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.

2024 Sun Aug 11

C.S.Lewis, Watchman of his generation

Psalm 130 – "My soul waits for the Lord, more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning."

Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1965), commonly referred to as C. S. was a British novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist.According to his memoir Surprised by Joy, Lewis had been baptised in the Church of Ireland at birth, but fell away from his faith during his adolescence. Owing to the influence of friend J. R. Tolkien and others, at the age of 32 Lewis returned to Christianity, becoming "a very ordinary layman of the Church of England". His conversion had a profound effect on his work, and his wartime radio broadcasts on the subject of Christianity brought him wide acclaim. Biography

“Love, in the Christian sense, does not mean an emotion. It is a state not of the feelings but of the will…The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love your neighbor; act as if you did."

– C. S. Lewis

"Look for yourself & you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, & decay… …look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in

– C. S. Lewis Mere Christianity  

“Remember He is the artist and you are only the picture. You can’t see it. So quietly submit to be painted"

– C. S. Lewis

“There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him & bad when it turns from Him.”

– C. S. Lewis The Great Divorce

 "We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito  

– C. S. Lewis

 "Don’t let your happiness depend on something you may lose." 

– C. S. Lewis

"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."

– C. S. Lewis

“Nothing you have not given away will ever really be yours.”

– C. S. Lewis Mere Christianity  

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Virgin Mary, Aug. 15

We celebrate her saint day on August 15. 

Mary lived circa 18 BCE- 41 CE. She was a Jewish woman of Nazareth in Galilee, the daughter of Joachim and Anne and the wife of Joseph, the carpenter. Little is known of her life except when it relates to Jesus life. She remained faithful to him through his death (when his disciples denied, betrayed, and fled), and even after his death, continued life in ministry with the apostles.

The New Testament records many incidents from the life of the Virgin which shows her to be present at most of the chief events of her Son’s life:

  • her betrothal to Joseph [Luke 1:27]
  • the Annunciation by the angel Gabriel that she was to bear the Messiah [Luke 1:26-38]
  • her Visitation to Elizabeth the mother of John the Baptist [Luke 1:39-56]
  • the Nativity of our Lord [Luke 2:20]
  • the visits of the shepherds [Luke 2:8-20] and the magi [Matthew 2:1-12]
  • the Presentation of the infant Jesus in the Temple at the age of forty days [Luke 2:22, 2:41]
  • the flight into Egypt, the Passover visit to the Temple when Jesus was twelve, [Matthew 1:16,18-25; 2; Luke 1:26-56; 2];
  • the wedding at Cana in Galilee [John 2:1-11]
  • and the performance of her Son’s first miracle at her intercession [John 2:1-11],
  • the occasions when observers said, "How can this man be special? We know his family!" [Matthew 13:54-56, Mark 6:1-3, Luke 4:22; also John 6:42],
  • an occasion when she came with others to see him while he was preaching [Matthew 12:46-50,Mark 3:31-35, Luke 8:19-21],
  • her presence at the foot of the Cross, where Jesus commends her to the care of the Beloved Disciple [John 19:25-27],
  • her presence with the apostles in the upper room after the Ascension, waiting for the promised Spirit [Acts 1:14].   

Besides Jesus himself, only two humans are mentioned by name in the Creeds. One is Pontius Pilate, Roman procurator of Judea from 26 to 36 AD and the other is Mary. There are more feast days in The Episcopal Church honoring Mary than anyone else.

There have been many appearances of Mary over the centuries. Tradition says that in 39 CE, the Virgin Mary appeared in a vision to Saint James the Great in Zaragoza, Spain. Over the centuries, there have been dozens of additional reports of appearances of the Virgin Mary in different times and places. Two of the most influential visions of the Virgin Mary are the Virgin of Walsingham and the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Her story was carried by National Geographic in December, 2015 –"How the Virgin Mary Became the World’s Most Powerful Woman"

Her message to us was simple – "Listen to Him. Listen to my Son. Do what He tells you."