A Honeybee Christmas Story

A long time ago there was a Queen Bee who lived in a hive among the scraggly hills outside of Bethlehem. One day, as the Queen Bee sat surrounded by her offspring in the hive, she took note, among all the worker bees, and drones, and larvae still un-hatched, of a newborn honeybee that caught her eye as it wriggled out of its larval sac and into the world.

The night before this infant honeybee had been born, the Queen Bee, who liked to gaze up at the stars through a chink in the walls of the hive, had noticed a particularly bright star in the east, and she’d taken it as a sign that she should be looking for a special honeybee child to be born in the hive.

In those days, you see, honeybee colonies were collapsing – just as they have been in our own time, for several years – bees dying off for no apparent reason, with no known explanation.  Entire colonies were disappearing, and the olive, and almond, and pomegranate trees were struggling in their groves without honeybees to pollinate them.  And no one knew what was the cause of the illness that brought to ruin one beehive after another, killing off thousands and thousands of honeybees, their tiny carcasses ground into the dust by the sandals of men and women passing by on their way to and fro Bethlehem.

The Queen Bee suspected that Herod the Great was to blame for the slaughter of the honeybees.  She had heard stories (for beehives are full of gossips) about the way that Herod had set out to kill all the infant Hebrew boys in the Bethlehem, and she harbored a deep and angry suspicion that it was at least a by-product of Herod’s campaign of terror, if not an actual part of his strategy, that was bringing about the destruction of so many colonies of honeybees, killing thousands upon thousands of bees.

She was a proud and beautiful Queen Bee, and she knew of the importance of bees to the well-being of mankind, so she took affront at the idea that men would do her and her kind harm, since honeybees do so much good for humans.  But she had seen enough of humanity to know that men are fickle, and prone to abuse their power, and to resent those who do well by them.  So she had begun to harbor a great resentment, herself, against humanity, as she reigned day by day over her colony of buzzing, fanning, busy little honeybees.

And she’d had this vision of a star, and she didn’t know what it meant, until she noticed the one little honeybee being born in the hive, that somehow caught her eye, and she decided that she wanted to keep this child bee close to her.  So, the Queen Bee had the little infant honeybee brought to her, and swaddled in honeybee swaddling clothes, or some such thing, much to the amazement of the other bees in the hive.  And she nurtured the special baby honeybee herself.  She fed her the finest honey from the stores the drones maintain for her, and she fawned over the little girl honeybee in its infancy.

And when the little bee began to grow old enough to receive instruction, she had her finest worker bees take her out on forays amongst the flowers, and gardens, and groves, and riverbanks of Bethlehem – teaching her about the collection of nectar and pollen.  Inside the hive, they showed her how the honeycomb is made and then how the honey is deposited, sealed up, and left to thicken and grow sweet.

The Queen Bee insisted that her special honeybee should always be protected, both inside and outside the hive.  She was not allowed out of the Queen’s sight without an escort of burly drones who would gladly give their lives to carry out the Queen Bee’s wishes.

Whenever the little honeybee was not out among the flowers, or learning about the workings of the hive, the Queen Bee herself would instruct her young child.  She explained to the little bee that a honeybee has only two potential capacities in life: the bee can collect nectar and make honey, or the bee can use its stinger in service to the Queen.  Honeybees have no other real potential, for either they keep on making honey, or when they deploy their stingers to protect the hive or the Queen herself, the stinger is left in the flesh of the victim, and the honeybee who inflicted the sting soon dies.

You can imagine that the Queen Bee spent long hours teaching her protégé the ancient stories of honeybees, reciting the names of her forebears so the little honeybee would know her lineage, and instilling in the young bee a desire to serve her Queen above all else, as well as an intense hatred of Herod the Great, whom the Queen blamed for the ongoing epidemic of colony collapse among honeybees.  Herod would have to be dealt with, the Queen repeated to her offspring.  Some day she would raise up a swarm and attack Herod in his own palace, and bring an end to his reign of terror!  She shared with the little honeybee her plans to build up the hive and mount an attack on Herod with a swarm so large that it would seem to be a plague of biblical proportions.  In time, the growing hive looked with respect and a kind of reverence upon the strong young honeybee who was now almost always at the side of the Queen.

