Shining Through Us All

Matthew 5:14-16

Father Mark reflects with deep gratitude on his 28 years of ministry at Christ Church, recognizing how profoundly the community has shaped his spiritual growth. He names his journey toward greater maturity, humility, compassion, and openness, crediting the people of the parish—past and present—as his teachers. Through shared prayer, study, dialogue, correction, and love, the congregation has embodied its motto of “going deeper,” helping him learn, sometimes through mistakes, the grace of falling upward.

Drawing on the readings from Micah, Colossians, and the Gospel of Matthew, Father Mark emphasizes that Christian virtues—justice, kindness, humility, compassion, patience, love, peace, and gracious speech—are simple to name but difficult to live. These qualities are not achieved by effort alone but by allowing the peace of Christ and the word of Christ to dwell within us. Gratitude, he teaches, is a powerful spiritual practice that disarms the ego and opens us to divine grace, enabling true transformation and humility.

Finally, Father Mark affirms the community’s calling to be “the light of the world,” embodying Christ’s love amid division, cruelty, and darkness. Though he is departing physically, he assures the congregation that there is no distance in the heart of God, and that shared love for the Gospel, justice, and community continues to bind them together. With poetry and prayer, he expresses profound thanksgiving, entrusting their shared life to God’s grace and celebrating the enduring light of Christ shining through them all.

Scripture quotations are from New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.