St. Michael's Church, Litchfield, CT

About this Commemoration
One of four brothers dedicated to service in the Church, Chad was trained by Aidan of Lindisfarne as a follower of the Celtic tradition in ritual. His elder brother Cedd, a godly and upright man, had built a monastery at Lastingham, where he governed as abbot. At his death, Cedd left the abbacy to Chad. According to the Venerable Bede, Chad was “a holy man, modest in his ways, learned in the Scriptures, and zealous in carrying out their teaching.”
Impressed by Chad’s qualities, the King appointed him Bishop of York. Chad was ordained by “bishops of the British race who had not been canonically ordained,” Bede tells us. Chad was, Bede also notes, “a man who kept the Church in truth and purity, humility, and temperance.” Following apostolic example, he traveled about his diocese on foot.
The new Archbishop of Canterbury, Theodore, arrived in England four years after Chad’s ordination as bishop. Theodore made it clear that Chad’s ordination had been irregular, that is, not according to Roman custom; and Chad most humbly offered to resign from office. “Indeed, I never believed myself worthy of it,” he said.
Theodore, impressed by such humility, reordained him, and appointed him Bishop of Mercia and Northumbria. Chad continued his custom of traveling on foot, until Theodore ordered him to ride, at least on longer journeys. When Chad hesitated, the Archbishop is said to have lifted him bodily onto the horse, “determined to compel him to ride when the need arose.”
Chad administered his new diocese with devout concern. He built a monastery, and established monastic rule at Barrow. In his see city of Lichfield, where he had an official dwelling, he preferred to read and meditate in a small house he had built nearby.
Two and one-half years after his reordination, plague broke out, killing many residents of the diocese including Chad himself, whose death Bede describes thus: “He joyfully beheld … the day of the Lord, whose coming he had always anxiously awaited. He was mindful to his end of all that the Lord did.” He was buried at the Cathedral Church of St. Peter in Lichfield.
Collects
I Almighty God, whose servant Chad, for the peace of the Church, relinquished cheerfully the honors that had been thrust upon him, only to be rewarded with equal responsibility: Keep us, we pray thee, from thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought to think, and ready at all times to step aside for others, that the cause of Christ may be advanced; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
II Almighty God, for the peace of the Church your servant Chad relinquished cheerfully the honors that had been thrust upon him, only to be rewarded with equal responsibility: Keep us, we pray, from thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought to think, and ready at all times to step aside for others, that the cause of Christ may be advanced; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Lessons
Proverbs 16:1-3
Philippians 4:10-13
Luke 14:1, 7-14
Psalm 95:1-7
Preface of a Saint (2)
From Holy, Women, Holy Men: Celebrating the Saints © 2010 by The Church Pension Fund. Used by permission.

Conflict Drives Some Away From Church by Rev. Holly McKissick, Pastor at Peace Christian Church in Kansas City, MO

People are difficult. More than difficult: they break your heart wide open.

To be in a relationship – from a friendship to a small church group – is a guarantee that at some point you will be disappointed, probably even devastated. Conflict is unavoidable whenever two or three are gathered in the name or service of any god.

Add to that fundamental truth the realities of modern life: Everyone, from preschoolers on up, is over-scheduled and over-stressed. The temptation to slip in and out of worship is understandable. It draws some to mega-churches, where anonymity is the norm. It leads others away from the faith community entirely. Not surprisingly, a growing number of people have chosen to be SBNR – spiritual but not religious.

While this individualistic approach works in some faiths, one cannot be a Christian alone, or a Jew, for that matter. Both religions are, at heart, communal in nature.

From Noah’s Ark to Paul’s letters to the early church, the Christian story is about learning to live mercifully, justly and peacefully with others. From the bedroom to boardroom, Christians are called to balance “what makes me happy” with “how are the poor doing?”
If you want a viable future where you can live and worship, you can’t just slip in and out.

Anyone who has recently played the game of Selling a Home/Buying a Home knows the game rules are much changed, thanks to banks’ wariness over the subprime lending debacle, house values plummeting and I don’t know, just general bad karma.

It took us fifteen months to get a buyer for our home, after several gut-wrenching price reductions. We immediately found the perfect house at the perfect price and it all seemed to be working out wonderfully. Until we got the inspection results and discovered the reason the house was perfectly priced was that it needed a new septic system. We also discovered that engineering fees and septic installation costs had risen by several orders of magnitude.

In the meantime, our buyers – a young couple with a baby – nitpicked and demanded many expensive repairs and upgrades to our house, even though our purchase contract clearly stated “as is.”
Our seller – an elderly woman – worried ceaselessly and at one point my husband made her cry. (Neither one of us is proud of that black day.)

When I received the engineer’s call that the septic system plans were finally ready, I hurried to grab them from his office and raced to Torrington Area Health Department to see one of the two officials who had been involved in the inspections and were familiar with the plans. Of course, this was thirty minutes to closing time on a Friday and both of the two had left early. I think the office staff recognized my desperation and hurriedly turned up the last remaining official with the power to stamp the plans and issue the permit. He asked me a lot of questions, then stamped and issued, to my eternal gratitude. I then raced to my lender and gave them the precious permit just five minutes before the bank closed.

After raiding our IRA to pay down our debt ratio as required by our lender, and financing such needful installations as a radon remediation boondoggle, we began to seriously budget. We chose a ‘bargain’ mover. (We eventually had to fire the movers when the meter was still ticking three hours past the estimated, and budgeted, time. Asking “Where should I put this?” when bringing in the last box, and in answer to my impatient response “Just drop it there,” my bargain mover literally let it fall from his hands. Crash bang went a large carton of dishes and glasses.)

Our septic installer announced when the job was halfway done that he was going on a mission trip to Guatemala, but assured us “Don’t worry, it’ll get finished before closing.” It didn’t and the closing had to be extended. It was finally decided amongst all parties that as long as the bank was satisfied, we could close prior to topsoil being leveled and seeding being done. We then moved into a home we hadn’t yet purchased and vacated a home we hadn’t yet sold. That leap of faith required daily entreaties to St. Jude and a lot of Tums.

Two days after the long-awaited and joyously celebrated closing, our attorney called us back to sign some new papers. It seems in a room full of attorneys, paralegals, brokers, buyers and sellers, none of us caught a glaring error on the most important closing document. Our attorney assured us he’d never made this mistake in decades of closings, and I believe him. All through the process, I was expecting obstacles to be placed in our path, and they routinely were. I was just grateful when they were small molehills rather than mountains, although we got both. I was also grateful to our long-suffering realtor – Super Susie of Sotheby’s – who cheerfully hung in with us throughout the entire ordeal.

At long last, the hydroseeder came and seemingly painted the Indian burial mound that had once been a lovely backyard with a poisonous green color. I thought, that’s not fooling anyone. My husband assured me there were grass seeds in that fake green, and if we risked running our well dry by watering the entire backyard for hours each day, there would soon be real green sprouting up. I choose to believe that – you gotta have faith.

(Reprinted from Litchfield County Times, August 3, 2012.)