Dear Friends,
Father Turner announced last week that our beloved sometime seminarian, now Assisting Priest, the Reverend Sister Promise Atelon, SSM has accepted a call to serve on the clergy staff of Trinity Wall Street. She will be beginning in September, so her last services with us in this particular capacity will be Sunday, August 22 at 11am, when she will celebrate the mass, and Tuesday, August 24, which is the Feast of Saint Bartholomew, at which she will be the preacher.
It has been a great privilege to share ministry with my colleague, Sister Promise, over the course of two years. Our clergy team was so very grateful that she was willing to keep her ministry here at Saint Thomas Church after her internship and ordination to the priesthood in the Diocese of New York in March of this year. Her dedication to the life of this parish, through leading prayer groups, regular worship, even an online retreat, has been a superlative example to me of holy living and centered faith.
It goes without saying that those two years proved to be a period sustained challenge and growth for all of us. As the pandemic seemed to be closing in on every side, Sister Promise’s steady, gracious, and supportive presence was a veritable balm in Gilead as we sustained, and in some notable cases expanded, the ministries of this parish during this global crisis. Through it all, Sister Promise demonstrated resilience and devotion of the highest order, broadly enhancing ministries of our parish as a core member of our pastoral team. The opportunity I have had to witness her journey from a stalwart member of her religious order to a new priest in this diocese has endowed me with a respect and gratitude for her as a gift from God.
I hope you will join me for her final services with us in this role, or perhaps for our Zoom coffee hour after the 11am service on the 22nd (see details below).
I am including a poem from the Collected Poems of Anne Ridler, a poet that continues to surprise me with her vivid theological visions grounded in life, a life transfigured by the way she puts it, to say the least.
With every blessing,
Matthew Moretz+