One night, as the Queen was gazing up at the stars through the chink in the wall of the hive, she noticed a star yet brighter than the star that had heralded the birth of her special offspring.  Beehives being the rumor mills that they are, word quickly reached the Queen that a human Child had been born in Bethlehem that night, and that the people were saying this Child would be called, among other things, the Prince of Peace; that he would bring forgiveness wherever there was hurt or hatred; that he would be a new kind of king who ruled with love rather than by force; that true justice would be the result of his reign, and that mercy would characterize his rule; that he would usher in the kingdom of heaven; and that he would bring hope to all those who had none.

Now, you would think that the Queen Bee would have heard this as good news, but you’d be wrong.  For the Queen had grown obsessed with the idea of wreaking vengeance on Herod.  And some Baby-of-Love, heralded by the stars, about whom apparently angels were singing in the night sky, and shepherds were dashing off to visit – such a child threatened to undo her plan to mount a swarm of vengeance.  And after all, only by getting rid of Herod, thought the Queen, could she prevent the collapse of her own colony of honeybees, that had so far avoided the fate that so many others had suffered.

The Queen was blinded, you might say, by her vengeful spirit, and she’d been given little reason to think that any human child could be the bearer of good news to honeybees, anyway.  So she called her beloved daughter honeybee into her innermost chamber, and shared with her a special mission:

“My child,” the Queen Bee said, “I have loved you like no other bee in the hive.  I have reared you myself, and shared with you all my wisdom, all my history, all my insights, and all my plans.  You are the strongest, cleverest bee in the hive, and no one surpasses you in any way.

“Tonight, my dear one, I must ask you to realize one of the only two potential capacities of which a honeybee is possessed.

“Tonight I will send you to the newborn Child in Bethlehem, and you must sting the infant King with your stinger, dear child.  For if the prophecies are true, he will prevent me from unleashing my swarm on Herod; he will be a force for peace, when what we need to protect the colony is terrible power; he will urge forgiveness, when what we need is to show these humans that we are more frightening than they had ever imagined, and we are not to be trifled with!”

And the Queen Bee produced from a secret part of the honeycomb, a dark and treacly substance that was, she told the little honeybee, a special venom, more deadly than normal bee venom, guaranteed to kill a little newborn child with only one sting.  She loaded the venom carefully into the glands that empty into the stinger of her beloved little honeybee.  She looked at her daughter lovingly and gratefully, for it pained her to send her beloved child on the cruel errand she had planned, but she could see no other way.  And whispering words of love and encouragement from her antennae to her daughter’s, she sent her strongest, most beautiful, dearly beloved honeybee child out on a mission to kill, and to die.

The honeybee easily found the barn, what with the bright star twinkling right over it, and with the shepherds showing the way as they loped along toward the place.  In the night sky, the honeybee circled, taking in the scene: parents with newborn Child, shepherds gawking, cattle lowing, and indeed, and angel or two off in the distance singing in Latin, as angels are prone to do.  Then she swooped in closer, and buzzed through the open barn a few times.   It was more of a lean-to than a proper barn.  The father was asleep, in a pile of straw beside the manger.  The Mother was drowsy but awake, having laid her Child down in his own bed of straw to sleep.  But the Child was not sleeping; his eyes were open, twinkling with a brightness not unlike the brightness of the star above.

It was a warmish night, and the Baby kept wriggling out of the swaddling clothes his Mother had wrapped him in.  He was reaching out his hands and opening his little pudgy palms wide as he could, the way babies do.  An easy target.

The honeybee buzzed by again, and the Mother saw it, and drew in her breath sharply.  The Mother swatted at the honeybee with a handful of straw, but she was tired, and her defenses were down.

And the Child locked his eyes on the compound eyes of the honeybee as the brave bee prepared to realize her potential, to give her own life for the sake of her mother, the Queen, and to save her own hive by this regrettable act of treachery.  And the honeybee extended its stinger from its abdomen and set a course for the soft exposed shoulder of the little child.  She felt the venom: heavier than the usual venom in its sac, ready to be delivered.  She flew far outside of the barn, in order to build up as much speed as possible.

The Mother had no idea what was about to happen.  The father was snoring, the stupid cattle were still lowing, and the shepherds were useless.

The honeybee zoomed in toward the Child, who clearly saw it coming.

