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Surveyor stakes are in the ground and heavy equipment for site work and digging is being shifted to the property in the coming weeks. Phase I is what we’re calling the construction of the interim sanctuary and the admin wing of the cathedral. We are moving now to break ground within the month of April and greatly anticipate the shifting of dirt. What we have done is take part of the original first phase of building and part of the second phase of the original plans and submit them as a phase 1 interim option for use immediately upon construction. This plan will begin the entire site work project of moving dirt, cutting into the bank along Grafton Shop Rd., digging the foundations, parking lot, stormwater runoff pond, and cemetery grounds. This work alone comes at substantial cost and effort and is an enormous undertaking. Then comes the construction of the interim sanctuary, admin wing, interim nursery, classrooms, fellowship space, patio, and church grounds. This sanctuary will be a 170-seat consecrated space for worship and will serve until the completion of the main sanctuary, steeple, lower levels, and more. This space will house a lower level fellowship space, walkout classrooms, etc. After selling our Bel Air property we have been faced with the need for nearly immediate space and rather than renting commercial property or building out another facility, we are excited to be rapidly approaching the new grounds and every dollar we spend will go toward the entire project. We look forward to the opening of the two cemeteries and all that that means for the community at large and for the cathedral in it’s next chapter.

Learn more at www.fhcathedral.com

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Avery Northwood
March 7, 2023

25 Years in One Mighty River

This year marks the 25^th Anniversary of The Church of Reconciliation in Bel Air, Md., now the Cathedral Church of the Diocese of the Mid Atlantic. The congregation was honored to welcome Archbishop Craig Bates and his wife Cathy to help celebrate the occasion.

This is the Silver Anniversary of a parish birthed and formed entirely within the ICCEC. In 1995 Bishop Rob Northwood, then a deacon serving and helping to establish Christ the King Church in Towson, MD, received a prophetic word that he would plant a church in Bel Air, MD just 15 miles North of his current assignment. This was received with excitement even though he was currently studying at seminary, selling cars full time, fathering the first of many children, and was newly married. In February of 1996 he was ordained a priest and one week later was hosting the church’s first service in his home’s basement.

The church’s inaugural communion wine was very bitter, it’s first tabernacle was handmade, simple, and wooden, and it’s first service was marked by a sense of purpose and unity. The memories warmly recalled by many parishioners still present after all these years included recollections of Sarah Northwood, the Bishop’s wife, self-teaching guitar for praise, the home’s modest kitchen being used for coffee and fellowship, the living room being used for mid-week Bible study, the dining room a Sunday school classroom, the laundry room for the vesting clergy.

This reminiscence serves a greater purpose than nostalgia, it serves to illustrate the nature of a humble initiative serving a divine vocation. The recurring theme of each member’s recollection was the presence and hand of God through the years that would follow, His guidance in times of confusion, His blessing in times of want, His protection in times of turmoil, His love poured out to those who came seeking.

The question kept presenting itself all through the celebrations and testimonies and memories spoken: “Who would attend a church in a nondescript residential basement?” The answer of course; those who came thirsting for something real, something new, something touched by God. Each trailblazing member was there for something intangible and beyond a youth group, nursery, outreach

program, preaching, or praise. Each was there only to experience the Holy Spirit’s move, the written truth spoken, the Body and Blood of Christ, the community of a sincere church family.

These elements have flourished in the church today. The latest generation of seekers has found something that they describe in all the same terms. They have found a home, a family, something old and something new, something rich, something they can be a part of.

Looking ahead we see a vista, bright days, further stories of God’s greatness, stories so grand the coming generations will pass them on and anticipate God’s power in their lives. Looking ahead we see souls flocking to the church, the three streams integrated in worship. We see weddings, funerals, birthdays, baptisms, celebrations, and many, many more anniversaries. This year, The Church of Reconciliation’s 25^th year, will be a mountaintop year. A year of long sight. A year of approaching horizons.

To God Be the Glory!

The Cathedral Church of Reconciliation

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Youtube – Mrs. Ann’s Sunday School

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Saturday, July 11th 2020

The Cathedral church of Reconciliation has been blessed by the ordination of two new deacons, Samuel Foss and Caleb Northwood. The ordination was a limited capacity event attended by the Diocesan clergy and the ordinands family and several friends. Both men have studied and served for years before this point and have been pursuing a call of God to wear a clerical collar and serve the people of God under the authority of the Bishop. They boldly made their vows to preach the word, remain in prayer, to live lives of repute, to serve the church and the Bishop.

