Message from Fr. Austin 

Hello, Goodbye, Hello

Over the decade I’ve been serving at St. Paul’s, a certain characteristic of our common life has stood out to me: the necessary/non-optional nature of our welcoming ministry. 

Many of the US based parishes I’ve known and served are multi-generational congregations—drawing the bulk of their membership from successive generations of founding families or a locally rooted population. The great benefit of a congregation of this makeup is that it imparts an important kind of stability, especially when it comes to the stewardship of vital parish ministries. I remember a parishioner recounting with appropriate pride when I first began my curacy, “When I prepare the altar on Sundays, and when I polish the silver or mend the altar frontal, I feel connected to my grandmother who used to do the same. Mom and I now serve together on altar guild and it is a blessing to do so together.” Not only does this kind of continuity faithfully transmit hard-won wisdom, but it also usually develops great devotion and affection for the institution that serves as an historical connecting point for its members. The downside to such a congregation is that, unless carefully attended to by leadership, a widening divide can develop between insiders and outsiders—a gap that is especially tough to bridge in a post-Christendom world where generational replacements are no longer assured.

St. Paul’s is not this kind of congregation. Sometimes, I wish it were, because I would love to benefit from such wisdom and fidelity in our ministries! St. Paul’s, since its humble beginnings as Grace Church in 1859, instead has been a church that has grown adept at welcoming new members, walking with them for however long their sojourn in Rome lasts, and then hopefully saying goodbye well with the understanding that a member leaving Rome does not mean they’ve left our hearts forever. This pattern of community life most likely arose due to our connection to the American Legation and later US Embassy and the attendant cyclical nature of tenures in the diplomatic system. And over 163 years of our life together, such a pattern has written the ministry of hospitality into our communal DNA. Because we know that members may only be with us for a limited time, we’ve had to take an important faithful risk —to invest in these relationships and invite those who are recently arrived into the fullest circle of life in our community they can handle. Even though we know that it will hurt when those we love have moved on from Rome, and even though such an investment requires an extraordinary level of energy and effort to begin the process again with newcomers, St. Paul’s has found this particular way of being a congregation to be much more blessing than curse. In fact, I would say that it has prepared us well for a world in which generational membership is no longer assured, and in which newcomers are more the rule than the exception. Our challenge is to keep looking for even better and more effective ways to embrace and empower those that God sends our way, trusting that no matter how long their sojourn, we will all encounter Christ more fully as we worship and learn together, and give ourselves to one another in faith and love.

One never knows how even a short stint among us may turn into something larger. In the winter of 1867, Robert J. Nevin came to Rome for his health and supplied for the Rev. Theodore Lyman at Grace Church for a few months. Nevin returned a few years later to serve as the first Rector and builder of St. Paul’s, a tenure lasting 37 years. The Rev. Walter Lowrie came to supply for Nevin in 1899 while the Rector was officiating President Ulysses S. Grant’s daughter’s wedding in the US. Lowrie, moved by the experience, returned 7 years later to serve as St. Paul’s second Rector. In my own case, it was meeting The Rt. Rev. Michael Vono while visiting St. Paul’s on a January term trip to Rome in 2001 that introduced me to the ministry and mission of this place. I never would have dreamed then that 11 years later I’d return as Rector! And I know from connections with parishioners around the world, that this story of a brief initial exposure leading to a life-long love and commitment, is a common one for those who have called this church and this city home.

Let us thank God this week for the ministry of hospitality that has been entrusted to us. I pray that we will look for ways to strengthen our welcoming and empowering of those whom God draws to us, regardless of the duration of their stay. And I pray that as we continue to celebrate the many blessings of these 150 years of St. Paul’s, we might look for new ways to offer the fruits of our peculiar and holy experience to the wider church. 

Blessings to you, dear saints of God,

Austin