Just then, the Mother looked up and saw what was about to happen, but she had no time to react or even to scream.

The Child was looking at the honeybee with a look of serenity on its face, and a look of strength, and of grace.  And the Child stretched out its hand to the incoming honeybee, whose stinger was ready to strike.

“Foolish child,” was the last thing the honeybee thought as she prepared to pierce the Baby with her stinger.  She aimed directly for the soft palm of his outstretched little hand.  And as she went in for the kill, the Baby actually gently closed his little fingers around the honeybee, making it even easier for her to place her stinger right where she wanted it.

The Mother shrieked a little shriek.  The father roused from his sleep. The cattle looked up. 

The Mother stooped over the manger in fear to see what damage the bee had done, expecting to find a red, inflamed spot, and the little stinger sticking out of the Baby’s flesh.  But she never suspected the truth: never suspected the deadly power of the venom that the honeybee had deployed for this Holy Child.  She expected to hear the Baby cry out, but she was not expecting him to die.  She was expecting him to wail, and for it to be a very difficult night, but not to be his last night.  She was ready to open the little hand and to kiss the tiny wound, to bathe it with her saliva, and to draw the bee’s venom out of him with her lips.  But she was not prepared for what happened next.

She was not prepared for the Baby to lie absolutely still, and to remain absolutely silent.

And she was not prepared to see the tiny stinger there in the flesh of his tiny hand, but to see that there was nothing red or inflamed around the stinger; there was only a tiny drop of a thick, golden liquid.  And when she pressed her lips to it, she knew immediately what it was: honey.

And she was not prepared to see a fluttering of tiny wings down in the straw as the honeybee discovered that her venom had been somehow turned to honey, and that she had not died.  And the bee sped off into the night to return home to the Queen Bee and urge her to re-evaluate the situation.  And the Child cried out to its Mother that he was hungry.

Now everybody knows that the world does not work like this.  Everybody knows that honeybees do not plot to overthrow governments.  And everybody knows that special little babies are not born who turn dangerous weapons into honey.

Everybody knows that no Prince of Peace has established his reign over the face of the earth; that forgiveness has not triumphed over hurt and hatred; that we have not yet seen a king who could truly rule with love rather than by force; that true justice is so far unknown in the world, and that mercy is a rare commodity; that the kingdom of heaven seems like a fairy tale; and that no Child has yet brought hope to all those who have none

Except tonight.  When for some reason, more of us than would normally be open to such a thing, have come here to sit with the baby Jesus.

And maybe we have come here hoping that he will take all our hatred, and jealousy, and violence, our cruelty, and our abused power, our pride, and even our sense of honor that is so easily misplaced; that Jesus will take whatever it is that warps and ruins our lives and the world we live in; that Jesus will take our stingers, and our venom – of which we have plenty – and turn them into honey.

And we come here tonight, not to tell ourselves fairytales that will never come true; but to remember that this Child has done it before.  He has brought peace out of deadly venom, from the tip of a sharpened stinger.  He has brought life where no one could see anything but death.

And he will do it again.

He is doing it now, if we will let him; if we go back to our hives and re-evaluate the situation, and decide that of the many potential capacities available to us, perhaps the best one is to make honey.

And if you aren’t sure what that might mean, how you might make honey out of the venom of your life, then you might want to reach out your hand, so to speak, and place it in the hand of the Baby Jesus and just hold on to him, and let him show you how.

And when you do hold him, don’t be surprised to find that your own hand has about it the faint aroma and the unmistakable taste of a drop or two of honey.

Thanks be to God!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

Christmas Eve 2013

Saint Mark’s Church, Phialdelphia

Bearing Fruit in Unlikely Places

You may listen to Mother Takacs's sermon here.

I have been to the wilderness of Judea only once. It was the spring of 2009, and I was there on a pilgrimage with a group from the Washington National Cathedral. We took a bus to get there, of course, and parked along a ridge that then led us along a wide, dusty path away from the road. Everywhere I looked was beige. Beige to the right and beige to the left – over there, along the crest of the mountain, slightly darker beige, but only very slightly, only one crayon over in the box of 96 Crayolas. The hills were so mono-chromatic that they seemed two-dimensional, flat, propped up against the horizon. It was beige and hot and dry; the sun beat down on our heads as our tour guides tried to beat it into our heads that we needed to stay hydrated. Take another sip, friends, we’ve been here 15 minutes already. Barring our sipping water and snapping photos, there was no movement anywhere – just beige and dust and heat. It was one of the least hospitable places I have ever seen – not an easy place to get to, and not an easy place to stay in.

