St. Matthew's Church

Today we express our gratitude as a church to those veterans who have served faithfully in the various branches of the military. Faithfulness, the continuous donation of time and diligence, is required for any great purpose to be successful. This is true of nation-building and it is true of the spiritual life. Patriotism, the love of country, expressed through the sacrifice of service is an image of the self-giving and life-giving love that Christ gives to us and calls us to give as His disciples. To all the veterans of our parish and beyond: thank you for being an example to us all, and Happy Veterans’ Day.

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or to be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the oth...er, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that country and to help others to do the same. - C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity See more

Rachael Smith: On Ash Wednesday a little over five years ago, my dear friend picked me up from school and drove me to the 6:00pm evening service. People tend to laugh at me when I tell them my first Anglican service was Ash Wednesday, and that for as much as I understood it at the time, I immediately began observing Lent that same evening. For me, the minute I stepped foot in St. Matthews, it felt like home. I was mesmerized by the motions of the celebrant at the altar, the ...smell of incense lingering in the air, and the fact that for the first time, I felt what it meant to be touched by the Lord. Love bade me welcome back to the Body of Christ that evening after a season of hurt and healing. From that night on, I knew that this was where the Lord was calling me to renewed life and eventual ministry. I immediately began attending the Inquirer's Class led by Father Hayden that same Sunday and was confirmed on Pentecost a few short months later. My life found rhythm and routine in both the church calendar, weekly sacrament of the Eucharist, and Daily Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer. What I’ve grown to love most about liturgy, liturgical worship, and this parish is its steadfastness, which mirrors the steadfast nature of the Lord our God. It is in the comfort and repetition of the liturgy that I came to experience the salvific work of Christ afresh in my life, more so than in any Spirit filled church whose spontaneity of the Spirit left me questioning my own salvation when I couldn’t feel the presence of God. Liturgy and the Sacraments necessitate a communal experience, and create for us an objective reality that is no longer dependent on how we feel or how the priest feels, but rather communicates grace to us regardless of any other mitigating factor. The words and power of the liturgy remain the same regardless of my personal experience of them because they are based in the work of the Spirit through the intercession of Christ, not based in my own fickle and fleeting narrative of God. In this, we can find comfort, for God will hear fully our prayers whether we pray them in joy, or whether we pray them in sorrow. This is the blessing and mercy of liturgy. This is the home where I felt the love of God, in the Spirit for the first time in any church. This is the home where I learned what it meant to be a part of the body of Christ that builds one another up, rather than seeking to look perfect each time. This is the home where I learned what it meant to have deep spiritual friendships. This is the home where those I loved encouraged me to enter back into ministry, thus fulfilling God’s will and fully altering the trajectory of my life. This is the home where I met and fell in love with my fiancé. This is the home where we will God-willing build our family and be transformed. From glory to glory, saecula per infinita saeculorum. Amen. : @mariannegreig

Excerpt from today's Epistle: "And this, I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment, that you may approve the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ, being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God." - Philippians 1:9-11

Join us via livestream for the Twenty-second Sunday After Trinity Mass! https://youtu.be/CUe22IgfAxY

Lament. Sometimes Christians fall into the false expectation that they should never feel any negative emotions. But this defies healthy psychology--it is perfectly sane to feel badly if the circumstances are, indeed, bad. The Christian tradition of prayer affirms this, and allows space for the expression of, in the phrase of Hans Boersma, a hope-bridled grief. Christians do not deny the pain of loss, but they also experience loss through Christ who is able to redeem it, to ...orient it toward and bring it into the Kingdom of God. Christian prayer of lament, as N.T. Wright puts it, is a kind of prayer we offer when we acknowledge that we don’t know how to explain the pain of loss, nor do we know what to do about it. It is the honest expression of sorrow at the brokenness of things, and a humble commending of ourselves and all we love to God, trusting that He can and will bring healing in its season. See more

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. -G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Join us tonight via livestream for our All Souls Day Mass at 5pm https://youtu.be/_t6WPSZnqFg

Marriage can be challenging, and my wife and I have not been spared from this. Specifically, during the early years, we disagreed intensely about which church we should attend. I was drawn to the ultra-traditional Orthodox Church, but she did not want to leave the community we had at the more contemporary evangelical church we had been attending. At St. Matthew’s we found healing from this painful conflict. We encountered teaching that adhered to traditional sacramental Chris...tianity, a liturgy that brought us into the presence of Christ, and a community with whom we have shared growth and joy, as well as frustration and grief. When my wife and I were confirmed in 2016, it not only signified the completion of a long personal journey towards apostolic Christianity, but also marked the beginning of reconciliation in our marriage. One of the happier moments in my life was to see my daughter baptized at St. Matthew’s and I look forward to the baptism of our second daughter soon. See more

"CAN I GET AN 'AMEN'?"

Join us this Sunday for All Saints Day Mass via livestream! https://youtu.be/QSc41M8gn40

All Souls' Day is our opportunity to remember our own dead together in the context of Eucharist. On Monday, November 2nd, at 5:00 pm we will gather at St. Matthew's Church to observe All Souls' Day and remember by name all those of our dead for whom we pray each week. Due to limited seating, please register using the following link if you'd like to attend. Please note that registration is available in the the church only, there will be no patio seating. https://stmatthe...wsnewport.ccbchurch.com//forms/161/res/new Today is also the LAST DAY to let us know if you'd like to have names read at that service, whether you attend or join us via livestream. Use the following link to submit a name: https://stmatthewsnewport.ccbchurch.com//forms/159/res/new See more

Mortification. As Christians we are called to die to the ‘old man,’ a concept that arises out of Romans 8 and Colossians 3. This ‘old man’ refers to the human nature we have received from our first moments as descendants of the first humans, Adam (whose name means ‘man’) and Eve. In Baptism, we are regenerated and given the gift of new life. But this is not an abstract principle. We are given the new life of a human being, a new humanity not based in the broken family of Adam... (the old man) but in Jesus (the new man). Our life is one that knows both the decline of the old and the growth of the new. Mortification means allowing the old to die away and striving to cultivate the new way of being human so that it grows and thrives. Mortification is not easy, and often brings a lot of pain. But even while we patiently endure the pain of our old self in decline, even the pain is transformed into the birth pains of new life, of a new self that is growing. The Christian life is not free of hardship, but ours is the hardship that leads to fullness of maturity and growth. We do not labor in vain. We strive with grace toward the goal of being made fully new in the likeness of Jesus, who in all the seasons we follow Him seeks to make us whole and present us His glorious friends to the Father at the end of all things. See more

Let us remember that love lives through sacrifice and is nourished by giving...Without sacrifice there is no love. -St. Maximilian Kolbe