Saint Paul's Episcopal Parish, Malden MA

04/13/2026

A little Monday humour.

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1aceZC6L4s/

04/02/2026

We'd love to have you join us!

03/28/2026

Palm Sunday Mass at 10am.
Yes. We have Palm crosses.

Making these crosses can be tricky!

03/23/2026

Monday, March 23, 2026

Extending Healing and Wholeness to All
Scott Stoner

Let us hold our broken world—and our own brokenness—in compassion, light, and love. For God’s love reigns forever, forgiveness is the key, reconciliation is the goal, and love is always, always, the answer. —Westina Matthews

This week, we turn our attention to loving our neighbor, specifically, how we can participate in bringing healing and wholeness to the world. As people of faith, our call to wholeness always extends beyond just ourselves and those closest to us. Jesus taught that when it comes to loving our neighbor, there are no limits to whom we are called to extend our love.

The quote above from Westina Matthew’s Sunday’s reflection captures our focus for this week: to hold the brokenness of the world, along with our own, in compassion, light, and love, and to be instruments of God’s forgiveness, reconciliation, and love.

Given the overwhelming needs for healing in the world, focusing our attention on these needs can feel daunting. A story from a young man who visited Mother Teresa can be helpful to give us perspective. The young man asked her how he could return home and do something as significant as she was doing in her work in India. Mother Teresa wisely responded, “Not all of us can do great things. But we can all do small things with great love.”

Making It Personal: What “small things” are you currently doing to offer healing to others? Take a moment to pause and pray for guidance on any additional small offerings of love that God may be calling you to provide to others.

03/20/2026

Friday, March 20, 2026

Letting Go

Robbin Brent
Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, ‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.’ Having said this, he breathed his last.—Luke 23:46

As we navigate the path of emotional and spiritual healing, we will likely find ourselves confronted with the need to surrender, to let go of our illusions of control and allow ourselves to be held by a love greater than ourselves. This can be terrifying, especially when we have experienced the pain of betrayal or abandonment. Yet, surrender is not passive resignation but an active choice to align ourselves with a greater reality. Just as Jesus, with his final breath, surrendered completely into God’s hands, we too can surrender ourselves to trust in a love that will hold us.

Surrendering involves a daily practice of entrusting ourselves to God’s care, acknowledging our limitations, and making space for grace to work in our lives. Understood this way, true strength often looks like surrender, especially in our closest relationships.

We have reflected on forgiveness this week as one aspect of healing. To forgive often involves surrendering—surrendering our need to be right or our need to get even. It also means surrendering to God’s wisdom and desires. As Henri Nouwen writes, “Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasingly.”

Lent offers us the opportunity to practice both surrender and forgiveness, to loosen our grip on our own lives, and to allow ourselves to be held by the One who loves us beyond measure.

Making It Personal: What areas of your life feel difficult to surrender control? Is there a particular relationship that might be helped by a decision to surrender control or practice forgiveness? How might you practice letting go and allowing God to be more present in your life this week?

03/16/2026

Saint Patrick has an unfortunate blind date with Medusa. (Cartoon from Bizarro Comics by Dan Piraro)

03/16/2026

Monday, March 16, 2026

Healing and Wholeness in Relationships, by Scott Stoner

Marveling at life can be experienced every day at the center of being alive.
—Lisa Senuta

Relationships are foundational to our lives. Few things affect the well-being we experience in our lives more than the well-being of our relationships. Even so, it is easy to take our relationships for granted and overlook their importance.

This week, our focus will be on healing and wholeness in relationships. We will reflect on ways to cultivate our relationships to help them grow and thrive. We will also consider steps we can take to heal a relationship when there has been hurt.

One thought that will be helpful as we reflect on relationships is captured in Lisa Senuta’s quote above from yesterday’s reflection. When we can look at the people in our lives with appreciation and love, our relationships with others can be seen as treasures, even when they are imperfect and challenging at times. And as we will see, the more we tend to them, working on loving and forgiving as need be, the greater the blessing they will be.

Our God is a relational God who thankfully provides us with the guidance and inspiration we need to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. As Scripture says, “We love, because God first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

Making It Personal: Take a moment to pause and offer gratitude for the people in your life, past and present, who are important to you. Also, pause and reflect on whether there is a particular relationship that you feel God is calling you to nurture or strengthen at this time.

03/15/2026

Fourth Sunday in Lent, Sunday, March 15, 2026

What Is, Just As It Is , by Lisa Senuta *(see bio below)

Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.
—John 9:32-33

Like dominos when Jesus healed the man born blind, that act of mercy set in motion a long chain of reactions. The brilliance of the passage is in how it can help us recognize how disconnected we can be from what is.

The blind man sees clearer than anyone the absolute miracle of meeting Jesus and of healing. His response is simple: awe and wonder. How? Why? It does not matter. If this man were not of God, he could do nothing.

What is just as it is,* guides us toward the heart of the matter. Whereas our opinions, our questions, our judgements often disguise reality and therefore the miracle at the center of being alive.

This is comically illuminated in a cartoon Ronald Rolheiser describes in his book, The Shattered Lantern: Rediscovering a Felt Presence of God. The cartoon is of a family waking up in the morning. In the first frame the dad is driving his car to work and says to himself, “another dumb day, going to that same dumb office, to work on those same dumb numbers that I must have worked on a thousand times.” In the second frame the mom is cleaning the floor saying to herself, “Another dumb day cleaning this same dumb house I must have cleaned a thousand times.” In the next frame we see the older children on the school bus. One says to the other, “Another dumb day going to the same dumb school with the same dumb teachers working on the same dumb stuff we’ve been working on a thousand times before.” In the last frame we see the youngest child standing up in her crib, wide awake fresh for a new day, her arms up in the air facing the sun shouting, “Another Day!”

One thing that restores our health is to follow the man born blind and rediscover awe and wonder. Br. David Steindl-Rast describes this as Surprise. Other spiritual teachers call this “the second naiveté.” A state in which we, as adults, connect with the sacred center in life just as it is, just as we are. Marveling at life can be experienced every day at the center of being alive.

The happiest people on our planet are the people who have enough to thrive physically, socially, and spiritually and to live closely connected to the miracle of life and the peace available at the center of everything we do.

Yes, we can, and often do, get in our own way. It is also true that faithful and authentic prayer is an act of courageous and compassionate trust that what is going on and where we find ourselves is also where God is, and that is a miracle. That place is where we experience what the psalmist put into the famous words, “my cup runneth over” (Psalm 23).

* I first learned about the concept of “accepting what is as it is” from James Finley’s book, The Contemplative Heart.

*Lisa Senuta is an Episcopal Priest serving in the diocese of Kansas as director of Spiritual Formation and Clergy Care. Trained through Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation in Washington DC, her vocation focuses on spiritual guidance and faith development. Her deepest pleasure is found in relationships new and old. And she loves gardening, hiking and poetry where there is no end to discovering God’s joy.

03/10/2026

Tuesday, March 10, 2026

God Loves Every Body, by Scott Stoner

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? … Therefore glorify God in your body.
—1 Corinthians 6:19, 20

At Living Compass, we often say that many compasses are competing to guide our lives. The compasses of the dominant culture are strong, frequently giving us messages that are contradictory to those that our faith gives to us. This seems to be especially true in the messages we receive about our bodies.

Social media and consumer-driven ads often show us body images that are perfectionist, unrealistic, and are frequently obsessed with looking young. The message is clear: your body is not okay as it is, and you need our product/program/workout to create a body you can feel good about. Sadly, sometimes churches have even added to body negatively by falsely attributing sin and temptation to the body.

In contrast, a healthy faith tells us that our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, and that God loves every body. Our bodies are wonderfully created by a loving God who loves all aspects of who we are, no exceptions. This faith-based body-positivity celebrates our bodies and inspires us to care for the gifts that they are.

Making It Personal: Are you aware of any unhealthy body image messages you may have internalized? If so, what might help you move to a more positive image of your body, one that is grounded in the truth that your body as a miraculous gift from God?

03/09/2026

Monday, March 9, 2026

Physical Healing and Wholeness: A Holistic Approach, by Scott Stoner

Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health, just as it is well with your soul.—3 John 1:2

Eighteen years ago, I was hit by a car on my bicycle. I was knocked unconscious for several hours and ended up with multiple injuries, including a traumatic brain injury that took several years to recover from.

My physical pain was acute for quite a while, but gradually calmed down. Unbeknownst to me, but quite apparent to those closest to me, six months after my accident, my mental health was suffering. Like the Samaritan woman at the well that Rob Hirschfeld wrote about yesterday, the trauma I was carrying was weighing me down and becoming visible to those closest to me. With the support of family, friends, and my faith community—who spoke the truth with love to me—I was able to get help and recover.

I learned a valuable lesson in my recovery. I, like everyone, am wonderfully created by God as a whole—body, mind, heart, and spirit—meaning that physical well-being is interconnected with all aspects of well-being. This is our theme for this week as we explore how our physical well-being both affects and is affected by our spiritual, emotional, and relational dimensions of wellness.

Making It Personal: Bring to mind a time when your physical health either affected or was affected by your emotional, spiritual, and relational health. Pause and reflect on what you might learn from this experience.

03/08/2026

Third Sunday in Lent, Sunday, March 8 2026

Seeing in a Fresh Way, by Rob Hirschfeld *(see bio below)

The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” —John 4:15

Except when the Merrimack River in New Hampshire is frozen, I row in a single sculling shell almost every day. I row upstream a few miles, turn around, and row back downstream. It’s an activity I’ve “enjoyed” for over fifty years now. It sounds monotonous, more like chore than recreation. Sometimes I’m asked, “Isn’t it just so dull to go up and down the same body of water every day?”

I see the point. There is some tedium to this lonely sport. But then I notice that it’s always a different body of water on a river. Sometimes there’s mist. The greens of the trees, from early spring to full spring, to summer vary from day to day. Often a blue heron shows up on the riverbank. It’s not the same river each day, though it is. Either full of energy or tired, I am not the same sculler from day to day, though I am.

There’s no such leisure or recreational activity for the woman at the well. She goes back and forth in the monotonous drudgery of getting water for her household. She carries with her memories she would rather not share and just as soon forget. Her life, even her love life—if we can call it that—probably seems a chore, a series of tedious repetitions in the empty hope that something new might arise. What would it be like not to carry the weight of the tedious awareness of past traumas, past patterns, past sins with their accumulated shame?

Perhaps I am drawn to water—rivers, ponds, streams, or lakes—because they have a way of praying me, of cleansing my soul. This life-changing encounter between Jesus and the woman of Samaria has to take place by a well. It has to involve water. The well where Jesus meets her is really a kind of baptismal font where she is given a new way to see her life.

Jesus’ acceptance of us gives us our tainted stories back to us but without the stigma of shame that keeps us from being in community with God and each other. As we approach the celebration of baptism at Easter, we are invited to see our lives sprung from the monotony of our sense of sin. Though we don’t forget our past and the moral complexities of life, our lives are seen in a fresh way.

Our stories are drawn into God’s own memory. The best re-creation of all.

*Rob Hirschfeld is the tenth Bishop of New Hampshire. When not making the rounds to the congregations of the Granite State, he has been working to reestablish in his life a daily practice of contemplative prayer. Sculling in a single shell on the Merrimack River has been an aid to that practice. He also enjoys making abstract art in mixed media and writing poetry in a local workshop of fellow poets. He enjoys quite evenings at home with his beloved wife of 35 years, Polly Ingraham, a writer and career counselor at a local public high school.

03/08/2026

Saturday, March 7, 2026

Is Self-Care Selfish?, by Scott Stoner

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. —Prayer of St. Francis

Christians sometimes wonder if it is self-centered to focus on their own emotional and spiritual wellness. Isn’t it our call to love and serve others, not ourselves?

My thought is that if our only goal is our own well-being, that would be self-centered. However, when our goal also includes being well so that we can serve others effectively, we become instruments of healing and wholeness in our world. In that case, we are better able to fulfill our desire to love our neighbor as we better love ourselves. There is a significant difference between being self-centered and having a centered self.

The opening words of the St. Francis Prayer above are a prayer for being able to be instruments of God’s peace. It can be helpful to think of this in musical terms. If our own instruments—our hearts and souls—are out of tune, it is difficult to share the gift of beautiful music with others. When I am not emotionally or spiritually well, it is difficult for me to convey well-being to others.

But if we regularly tune the instruments of our lives, we can then truly be God’s instruments for spreading the peace and healing described in the Prayer of St. Francis.

Making It Personal: Have you ever wondered if self-care is selfish or if it is always better to prioritize the needs of others over your own? Looking back on this week’s reflections, what thoughts or practices will continue to be helpful for you in nurturing and tuning your emotional and spiritual well-being?

Our Living Compass app has several guided meditations for related to our focus on healing and wholeness. You can download our Living Compass app in your phone's App Store. You can also access all the content in the app at https://app.livingcompass.org.

Our Living Compass podcast is also offering episodes to support your Lenten journey. Listen in any podcast app or at www.livingcompass.org/podcast.