Official Diocesan Blog

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An Invitation to Join Us in Holy Week
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"The celebration of Easter is robbed of something if we do not take the opportunity to enter into lament... I want to invite us all, particularly during Holy Week, to gather and pray together as we observe and walk with Jesus through his betrayal and death, into the joy of the resurrection."

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Bishop Alex on How to Approach Intercessory Prayer
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“It is my conviction that when we ask things of God, God acts. God hears. Jesus told us, 'Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you shall find.' Our anticipation as we pray is to a God who is hearing us, who wants to come to us, who wants to respond. Will he always respond in the way we specifically ask? Why, no. But it is my conviction that he is always responding.” 

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Bishop Alex on Two Enemies of Prayer
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"If prayer is a conversation and not a monologue, how is it that I listen? How do I hear from God?” 
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Types of Prayer and How Delight in the Lord Might Improve Our Health
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“Awe is a pathway to physical and mental health.” 

Bishop Alex continues his series on prayer with a video about various types of prayer and how being in a state of awe and worship might lead us to better physical and mental health. Which type of prayer could you use more of in your daily time with God?

 

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An Invitation to Pray with Us
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On Tuesday, March 14, we will begin a pilot project of weekly prayer at the diocesan office. All are welcome to join us at 8:30 a.m. each Tuesday throughout Lent and into the Easter season for a short service of Holy Eucharist and to pray for mission in the congregations across our diocese.

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Church of the Savior - mortgage burning
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On February 12, Church of the Savior in Ambridge, PA, held a ceremony to burn their now-paid-off mortgage papers in the alley behind their church. This financial feat was made possible by a capital campaign initiated in 2017, which raised over $350,000 in just five years—45% coming from Church of the Savior’s members and the remainder from outside donors—enough to fund much-needed upgrades to the building and to pay off the remainder of their $404,000 mortgage years earlier than expected. 

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Collect for Ash Wednesday
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So it’s Lent. And what is Lent, anyway? We might perhaps think of it as that annual morose and mopey time of year, marked by giving up some treasured food or habit, that engenders a sense of holy deprivation which is supposed to be good for us. But neither moping nor deprivation is the point, nor the true value.

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Q&A with Bishop Alex on Prayer thumbnail
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As a follow up to Bishop Alex's recent blog series on daily prayer, we asked him how he recommends creating space in our busy lives to pray each day and what to do when our devotion time starts to feel like a burden. Watch on our YouTube channel below.