Episcopal News Service February 7, 2007 In this season: 'Christ in the stranger's guise' A reflection from the Presiding Bishop [ENS] Note to readers: With this posting, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori continues a series of occasional reflections for the people of the Episcopal Church. The reflections are also available on the Presiding Bishop's web pages at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/pb. In this season: 'Christ in the stranger's guise' For the People of the Episcopal Church As the primates of the Anglican Communion prepare to gather next week in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, I ask your prayers for all of us, and for our time together. I especially ask you to remember the mission that is our reason for being as the Anglican Communion ?- God's mission to heal this broken world. The primates gather for fellowship, study, and conversation at these meetings, begun less than thirty years ago. The ability to know each other and understand our various contexts is the foundation of shared mission. We cannot easily be partners with strangers. That meeting ends just as Lent begins, and as we approach this season, I would suggest three particularly appropriate attitudes. Traditionally the season has been one in which candidates prepared for baptism through prayer, fasting, and acts of mercy. This year, we might all constructively pray for greater awareness and understanding of the strangers around us, particularly those strangers whom we are not yet ready or able to call friends. That awareness can only come with our own greater investment in discovering the image of God in those strangers. It will require an attitude of humility, recognizing that we can not possibly know the fullness of God if we are unable to recognize his hand at work in unlikely persons or contexts. We might constructively fast from a desire to make assumptions about the motives of those strangers not yet become friends. And finally, we might constructively focus our passions on those in whom Christ is most evident ?- the suffering, those on the margins, the forgotten, ignored, and overlooked of our world. And as we seek to serve that suffering servant made evident in our midst, we might reflect on what Jesus himself called us ?- friends (John 15:15). Celtic Rune of Hospitality I saw a stranger yesterday; I put food in the eating place, drink in the drinking place, music in the listening place; and in the sacred name of the Triune God he blessed myself and my house, my cattle and my dear ones, and the lark said in her song: Oft, Oft, Oft, goes Christ in the stranger's guise. Shalom, Katharine -- The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori is Presiding Bishop and Primate of the Episcopal Church. - - - - - - - - - To SUBSCRIBE to Episcopal News Service, send a blank email message, from the address which you wish subscribed, to join-enslist@epicom.org and include "subscribe" in the subject line. Send QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS to news@episcopalchurch.org ENS provides information and resources which we consider to be of interest to our readers. However, statements and opinions expressed in the articles and communications herein, are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of ENS or the Episcopal Church.