The Bishop spoke briefly at the ceremony of the importance of the selection of deacons, by the people. He reminded us that deacons are servants before they are superiors, and that they must be filled with the spirit and ALREADY in service before being put forward by their church family to serve in a clerical order. Acts 6 clearly outlines the selection of deacons and the purpose for which they are given by God to the church as a gift.

Deacon Samuel and Deacon Caleb are excited to take part the in the growth of the diocese and the church of God at large and both covet your prayers as they move under the weight of their vows and the glory of their calling.

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Neither of these worry need concerning us, for they are not true.  “Praying to Saints” is not worshiping them, or trying to get them to speak into this world.  First of all, the saints of God who have died and are in heaven, are alive and not dead.  When we address them we are simply soliciting their help with spiritual battles, in our walk through this life, the same way we ask others here in the Church Militant to pray for us in times of trouble or need.

There are advantages in asking the victorious Church Triumphant to pray for us: they have time (both in the sense heaven’s “time” is different from this world and in the sense they are not encumbered by scratching a living from a ‘weedy’ garden!); And they are on the other side of the ‘veil’ of heaven, and thus are in human terms ‘closer to the Lord Jesus’ than we, who are on this side of the grave.  Hebrews 12:23, 24 addresses the scene in heaven as the “assembly of the firstborn… and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, with Jesus the mediator of a new covenant…”. They are literally closer to Jesus our Lord and Savior.  In addition, they have been through trials and tests in this world (whether they passed or failed).

After the listing of innumerable saints in Hebrews chapter 11, chapter 12 begins: Hebrews 12:1-2 (ESV) [1] Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, [2] looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

The prayers of particular saints may help us in specific spiritual battles because of their experience (and victories) in similar struggles.  Bp. Rob volunteered that when he is battling evil spirits in a healing service (or exorcism) he often calls upon Elijah who battled Jezebel and her ‘necromancers’; and upon St. Benedict (a leading founder in western monasticism and reformer of the Church) who is known for his battles with Satan and demons.  Bp. Rob shared that the Blessed Virgin Mary is his favorite saint from which to request help.  She is the closest person to Jesus, as any mother would be to her child.  Bp. Rob solicits the prayers of St. Luke the physician when praying for the healing of others.

There was a precious piety lost when the ‘divorce’ between “Protesters” and the Roman Catholic Church took place in the 16th century. We are only recently beginning to recover these losses.

All this is not to say that saints are perfect people!  (Just read the history of Abraham the father of all those who have faith!).  But faith is our hope and assurance of things that are not visible, not “testable” in a ‘scientific’ sense.  The important point is that we do not confine our understanding of reality to that which we can see.  We’re brought up in and constantly bombarded by a hyper-rational world-view or philosophy of materialism.  Yet God is a Spirit and everything in the universe, visible and testable, are made by God having spoken them into existence.  Thus, all that we see, testifies to the Creator, no matter how often or loudly people chant ‘there is no god.’

Living in a world with a hyper-rational view of how everything works may make it harder to believe that just the “word” spoken over a valley of bones would bring life to them.  But it did.  Accounts in the Bible are NOT fables, but reality from the Author of our faith, the Creator of the universe.  If you cannot believe these miracles, then how can you confess that Jesus Christ rose bodily from the dead and is living now today?  (To which we attest each week in the Creed.  Be careful, God takes your words seriously.)

What is God saying in all this?  What is the lesson today?  We are all to seek a personal intimate relationship with God, the Creator.  Our physical bodies are important and will be redeemed and resurrected.  Don’t let God’s gift of rational thought limit your faith in what God can do; that which we cannot see.

A word from the writer:
I have tried to faithfully convey as accurately as I can Bishop Rob’s  communication. If something bothers you, or you disagree with what I have written, it may not be Bp. Rob’s teaching that is bothering you! Please understand I am sharing what I myself (Fr. Jeffrey Welch) have received from the Adult Sunday teaching and the experience I had that Sunday. 
-Father Jeffrey Welch

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Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few;  therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
Matthew 9:37-38

The 2019 Diocesan Womens’ Retreat was themed around the mission of evangelism. Not natural evangelism, but rather supernatural evangelism. The mission given to us by Jesus to go and make disciples, is an impossible task. It is daunting, immense, limitless, and unapproachable without divine intervention. Even the most outgoing individual may find themselves making no headway. There has been more than one top-notch pastor asking themselves “Why don’t the people come flocking?” The ministry of evangelism requires a surgeon’s steady touch and an eagle’s longsighted vision.

