Click here to listen to the introduction to the Letter and the Letter itself as read on Sunday the 11th of September at the 10.00 a.m. Eucharist.
11 September 2016
11 September 2016
Dear Miles and
Dominic,
Sixty-nine years
ago, long before you were born and six years before I was born, a number of
families wanted to start an Anglican church in this part of the city of
Vancouver. They showed courage and
vision when they decided to do this.
Just two years before the Parish was started, a horrible war had taken
hold of almost all the world. Many
people in Canada lost family members and friends during that war. Others came home to Canada with wounds, some
visible, some invisible.
Because Vancouver
was growing in the years after the war, the Anglican Church realized that more
churches were needed, so the Bishop was happy to support the first families of
Saint Faith's in their effort. So a wooden
church and church hall was built just across the lane way from the present
church. Some years later this building
was completed and became the home of the Parish.
Why did those
first families start this Parish? They
knew what Christians have known for almost two thousand years. People need a place of help, hope and
home. People need a place where we can
hear the story of God's love for us and for whole world. People need a place where each one of us,
young or old, male or female, can play our part to building and sustaining
places of help, hope and home like Saint Faith's. People need a place where we can learn that
God's story is our story; each one of us is helping to write a chapter in our
own times and our own places.
Miles and Dominic,
today you become a part of the story that God is telling. When you are baptized, God invites you to be
a story-teller, someone who can encourage others to share in this ancient story
of love.
God's story, our
story, reminds us that we all need help.
No one grows up without the help of other people. Even people like me, old enough to be your
grandfather, need help to continue to grow up and become better story-tellers
of God's strength and wisdom.
God's story, our
story, reminds us that we all need hope.
Hope means believing that God is at work in the world to create a place
where all God's children can be free and become who God's wants each one of us
to be. Sometimes hope is hard to keep
hold of in our world. When we baptize
you today, we are asking you to be a person who holds on to hope, even in
difficult times.
God's story, our
story, reminds us that we all need home.
Having a home means having a place where you are loved for who you are,
where you will always find help and where you will always find hope. Being baptized means that you will try, to
the best of your ability, to create places of home, whether in churches like
Saint Faith's or in the schools you attend or in your own family home.
You know, everyone
loves a good story, no matter how old we are.
Everyone here today is looking forward to the chapters you are going to
write, the stories you will add to all the stories told about how God has
helped us, given us hope and found us homes.
So, Miles and Dominic, welcome to God's story, our story, your story.
Always your friend
in Christ,
Richard+
(The Rev'd Dr)
Richard Geoffrey Leggett
Rector of Saint
Faith's
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