Episcopal News Service November 5, 2006
Presiding Bishop takes seat in Washington National Cathedral
All Saints Sunday assembly hears Jefferts Schori call Church to 'burn brightly and transform this world'
By Mary Frances Schjonberg
[ENS] A day after she was invested as the 26th Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts Schori officially took her seat in Washington National Cathedral on November 5 in a festal All Saints Sunday Eucharist.
During her sermon, Jefferts Schori called the congregation and the Church to sainthood, and told them its cost.
"Saints are those who are vulnerable to the gut-wrenching pain of this world," she said. "Some of us have to be seized by the throat or thrown into the tomb before we can find that depth of compassion. And perhaps unless we are, we won't leave our comfortable narrow lives - or our remarkably nasty ones - to wake up and begin to answer that pain."
Jefferts Schori became the eighth Presiding Bishop to take the official chair in the Cathedral. The 1940 General Convention adopted a recommendation from Virginia Bishop Henry St. George Tucker, elected Presiding Bishop in 1937, suggesting that Washington National Cathedral was the suitable seat for the Presiding Bishop. Tucker was thus seated in 1941 as the first of the eight. (A listing of all the Episcopal Church's Presiding Bishops is available at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/78716_ENG_HTM.htm?menupage=29883)
Edmond Lee Browning and Frank Griswold, the 24th and 25th Presiding Bishops respectively, participated in Jefferts Schori's investiture (http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_79235_ENG_HTM.htm) November 4 at the Cathedral.
The Blindman brothers, two Oglala Lakota-Paiute Indians from Wadsworth, Nevada, drew the assembly together for the November 5 service with drums and chant, and brought the altar party and choirs into the Cathedral. Their music followed preludes from the carrillon, organ and other instruments, the SOL music group, and the Gospel Choir of St. Thomas African Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. The latter group led the assembly in "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" before the singing of the traditional All Saints hymn "For All the Saints" to usher in the service's entrance rite.
Jefferts Schori's seating came just after the liturgy's opening acclamation, as Cathedral Dean Samuel Lloyd welcomed her and told her that the cathedral was "honored to host the inauguration of this new season of ministry."
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_79272_ENG_HTM.htm
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