“Shall I abandon, O King of Mysteries, the soft comforts of home?” – from St. Brendan’s Prayer
In mid-sixth, St. Brendan the Navigator sets sail with a small group of friend in search of the Holy Island. His story reveals a pattern of Celtic explorers who go on pilgrimage for the love of God. Known as peregrine, these pilgrims take the Gospel from the comforts of home out to the greater world.
As they traveled from island to island, they celebrated various events in the liturgical year. This pattern indicates a journey in time as a well as space. At St Brendan’s Church, we seek to follow this pattern of pilgrimage in space and time. Together we journey through the church year, looking to Christ along each step, each moment, each day. Like the early followers of Christ, we are gathered as His disciples, raised up as friends by His grace, and sent out as lovers following HIs mission to reveal the Good News of Jesus Christ in all we say and do.
Gathering
In His mercy and grace, our Lord gathers men, women, and children to Himself in a community of love and joy. He adopts into a family, forms us into a body, lifts us up as a temple of praise. At St. Brendan’s Church, we gather in worship each week to remember and rejoice in God’s redeeming love. In Word and Sacrament, we rehearse…
Raising
Just as Jesus made a disparate group of disciples into friends, He continues to gather men, women, and children of all races and ages into friends, into family. While Jesus shares a final meal before the cross, he turns to his disciples and says, “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but…
Sending
Like the disciples of old, we are sent out in the power of the Sprit, bearing the love of God and the witness of Jesus Christ to the world. As Jesus tells the disciples, “But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.…