to consider what we seek in life and how our spiritual life is part of our daily life. Advent leads us to Christmas when we will celebrate once again that God through Christ came to be part of our lives by being born in vulnerability as you and I were...yet at the same time, God-with-us, our Emmanuel...with us to love us in the most intimate way...with us to help us, and protect us, to inspire, to lead, and to save us. Even as we focus on God / Jesus in a special way during Advent; we wake up to the fact that God’s focus has always been on us.

 

Faithfully yours,

 

Hilary+

 

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