Every 4th Sunday of the month, we honor our commitment to the diocese’s (and St. John’s) priority of Justice by celebrating a Racial Healing Eucharist. This liturgy includes collects and reflections celebrating saints who worked for Racial Justice in the Episcopal calendar of Saints. Each liturgy begins with an Acknowledgment of Indigenous Peoples’ Land and includes a Litany for Racial Reconciliation.
This Sunday, April 26 at 8am and 10am, we will commemorate Genocide Remembrance Day. Our guest preachers this Sunday will be a group of St. John’s youth confirmation candidates.
In 2006, the Episcopal Church’s General Convention called for the inclusion in our Church Calendar of Genocide Remembrance Day in April, lamenting the deaths of Armenian Christians a century ago and the several other 20th century genocides (e.g., the Holocaust, Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur, and the Acholi people of Northern Uganda). And tragically, it has not ended there; since that convention, the 21st century has brought other genocides that we also lament.
“As we remember those who endured depredation and death because of who they were, not because of what they had done or failed to do, give us the courage to stand against hatred and oppression, and to seek the dignity and well-being of all for the sake of our Savior Jesus Christ.”.
