Webmaster's Note: Bishop Mathes has given permission to print his notes to the clergy of his diocese. The Bishop writes regularly to his clergy in order to inform, to teach, to share his joys and sorrows, and to encourage the clergy to likewise share with him. We are grateful to Bishop Mathes for allowing us to share these notes with you.
November 10, 2006
Leo the Great
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
It was a privilege to represent the Diocese of San Diego at the Investiture of
the 26th Presiding Bishop. It was an awesome celebration of a new ministry.
Led by choirs from the National Cathedral as well as St. Thomas Episcopal
Church, Philadelphia, the parish of Absalom Jones, hymns and anthems filled the
air, as did the beat of Native American chant and drum beat. Katharine Jefferts
Schori received the primatial staff from Frank Griswold, and gave us a sermon
that called us to a new season of ministry. Her message was one of home and
shalom.
That homecoming of shalom is both destination and journey. We cannot embark on the journey without some vision of where we are going, even though we may not reach it this side of the grave. We are really charged with seeing everyplace and all places as home, and living in a way that makes that true for every other creature on the planet. None of us can be fully at home, at rest, enjoying shalom, unless all the world is as well. Shalom is the fruit of living that dream. We live in a day where there is a concrete possibility of making that dream reality for the most destitute, forgotten, and ignored of our fellow travelers - for the castaways, for those in peril or just barely afloat on life's restless sea.
As I listened to our presiding
bishop's words and I experienced this new beginning, I found myself renewed and
centered for our work in the years ahead. I am grateful for Katharine and for
her leadership, and ask for your continual prayers for her and all who accept
leadership in our church. Yes, these are times of challenge. Yet they are also
times of extraordinary opportunity and mission. Let us be about the gospel of
Jesus Christ so that the Scripture may "be fulfilled in our hearing and doing."
And so I end as our Presiding Bishop closed her sermon.
Shalom, chaverim, shalom, my friends, shalom.
The Rt. Rev. James R. Mathes
Bishop