“Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins.” – 1 Peter 4:8

If you have ever been a child, a parent, a friend, a human, you know the need for love. All creatures need love, and without it, they wither and die. Love is nourishment, and it includes forgiveness. How many of us do not need that? A toddler who runs out into the street finds he will be scooped up, scolded, and hugged all at once. Love for the little one covers up the anger at his behavior.

We use this kind of love in all our relationships. Loving and forgiving come hand-in-hand. It comes close to God’s agape love, being loved for oneself, not for what one has or has not done.
I have received this kind of love many times, and it has saved me. It is difficult to forgive myself, but the love of others has given me the courage and freedom to move on and try to do better at this thing called life. Thanks be to God and to those who can love and forgive.
Gracious God, we thank you for your undying, holy love for us. Without it, we would be nothing. With it, we are able to live and love those you have given us. Amen.
-Penny Worrell 

“And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds…” – Hebrews 10:24

Sometime back in the ’80s, Skagit County decided to build a new jail. The original building was located on top of the courthouse, a metal structure that was probably freezing in the winter, steaming hot in the summer, and miserably cramped. The new design promised to be the latest in technology, larger, safer, and full of cameras. My husband Dennis was a paramedic at Skagit Valley Hospital and he and the rest of his crew were invited to visit the jail before it was officially opened so if they had to go and pick up an inmate they would have an idea of the layout and protocols. I was permitted to join the tour and gathered with the group outside THE DOOR on that chilly day. The portal opened silently and our guide pointed out that it was six inches thick but it wasn’t quiet when it closed after we entered, it made a huge booming noise. The rest of the tour showed us no privacy, hundreds of cameras, and a special room with a drain in the middle of the floor for inmates detoxing from alcohol or drugs. No way I wanted to end up in that facility.

Last year, a group of us at St. Paul’s formed an OPOP team, One Parish, One Prisoner. OPOP is an organization that matches an inmate who is going to be released with a dedicated team with the hope that with support, love, prayers, and visits, when this person is liberated from the prison’s walls, they will not return because of a lack of housing, food, driver’s license, programs to help with drug and alcohol addiction, absence or no family members, unpaid fines and no money.

I’m not sure why our incarcerated friend was chosen for us but I feel it deep in my soul that he will be like the starfish I picked up on the beach in Florida and placed back in the ocean so it would survive, that with our OPOP team, the OPOP organization that started us on our journey, our congregation, the community and with God’s help, he will survive.

Thank you, Lord, for helping us to heal and restore a person with love and good works. Amen.
-Mary Ann Taylor

“For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you …” – 1 Corinthians 11:23

There is nothing that touches me the way the Mass touches me. Whether as a child receiving communion for the very first time in a non-denominational church my grandmother took me to (I was about nine or ten, unbaptized, and actually thought coffee hour snacks were being served early as the plate with the Chiclet-shaped bread and little cuplets [sic] of grape juice were passed from person to person in the pews) or as a priest administering the Sacrament, I have never not known the presence of God in the Mass. I remember my first communion in an Episcopal church – by which time I was a young teen (and still unbaptized) – and that which I came to learn was called the “prayer of humble access” (“we are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs from under thy table, O merciful Lord …”) taught me not to fear coming to the table (for all my sins both known and unknown), but to delight in coming to the table by the invitation of One who wrapped me in his own worthiness. We are not worthy, but “thou art the same Lord whose property is always – ALWAYS – to have mercy.”

It was not just the words of institution that were passed along to St. Paul, but the gift of mercy, the gift of grace, the gift of God’s very own presence in the breaking of the bread and sharing of the cup. Paul is clear. These things aren’t given to us by the other Apostles but from Jesus. Like Paul, a priest may stand behind the Altar, but it is Jesus who consecrates the elements; it is Jesus who breaks the bread and shares the cup. I am not worthy, but through God’s grace, I am healed. It is well with my soul.

God, you take a simple thing like bread and knead yourself into it so that we may have life. You take the simple juices of grapes, crushed, stored, and (in the fullness of time) pour into them your Spirit so that we may have joy. So allow those elements to enter our very own bloodstream, that we may find strength and courage to deliver unto others what you have delivered unto us – health, holiness, and well-being; in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
– Fr. Keith Axberg