So imagine, for a moment, that you are a Pharisee, and you have just schlepped all the way out into the wilds to have a look at this crazy man dunking people in the desert. You don’t know if he is one of the Essenes or just a nut job with an Elijah complex, but you felt compelled to check it out, if for no other reason that if anyone asks you about him you want to have a decently informed answer. You want to be able to say, “Well, when I went out to the wilderness to see him, I thought this.” That seems like what a responsible religious leader should do.

And so you’ve hauled your butt all the way out into the desert to find John the Baptist. You walked, and it was hot, and the wine skin you brought along to help you stay hydrated seemed to have gotten heavier instead of lighter as the day wore on. It wasn’t an easy journey, not least because you ended up traveling with a bunch of Sadducees who were headed in the same direction. You and the Sadducees agree about, well, not much, so along the way you tried to avoid topics that might lead to arguments, like the doctrine of sola Torah, or the primacy of the Temple, or the resurrection of the dead. Mostly you talked about John. What have you heard? Have you talked to anyone who’s been baptized? What do you think he’s up to, really? And you decided, as you traveled, that you just don’t know what to make of him, that you’ll just have to wait and see. You’ll wait, and pass judgment when you get there.

And so imagine your surprise, now that you’ve found your way down to the Jordan River, that it isn’t you doing the judging but John. You brood of vipers! he yells at you. You conniving clutch of cobras! You’ve come out here trying to look pious and responsible but you look like nothing so much as a bunch of asps. You’ve come out here to look into baptism, but you haven’t even looked into your own souls. Is there anything growing inside you or is it just dried up and beige in there? He points a dusty finger in your direction. Bear fruit, he snarls. Bear fruit worthy of repentance.

Now scripture doesn’t actually tell us what the Pharisees and Sadducees do in response to this scolding. We’re left to assume that they just up and go, leaving John to his wooly, wet work. But that doesn’t seem quite right – after all, you’re a Pharisee. You don’t mind a good argument, and you’ve walked all the way out into the desert, with the dust and the sun and the Sadducees – are you really just going to turn around and go home because this prophet has called you a couple of names? No! You’re going to challenge him right back, aren’t you? You’re going to defend yourself, say something like, wait a minute pal, bear fruit worthy of repentance, what exactly does that mean? How am I supposed to do that? I mean, I’m doing the best I can, but just in case you’ve forgotten, we Jews aren’t exactly thriving here. Remember this little problem called Rome? I can barely practice my religion at a bare bones level without getting the hairy eyeball from some Roman prefect. We’re an occupied people, imprisoned in our own cities. We’re barely making it here – we’re living in a dusty, dry, pretty beige time. Really, John, how am I supposed to bear fruit here?

And John is going to look right back at you and say, look around you, you silly serpent. Just look. Look at all of this fruit right here, in the desert. I, John the Baptist, am standing in the middle of the wilderness, and yet I am surrounded by fruit blossoming all around me, faithful, fervent followers, standing dripping in the waters of the Jordan, succulent with Grace. Look around you. You ask how you are supposed to bear fruit here, as if here is some impossible place. But there is no impossible place with God. How can you bear fruit here? How can you not bear fruit here?  

We can sometimes get stuck asking ourselves how we can possibly bear fruit in our time, in our place. And we can imagine that Advent is a time to help ourselves move along to someplace better, some holier, more mystical place where all the conditions will be right for us to be the disciples we want to be, to be able to bear good fruit. And yes, of course Advent is a time for reflection, for repentance, for re-orienting ourselves. But this Gospel reading reminds us that Advent is also a time to bear fruit – right here, and right now. The kingdom of heaven has come near to us here, in this place, even if this place feels impossible to us. Advent is a time to bear fruit right here and right now, because there is no impossible place with God. There is no place so dry, so dusty, so altogether beige, that God cannot encourage a new blossom to grow.

