St. Timothy's Episcopal Church - Salem, Oregon

06/03/2026

Wednesday 10 AM Holy Eucharist at St. Timothy’s (Rite I)

Today we remember the Holy Martyrs of Uganda. They were a group of 45 indigenous Christians, including 22 Catholics and 23 Anglicans, who were executed between 1885 and 1887 under King Mwanga II of Buganda for their refusal to renounce their faith. Their heroic martyrdom caused the church to grow rapidly in Uganda. It was their placing of loyalty to Christ above loyalty to the king which brought about their deaths—and the power of their witness. They went to their martyrdom praying for their killers.

Let us look at their witness and recall where our own highest loyalty must go, and reject all forms of idolatry or claims to identity which seek to supplant Christ our Lord and King.

[The icon for this post comes from the University of Portland, Oregon]

05/30/2026

The First Sunday after Pentecost: Trinity Sunday

Sunday Schedule
- 8 AM: Holy Eucharist (said)
- 10 AM: Holy Eucharist & Solemn Te Deum (sung); Godly Play for younger members; nursery care provided during this service.
- Coffee Hour following the liturgy

This is a special Sunday when we honor the revelation of One God in Trinity of Persons. It is an important feast honoring mystery, worship, and the direct connection between what God has revealed about the Divine Nature and the nature of creation and humanity. Come and see!

The 10 AM service concludes with a special act of worship: the Solemn Te Deum (an ancient hymn of praise). It is in praise and worship we most fittingly speak of the Trinity.

The Collect for Trinity Sunday:
Almighty and everlasting God, you have given to us your servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of your divine Majesty to worship the Unity: Keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, and bring us at last to see you in your one and eternal glory, O Father; who with the Son and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God, for ever and ever. Amen

05/29/2026

During the Embertides we pray for the faithfulness of all ministry in the Church—lay and ordained. One of those ministries, mentioned especially in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25, is to those who are imprisoned. We pray for all prison chaplains and those who work to make sure that jails, prisons, and (perhaps especially in these days) detention centers are run according to just and humane principles. This ministry is made very difficult by restrictive and secretive policies—which can easily be used as cover for misuse of authority.

A Prayer for Prisons and Correctional Institutions

Lord Jesus, for our sake you were condemned as a criminal: Visit our jails and prisons with your pity and judgment. Remember all prisoners, and bring the guilty to repentance and amendment of life according to your will, and give them hope for their future. When any are held unjustly, bring them release; forgive us, and teach us to improve our justice. Remember those who work in these institutions; keep them humane and compassionate; and save them from becoming brutal or callous. And since what we do for those in prison, O Lord, we do for you, constrain us to improve their lot. All this we ask for your mercy’s sake. Amen.

05/27/2026

Wednesday Eucharist this week: The Summer Embertide

We pray for the faithfulness and orthodoxy of all those who teach, preach, minister, and lead in Christ's Holy Catholic Church--lay and ordained. This holy time of fasting and prayer follows the Day of Pentecost. The traditional-language solemn liturgy is followed by tea and conversation in the narthex. Join us for a midweek sabbath of prayer and fellowship in Christ.

05/27/2026

"Lenty, Penty, Crucy, Lucy..."

The quarterly Embertides are seasons of prayer for all who minister in the name of Christ--lay and ordained. They occur in relationship to four holy days in the church year: The first Sunday in Lent ("Lenty"), the Day of Pentecost ("Penty"), The Feast of the Holy Cross on September 14 ("Crucy"), and St. Lucy's Day, December 13 ("Lucy"). Here is a quick summary of these days of prayer and reflection, and an invitation to incorporate them into you own practice of discipleship.

Four times a year* the Church’s calendar sets aside special days of focus on ministry…our work of sharing, serving, and living the Go...

05/26/2026

On Memorial Day

A Prayer in Thanksgiving for Heroic Service

O Judge of the nations, we remember before you with grateful hearts the men and women of our country who in the day of decision ventured much for the liberties we now enjoy. Grant that we may not rest until all the people of this land share the benefits of true freedom and gladly accept its disciplines. This we ask in the Name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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While Memorial Day is not a holy day on the Church's calendar, it has been observed in a wide variety of ways in parishes and by individuals in the Episcopal Church since its gradual adoption following the U.S. Civil War. The need for prayer, solace, and recollection of selfless sacrifice is an important part of a democracy's reckoning with warfare.