The only hope we have of helping the sinner to navigate the obstacles to salvation, is to ask for the eagle eyes and the surgeon hands of the Holy Spirit. Charismatic evangelism is Spirit-led. He decides who we speak to and when we speak. Rather than bombarding the lost with ceaseless invitations and condemnations, we allow the Spirit to speak through us.
Three stream evangelism is fulfilled as we celebrate and inundate the evangelistic with the sacraments. Bringing the lost to the church and allowing the sacraments to flow in and through them. Confession, Eucharist, Baptism, the apostolic office, etc. all have a role to play in the renewing work of the Spirit and the saving work of Jesus Christ alive today and reigning forevermore.

The retreat was lead by the Bishop’s wife, Sarah and several other women from the Cathedral Church. Teaching, ministry, prayer, and praise were the unified practice of the ladies as they came away from their everyday lives to that most noble pursuit, namely seeking God.

God thoroughly blessed this retreat from start to finish. Where there was tension, He released peace, where there was trepidation, boldness, and when He spoke, many heard.  Below are several quotes from women who were blessed on retreat this year.

“Feeling I’m not alone in my struggles and that I can relate with those who’ve been walking with the Lord
way longer than me…gave me even more peace with where I’m at right now and that pressing in will
only strengthen my relationship with (God)!”

“The amount of love, acceptance, and support we all seem to have for one another even without
knowing everyone is absolutely wonderful.”

“Knowing a priest would be available for confession help set the tone up front for getting serious with the
Lord.”

The retreat will be held again in Fall 2020 November 19-21 at Sandy Cove Resort. If you would like to get information as the retreat approaches, please signup for email at www.riversmerge.org

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Mary of Egypt was a fifth-century desert ascetic.  She was a harlot beginning from age twelve, leaving her parents and journeying to Alexandria, where she lived completely in accordance with her passions for 17 years.  She sought out sexual relations with any and all available men—even those unwilling–refusing money and making her living by begging and spinning flax. She joined a group of pilgrims bound for Jerusalem, intentionally seducing the men as they traveled.  Once there everyone entered the sanctuary to celebrate the Exaltation of the Cross, except for Mary, who was barred by an unseen force. Shaken, she came to repentance and after finally entering the church, fled into the desert.  

She lived alone, eating what she could find and enduring the open elements, for 17 years fighting her desires and passions before finally breaking through into the peace of God.  Thirty years later the priest Zosima came across her by accident while praying in the desert, seeing a naked thing but not knowing whether she was human or animal or demonic apparition.  With much reluctance and fear she recounted her life story, while manifesting graces such as words of knowledge about him and his life, walking across the Jordan river, and levitating in his presence during prayer.  God alone had known that within this drunken harlot had been hidden the greatest of desert Mothers.

What can we take away from all this?  First of all, Mary fought her flesh with savage fervor, undergoing an incredible purging as she battled her desires for food and wine and lewdness, going from darkness through darkness and misery through more misery until finally breaking forth into the peace of God, constantly praying to the Blessed Virgin for help.  While there was certainly demonic attack, she recognized that her battle was first and foremost against her passions.  

A second lesson for us was her strong reluctance to speak of her past sinfulness.  This was not an aversion to testifying to the mercy of God. She recognized her passions as restrained but not removed, and was terrified lest even speaking of them would bring them to life again.  We sometimes strive for years against besetting sins before one day finding God’s victory. Yet while those old holds are broken, wisdom demands that we always tread those areas with care. They are knives waiting in darkness, sharp and glistening, and we must always walk circumspectly lest we fall again.  An alcoholic is always in recovery. To forget that invites death.  

Finally, note her extreme humility.  She manifested such extraordinary graces as words of knowledge and prophecy, translocation, levitation during prayer, walking across the Jordan river, and surviving for many years with virtually no food or water in the most inhospitable conditions, yet all the while knowing her absolute dependence on the grace of God and relying on Him in a way that few of us will experience.  

Information has been gratefully taken from the following websites:  Orthodox Church of America; St. Mary of Egypt Orthodox Church (there is a wonderful narrative here); CopticChurchNet; Mystogogy Resource Center; Glory to God for All Things; Orthowiki.

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A fasting and Prayer Event at Esumeyia C.E.C. Church includes young and old alike.

Below are more videos of fasting and praise events, including a video of two birds that were causing continuous havoc and were killed through prayer. Bishop Chunge thanks the believers in Bel Air for a keyboard that is obviously used to great effect in worship.

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