Three days ago, this earth lost a man who understood this truth deeply in his very spirit. For Nelson Mandela knew how to bear fruit. He bore fruit while sitting jail cell for 27 years, fruit that flourished even in a wilderness of isolation and suffering, fruit that fed a wounded people and healed a nation, fruit that produced seeds of forgiveness and mercy, of truth and reconciliation the likes of which the world had rarely – perhaps never before – seen. Mandela’s life is an Advent life, and his witness helps to remind us that Advent is a time to bear good fruit here, right here, wherever here is. Maybe we feel like the ground beneath our feet isn’t particularly fertile, that it’s been scorched by injustice and oppression, by suffering and hypocrisy, by cynicism or secularism. Maybe we feel like the ground of our heart is dried up and desolate because of fear or anxiety, grief or pain, the uncertainty in the face of transitions, the struggle of loneliness, the dark night of the soul. But I’m guessing that John the Baptist and Nelson Mandela had moments when they felt the same way. I’m guessing that Paul, and Isaiah, and Martin Luther King, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Mother Teresa and Sojourner Truth had moments when they felt the same way. And yet the fruit their bore in their lives proves to us that there is no place that is impossible for God.

Before we got back on the bus to head out of the wilderness and back into Jerusalem, I ended up standing for a few moments next to our group’s tour guide. We looked out across the desolate landscape in a companionable silence, and then he turned to me and said, “It’s just unbelievable.” I was just about to agree with him that yes, this beige barrenness was unbelievable, when he finished his sentence – “it’s so green.” It’s so – what? It’s so green, he said, and then explained that as it was at the end of the rainy season, what we were looking at was as green as the wilderness ever gets. And then he started pointing out the growth – tiny, grey-green bushes that I hadn’t noticed before, a dusty green fuzz dusting the ridges, and flowers, too, squat little squirts of yellow just three inches above the ground. There was color there, there was life there, and growth; the wilderness was bearing fruit, right where it was.

So when we find ourselves asking in a kind of futile frustration, how are we supposed to bear fruit here, we can remember that John the Baptist has the Advent answer. Because here is where we are. Here is where the kingdom of heaven draws close. Here is where Christ comes.    

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

The Second Sunday of Advent, 8 December 2013

Saint Mark's, Philadelphia

Is there enough light?

You may listen to Father Mullen's sermon here.

This evening, when we are gathered here for a service of Advent Lessons & Carols, some of our friends and neighbors will be lighting the fifth candle on their Chanukah menorahs.  Much bally-hoo was made of the confluence of Thanksgiving Day and the first day of Chanukah (which had begun the night before).  But among those not still celebrating the Jewish festival interest quickly waned.  This is a shame, since, to my way of thinking, the coincidence of the beginning of Advent with the on-going Jewish festival of lights is more interesting, and more fruitful for reflection.

Although you will find the historical context of the festival in the apocryphal book of 1st Maccabees – namely, the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucid Empire, - you will not find any mention there of the miracle that is commemorated with the lighting of the menorah.  For that story - the story of the cruet of oil that miraculously kept the Temple lamp burning for eight days, when the Maccabeans re-dedicated the Temple - you have to look to the rabbinic tradition of the Talmud, where the miracle is asserted.  The rabbis tell us: “they searched and found only one cruse of oil which possessed the seal of the High Priest, but which contained sufficient oil for only one day's lighting; yet a miracle occurred there and they lit [the lamp] for eight days.”  (Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Shabbat, page 21b)

And so the blessing is said to this day:

Baruch attah Adonai, Eloheinu, melekh ha'olam asher kidishanu b'mitz'votav v'tzivanu l'had'lik neir shel Chanukah. (Amein)

Blessed are you Lord God, King of the universe; who has sanctified his commandments, and commanded us to kindle the Chanukah light.  Amen.

Blessed are you Lord God, King of the universe; who performed miracles for our ancestors in those days at this time.  Amen.

Blessed are you Lord God, King of the universe; who has granted us life, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this season.  Amen.

When it came to Chanukah, the ancient rabbis showed little interest in the military victory of a small group of rebels over the army of an empire.  Their interest focused on the dedication of the Temple and God’s provision to keep the lamp burning till more oil could be prepared.  Perhaps the rabbis knew that men will always fight wars, and the victors will nearly always claim that God is on their side – this was not a matter that required much investigation.