One of the distinctive characteristics of our observance is an absence of glorifying war in any way. Rather than attempt to dignify what is the most brutal of human actions, we remember those who have died in the service of our country when that struggle is "for the liberties we now enjoy." Warfare, as such, is not what we praise. We praise the sacrifice made for just wars intended to preserve our liberties. Only this, we believe, may justify war in the eyes of the supreme "Judge of the nations."

This shows the centrality of the nation as a whole being involved in deciding to enter into war, and for what must be considered just and sufficient reasons. When warfare is the result of one man's whim (as in traditional forms of monarchy or in modern authoritarianism), it loses both its firm basis of support and the ability for the governed to assert controls over its mission and its means. It loses any pretext of being righteous.

In our own day, we struggle with what the Prayer in Thanksgiving for Heroic Service terms “freedom's disciplines." Split by an unending culture war, we have assigned our duties to hold leadership to the strict standards of what is just and beneficial not to elected officials but ideologies and interests unresponsive to our stated ideals. The consequence is division which cannot be healed, resentment which cannot be overcome, waste which cannot be recovered, and manipulation which cannot be overthrown.

Substituting juvenile notions of "maximum lethality" for professional soldiering and just ideas of warfare leads only to be******ty, horror, and decline. As we honor the war dead this day, let us require better from those who prosecute war in our name, and let us require better from ourselves as we look beyond the paralyzing divisions which lead to the dishonoring of those who made the supreme sacrifice--sullying their memory in folly and criminality through the misuse of the terrifying power of war.

05/23/2026

The Feast of Pentecost (Whitsunday)

This Sunday celebrates the giving of the Holy Spirit to the Church. It is the great Feast Day of the Holy Spirit in the Church Year, as well as the celebration of our common call to share the gospel. Given the times we live in and the state of the culture around us, we will be focusing particularly on the role of the Spirit in pointing us toward Christ in hope and truth.

On this Sunday we will hear a portion of the Gospel lesson in various tongues, and it is the custom for participants to wear red in honor of the descent of the Spirit in the form of "tongues of flame." Come and see!

- 8 AM: Holy Eucharist (spoken)
- 10 AM: Solemn Procession, Holy Eucharist (sung)

- A special Pentecost reception following the 10 AM Eucharist will feature various kinds of cheeses (a traditional food for this day)
- A "Whit-walk" (prayer walk) in the neighborhood, praying for the people and concerns in the community around the parish church.

The Collect (prayer) for this Sunday
O God, who on this day taught the hearts of your faithful people by sending to them the light of your Holy Spirit: Grant us by the same Spirit to have a right judgment in all things, and evermore to rejoice in his holy comfort; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

[The image for this post is that of the Pentecost icon at St. Timothy's]

05/17/2026

The Seventh Sunday of Easter:
This Sunday marks the period after Christ’s Ascension, while the disciples, our Lady, and the Holy Women awaited the coming of the Holy Spirit in prayer and fellowship. Come and see!

- 8 AM: Holy Eucharist (spoken)
- 9:50 AM: "Godly Play" opens for younger parishioners (continues for the first part of the 10 AM liturgy)
- 10 AM: Holy Eucharist (sung)
- Coffee Hour following

The Collect for this Sunday:
O God, the King of glory, you have exalted your only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven: Do not leave us comfortless, but send us your Holy Spirit to strengthen us, and exalt us to that place where our Savior Christ has gone before; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

05/14/2026

Today is the Feast of the Ascension - the day that we commemorate the bodily ascent of our Lord Jesus Christ to the right hand of the Father, where he sits in glory and honor. This day also celebrates his bringing our humanity into heaven and Christ’s eternal intercession for us.

We celebrate this feast with the Holy Eucharist tonight at 7 PM.

This is a joint service with St Paul’s Episcopal Church and we will share social time together with a dessert reception following the liturgy.

"Dearly-beloved, let us rejoice with spiritual joy, and let us with gladness pay God worthy thanks and raise our hearts' eyes unimpeded to those heights where Christ is. Minds that have heard the call to be uplifted must not be pressed down by earthly affections, they that are fore-ordained to things eternal must not be taken up with the things that perish..."

From a Sermon of Pope St Leo the Great on the Feast of the Ascension