St. Francis The Episcopal Church In Potomac

At St. Francis, worship is the heart of all we do. And we worship not in a vacuum but in the communion of the saints, in what the Book of Common Prayer calls "the company of heaven." At the Great Thanksgiving of the Eucharistic liturgy, the celebrant leading our prayers says, "It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty, that we should at all times, and in all places, give thanks unto thee, O Lord, holy Father, almighty, everlasting God." A prayer appropriate to the occasion is said, and then, "Therefore with Angels and Archangels, and with all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify thy glorious Name; evermore praising thee, and saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts: Heaven and earth are full of thy glory. Glory be to thee, O Lord Most High."
    It's not enough to say that on a Sunday morning, we can be found in church at the corner of River and Counselman Roads in Potomac, Maryland. Well, yes, in a manner of speaking, that's where we are. But we are also, no less literally, in the heavenlies with the Angels and Archangels and all the company of heaven. It is a mystery—which is one of the meanings of the word sacrament. It is into that mystery that St. Francis invites people, including people who aren't here yet.
    Each week, we'll post under The Company of Heaven something said by someone in that company—a word from, say, Augustine of Hippo one week, and something from Jaroslav Pelikan the next, and so on—in that conversation which is the Christian tradition. Click on what you see in that area of the home page, and you'll be taken to the Company of Heaven Archive, wherein you'll find more about the person featured that week as well as more information about the people featured weeks before. Incidentally, it was Pelikan who wrote, "Tradition is not the dead faith of the living, but the living faith of the dead." He said that here in Washington, DC, in his 1983 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities later published as The Vindication of Tradition.