Greetings, beautiful Body of Christ!

It gives me such joy to write to you for the first time as I start to become part of the St. Catherine’s family. Your Wardens, staff, and so many of you have already made me so feel warmly welcomed, and I encourage all of you to pop by the office and say hello in the weeks to come. Please bear with me as I learn your names, faces, talents, and hopes for our parish community – you are learning one name and one personality, while I am learning dozens!

In these slower rhythms of summer, we will share Holy Communion twice a month and feast deeply on Scripture and prayer with a Service of the Word on other Sundays. Rev. Sharon Salomons, who is familiar to many of you, will join us to consecrate on our Holy Communion Sundays in July and August. Look below for our summer schedule of services and know that weekly Communion will resume in September, with Soul Food Sundays returning in October.

In this Sunday’s lectionary, we’ll encounter characters in all our readings who are trying to tell their neighbours that “the kingdom of God has drawn near” and that God offers a loving, restoring relationship with all. In Galatians 6:7-16, we’ll meet the early followers in modern-day Turkey, grappling with how to be a community that includes both Greeks and Jews, newcomers and established members, and discovering that a low-barrier approach is the way to go! In the Hebrew Scripture, 2 Kings 5:1-14, we’ll meet prideful Naaman, the leprous commander of the army of Aram, who seeks healing from the God of Israel and is eventually “restored like a young boy”, made clean and whole. As we’ll see, his path to wholeness relies on a long chain of a person telling a person telling a person about God’s welcome to all: a prophet, a king, the king’s wife, and a servant girl in a hostile, uninterested land.  And in our gospel, Luke 10: 1-11, 16-20, we’ll imagine ourselves with Jesus as he sends out the seventy in pairs to offer healing and to tell a dusty, uninterested world that the kingdom of God has drawn near. In our own largely secular time and place, we’ll consider how we too are called to share and extend meaningful welcome and wholeness in relationship with God: “The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few”, but “we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up”! (Lk 10:2; Gal 6:9)

Eager for the journey ahead,

Yours in Christ and in community,

Rev. Sarah

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This Sunday July 6, 2025 we will hosting a Morning Prayer Service

Here is the link to the downloadable bulletin:
Sunday July 6, 2025

Presider and Preacher:  Rev Sarah Lehman 

Our Musician is Hyejung Jun and Choir who has returned from vacation

To access the livestream, click on the button below.
Previous livestreamed services and sermon notes can be found on the website here.

Image: Jorge Alonzo, 2008 Vanderbilt