We are a small Episcopal Church on the banks of the Rappahannock in Port Royal, Virginia. We acknowledge that we gather on the traditional land of the first people of Port Royal, the Nandtaughtacund, and we respect and honor with gratitude the land itself, the legacy of the ancestors, and the life of the Rappahannock Tribe. Our mission statement is to do God’s Will in all that we do.

2023 Sun Nov 5

Prayers of the People, All Saints, 2023

The Prayers of the People

We give you thanks for those we have known and loved in this lifetime who rejoice with us, but upon another shore and in a greater light, that multitude which no one can number, and with whom, in your son Jesus Christ, we are one.  

James Abourezk, (friend of Linda Kramer), John Anderson (brother of Jim Anderson), Susan Allen (friend of Linda Kramer),  Bethune Andrews  (sister of Linneth Feliciano), Ruby Barnes  (sister of Laura Carey), Mattie Beale (friend of Mary Peterman and Denise Gregory), Easton Buchanan (cousin of Andrea Pogue), John Thomas Carter (Barbara Wisdom’s stepfather), Roger Chartters (friend of the Segars), Pansy Cohen (relative of Andrea Pogue) , Herb Collins (friend of Cookie Davis and Port Royal), David Fannon, David Fitzgerald (son of Lydia O’Neil),  Lynn Garrett,  Edward Geraci, (brother of Marion Mahoney), Louise Gossett (friend of Catherine Hicks) , Taylor Hayden (member of Scout Troop 304), Joan Johnson (Andrea Pogue’s family) , Billy Long (Larry Saylor’s brother-in- law)  Bill McKnight (Chris Fisher’s uncle) , Nancy Newton Nolen (friend of Barabara Segar), Beverly Pauken (Mary Peterman’s sister), Sandra Smith, John Stoddard (friend of the Upshaws), Paris Swisher ( friend of Tom and Alice Hughes), Edith Taylor (friend of Cookie Davis), John Vartonklan, MD.,  Robert Walker, Jane Harrington Webber  (Linda Kramer’s aunt), Jeremiah Williams 

Tolling of the Bell 

“We Remember Them”- Sylvan Kamens & Rabbi Jack Riemer 

At the rising of the sun and at its going down; We remember them. 

At the blowing of the wind and in the chill of winter; We remember them. 

At the opening of the buds and in the rebirth of spring; We remember them. 

At the blueness of the skies and in the warmth of summer; We remember them. 

At the rustling of the leaves and in the beauty of the autumn; We remember them. 

At the beginning of the year and when it ends; We remember them.  

When we are weary and in need of strength; We remember them. 

When we are lost and sick at heart; We remember them. 

When we have decisions that are difficult to make; We remember them. 

When we have joy we long to share; We remember them. 

When we have achievements that are based on theirs; We remember them. 

For as long as we live, they too will live, for they are now a part of us as, we remember them. 

Loving God, you have bound us together in one communion and fellowship.  Grant to us, your whole Church in heaven and on earth, your light and your peace as we continue on in our pilgrimage in faith with one another and with Jesus, our companion and friend.  Amen. 

And now, let us pray for an end to all violence and for the desire to walk the way of Jesus, for if only we follow that path,  we will find God’s reign of love here, on this earth.  

Lord, make us instruments of your peace.  Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy.  Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love.  For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.  Amen. 

All Saints Sunday – A Time of Baptism

  • McKenna Long – Jan. 2, 2011
  • Alexander Long VI – Nov. 4, 2012
  • Owen Long – Aug. 4, 2013

Baptism of Scarlett Joy Long is on Nov. 1, 2015.  Congratulations! Baptism is one of the sacraments of the Episcopal Church and is one of the times of the year appointed for baptism.

Here are the 3 Whys of Baptism

ECM Community Thanksgiving donation

From Ken Pogue. “Each year the Episcopal Church Men help St Peter’s provide support to those in need during the holidays.  The men coordinate with the Caroline County Department of Social Services to provide families in the area with gift cards

 “Your donations are greatly appreciated by the ECM and the recipients of the gifts in the Port Royal community, Thank you so very much in advance from a grateful community.”

If you’d like to donate for the Thanksgiving offering, please make a check to St Peter’s with ECM in the memo line by Sunday, Nov. 5

Last year $500 was given at Thanksgiving and $750 Christmas.

Teaching Touchstones for All Saints Adult Formation

By Jodi Belcher

  1. God with Actual Human People

One of the most beautiful messages that All Saints’ Day brings to light is that God is truly with us in our actual humanity. By inviting Christians to perceive ourselves as saints, this feast calls us to understand that our embodied human lives are completely intertwined with God’s sacred presence because God has chosen to be in relationship with us. God’s presence with us doesn’t suppress or subtract our humanity; instead, God embraces all our humanity—limits, graces, imperfections, and all.

Taking our actual embodied humanity seriously in how we talk about saints on All Saints’ Day can open up powerful formation conversations. An image that I find generative for envisioning God with actual human people appears in the book Where God Happens by former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. In a discussion about loving a neighbor, he says, “You become a place where God happens.” While he uses this metaphor to describe how an act of love enables a neighbor to encounter God in and through their fellow human being, it also points to the phenomenon of being and becoming saints, actual human beings in relationship with God. Our lives become sacramental places where God shows up for us and with us. If we situate this language in our bodies and humanity, it can liberate us from believing that our bodies, humanity, or identities are hindrances to God and show us how to let God embrace all that we are, “with God’s help,” as we say.

  1. Holy Together

The Feast of All Saints also points Christians toward the words that we recite in the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe in . . . the communion of saints.” This creedal confession reminds us that our faith is not individual-centered but communal. While the communion of saints often gets described as a mystical body of Christ that unites Christians past, present, and future, this image also suggests that being saints entails being in communion with one another and with God. In this way, All Saints’ Day invites us to recognize that Christians, as members of the communion of saints, are holy together, saints together. God’s Spirit draws us with our differences and diverse experiences into relationships with one another in God, and this togetherness is integral to the sacredness that defines saints’ lives.

  1. Unknowing

Mystery is another theme of All Saints’ Day—a theme that Jennifer McNally and Anna V. Ostenso Moore note in “What Does This Day Mean? Handout for The Feast of All Saints & All Souls at Home.” When lives of faith take on a sacramental quality and become knit to a communion of saints throughout past, present, and future, we inhabit the mysterious unknowns of God’s ways. We become part of something much bigger than ourselves, and what God may be doing in and through us can surprise and elude us. All Saints’ Day points us toward the mystery that we may be to ourselves and to one another through the incomprehensibility of God’s redemptive and life-giving work among us. It invites us into a simultaneously empowering and humbling posture of welcoming unknowing with God and one another.

One way that we can approach this theme of unknowing is to reflect on our place within the communion of saints. Just as people who came before us have inspired and enriched our lives of faith in ways neither they nor we may fully realize, we don’t know what God will do in future generations through our presence in this communion. This long view of our participation in the movement of God, for whom nothing is lost or beyond redemption, enables unknowing to be a space of hope, solidarity, and courageous, faithful action rather than a source of fear or inaction.

  1. Love as an Icon of the Holy

All Saints’ Day is certainly about the holy. Holiness, though, can conjure unhelpful images of a punitive God demanding unattainable requirements of absolute submission and sinlessness. What can guide us toward a more life-giving understanding of holiness on All Saints’ Day is love. While John Wesley’s writings first introduced me to this idea, a chorus of scriptures and theologians throughout Christian faith, including I Corinthians 13, Augustine of Hippo, and Julian of Norwich (to name a few), shows us ways of placing love at the center of what holiness means and looks like.

When love becomes our icon of the holy, it expands and transforms our way of being in the world with God and with one another. Being saints becomes first and foremost about letting God love us. Acts of love that may seem small nevertheless forge powerful moments that join people to one another, heal wounds, and endure. Compassion, repair, reconciliation, nonviolence, and spaces held for vulnerability become precious places to seek and find the sacred.

  1. “Sealed . . . and Marked as Christ’s Own for Ever”

A final theme that All Saints’ Day features is baptism. Because this feast is one of the recommended occasions for baptism, it provides a meaningful opportunity to grapple with the significance of this rite of initiation into the body of Christ. The communal emphasis of All Saints’ Day enables us to pay particular attention to the community we join in baptism. The “not yet” dimension of the communion of saints for us on this side of eternity also helps us tune into the promise of being “sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own for ever” in baptism (The Book of Common Prayer, 308).

Read more