If war is perennial, however, then so is the question of whether or not there is enough oil, whether there is enough light, whether God can keep the light burning, whether darkness will encroach and prevail, whether time is running out.  These questions were far more important to the rabbis than the military victory.  And perhaps they remain important to us today.

I have just finished reading a remarkable and heartbreaking account of one military unit’s experience in the Iraq War.  And the book does recount a few discussions about military tactics, etc.  But the concerns that it presents as foremost in the minds of the men who were fighting, and suffering, and bleeding, and dying are those same concerns about their lives, their families, their friends, and the world around them, that are prompted by the Chanukah prayer:

Is there enough light in the world?

Will God keep it burning?

Will darkness encroach and prevail?

Will time run out?

Of course, the questions the soldiers ask are not so abstract, they are more specific:

Will I ever be able to sleep again without these nightmares?

Will I ever be able to forgive them?

Will I ever be able to forgive myself?

Will I ever be able to see again?  Or walk again?  Or hold my child again?

Is my time running out?

But men at war are not the only ones who ask such questions.  The rest of us do, too – more often in the specific than in the abstract.  If some of you had not recently been wrestling with such questions, on your own terms, I would be surprised.  So let’s boil it down to one question:  Is there enough light?

I propose that if that is the Chanukah question, and if it is a question that pervades our lives in this difficult and dangerous world, then it is also the Advent question: Is there enough light?

How easy it is to feel as though we live in a world that requires eight days of oil, but we have only enough for a single day.  Of course, we live in a world that also wants to tell us there is no God to worship, so why are you worried about oil, which, by the way is a tradable commodity, for which there is an active and accessible market, so what are you worried about anyway?

Is there enough light? 

Advent seems to want us to sit with the question: to acknowledge it; to give it real space; to recognize it as a significant question that deserves careful consideration.  Advent does not seem to want to rush to an answer.  Advent seems to appreciate these shorter, darker days when flickering candles are both more suggestive and more vulnerable than they are in the long days of summer.  Advent wants to be your chaplain for questions about the pervasive quality of the dark, allowing you to ask these questions:

Does it seem this dark to everybody?

Why can’t I sleep?

Will things ever get better?

Will the pain, the grief, the memory, the sadness ever go away?

Advent hears the panic in your voice when you report that you have been able to find only a single cruet of oil, with barely enough in it to keep your lamp burning for a single day!

But Advent is not silent in response to these questions, to this worry.  Advent has something to say in response to all of them.  Advent has a reply to the question, “Is there enough light?”  Advent says:

Child, light your candle, and see.  Pour the oil into your lamp, and light its wick, and behold.  The warfare has been long.  The night has been long.  The darkness has been with us for a long time, it’s true.  But now, lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.

Advent says, the night is far spent, the day is near, and there is oil in this cruet; who knows what God will do?

The rabbis allowed for the possibility that instead of lighting one candle on the first night of Chanukah and lighting an additional candle each night thereafter you could do the reverse: begin with eight candles and light one less for each night of the festival.  But Rabbi Hillel maintained that the former pattern should be kept because “we increase in matters of sanctity but do not reduce.”  I am thankful that Hillel’s pattern prevails most often, and I am thankful for his reasoning, too.

And if I am to borrow the flame of Chanukah this Advent, I am doubly grateful, since the Advent light does, indeed grow stronger and stronger as the days progress.

And the answer to the question becomes, I pray, more clear with every passing day, as God works his healing and acceptance in our hearts and souls, as he opens our eyes to see paths that lie before us with hope and expectation, as he banishes fear, despair, and loneliness from us, and begs us make room for him – for the Child who is coming, the Friend we have waited for, the Love we so much need, the Master we might at last obey, and the Savior who finally shines with brightness to overcome the darkness, and who is himself the Light.

Advent promises that the light is coming – coming again.  But about that day and hour when it shall finally come, no one knows.

Till then, we could do worse than to learn from the prayers of our brothers and sisters for these eight days.

Blessed are you Lord God, King of the universe; who has sanctified his commandments, and commanded us to kindle the light.  Amen.

Blessed are you Lord God, King of the universe; who performed miracles for our ancestors in those days at this time.  Amen.

Blessed are you Lord God, King of the universe; who has granted us life, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this season.  Amen.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

1 December 2013

Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia