That Our Joy May Be Complete

The great message of Easter, indeed, the great message of Christianity, is that sin is forgiven for those who have faith in Christ.

To understand this requires multiple levels of comprehension, indeed, even dimensions of reality.

Sin, is disconnection, from God. The main way humans sin—disconnect from God—is to disconnect from each other. The opposite of sin is love. When we have love for one another—the love which is God—then we cannot be disconnected.

Today I heard a commentator on radio say that the problem in the world arises when both sides in a conflict are too hurt to stop hurting. In other words, so long as both sides are too hurt, they are so absent of love that they cannot see their way to a human realization of a way out.

Hurt is hurt; but let us remember the power of forgiveness. Forgiving is not forgetting, it is not forgoing justice, but it is the way to clear away the wall that prevents love. When that wall is raised there is no possibility of grace. The wall must be erased.

This is the essence of Christianity. Forgiveness is ours, by faith, by grace even, if only we can tear down those walls of sin that disconnect us.

Connection is God’s plan for creation. Not just connection, but synchrony, interconnection that is greater than the sum of its parts—otherwise known to us as “love builds up.” Connection, love, glory, blessing.

Both the epistle [1 John 1:1-2:2] and the Gospel reading [John 20:19-31] are from the author of John’s Gospel this week. The message is this: “what was from the beginning” “concerning the word of life,” that “our joy may be complete” when we walk in love. When we walk in love we understand that when sin occurs forgiveness is ours if we ask for it in faith. “Do not doubt but believe.”

Erasing the wall is the hard part. We who are created LGBTQ+  in God’s image learn to live with the powerful love in our souls even in the midst of oppression from all sides. We must erase the walls that separate us from each other—“Oh, how good and pleasant it is, when brethren live together in unity” [Psalm 133: 1]. If we can tear down those walls, we will see Christ among us and receive his peace.

2 Easter Year B 2024 RCL (Acts 4:32-35; Psalm 133 Ecce, quam bonum!; 1 John 1:1-2:2; John 20:19-31)

©2024 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

By Grace … Alleluia!

We have tulips. We have daffodils. We have sunshine. We have health. We have love. We have what God has intended for us.

And, we have joy. Joy is the outward expression of happiness, which is the inward expression of grace, which is God’s gift to those who remain connected, connected to each other most of all, which is how we remain connected to God.

Yes, of course, as Peter preaches: “God shows no partiality … anyone who … does what is right is acceptable.” And “everyone who believes in [Jesus Christ] receives forgiveness of sins through his name.” All of us are connected among us and with God through our faith in the one who taught us of the ultimate power of love.

God is love, and love is salvation, because love builds up, love creates, love heals, love sustains, love infuses, love is the greatest power God has given us. We sing [Psalm 118: 14-15] with exultation about our victory, we celebrate our righteousness—read that “right ness”—read that “walking in love.”

By God’s grace Paul writes [1 Corinthians 15:1-11] “I am what I am.” All that we are and whatever we are, we are by God’s grace. Remember, God created us in God’s own image. Next time you look in the mirror remember, you reflect the image of God. LGBTQ+ people, by grace, we are who we are, created LGBTQ+ in the image of God. Amen.

Of, course, today is Easter. Today is the Feast of the Resurrection. Today is the celebration of God’s promise to us—wait, even more, it is the celebration of our faith in God’s promise to us—of eternal life in the dimension of love. All we have to do is get it.

In John’s Gospel [20:1-18] it is early Saturday morning, before sunrise the day after the crucifixion, when Mary Magdalene gets up and goes to the tomb. She is ashamed for not having gone earlier to perform ablutions and tend to the body of Jesus. She is consumed with guilt and her own bad feelings. She therefore does not understand when she arrives to find the tombstone rolled away.

She is shocked. She runs to the disciples; note it is Peter and “the one Jesus loved” who come running. It literally says she ran, and then they ran. It says they ran together–connection. Peter and the disciple Jesus loved see that Jesus is gone. The one Jesus loved is first to believe. Love builds up. Love triumphs. Love conquers all.

But Mary Magdalene stood there weeping. Suddenly two angels appeared to ask her why she was weeping, then Jesus himself asks her.

She does not recognize him.

She thinks he’s a groundskeeper.

But when he calls her by name she shifts dimensions, her emotions fall away, and now she sees, now she knows, now she believes. By grace, she is who she is, in God’s image.

For us, as for Mary Magdalene, Peter, and the disciple Jesus loved, salvation comes in the most difficult moments when we are the most confused. All it asks of us is faith, faith in love. If we love enough, we will enter the dimension where love prevails. This is the message of Easter.

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Easter Day Year B RCL 2024 (Acts 10:34-43; Psalm 118:14-29 Confitemini Domino; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; John 20:1-18)

©2024 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Ponder, Rejoice

Have you had a good Advent? I have to say I did, although it also has been a challenging time in my life, somehow I suppose mirroring the world at large. Still, I have learned much this Advent, including how grateful I am for this venue and the revelations it brings to me.

Can we measure Advent? No, of course not. Not really. All we can do is ponder—ponder introspection, ponder revelation, ponder theophany, pondor comfort, pondor joy.

Was it introspective? Did you receive revelation?

Not long to wait now. Christmas will be here in a few hours; perhaps, given God’s space-time continuum Christmas already is with you. Expectation fulfilled once more, joy received in sweet harmony, blessings manifested eternally … in love.

We who are the LGBTQ+ people of creation are called to be hosts of love. We are called to be people of love. When love manifests in our hearts the dimension in which we reside expands with joy. When we learn to walk in love there is no longer any limit for those of us who are connected. And in this way, we perceive the joyous revelation that God is always with us because God is always within us.

Love dwells within, in the soul, it bursts forth from the heart, it finds realization in the Spirit. All we need do is remember to feel the love in our hearts.

The transformative power of love is ours.

All we need do is be present, to ponder all these things in our hearts, to let it be with us according to God’s word.

Our world is indeed a mysterious place. War rages, unrest is all around us like a raging sea.

And yet the truth rises to the surface and love always wins. What greater Christmas present could there be for the LGBTQ+ community than the announcement that the Roman church will join much of the rest of catholic Christianity in welcoming and celebrating and, indeed, blessing, our love.

It is a challenge, a Christmas challenge, a loving joyous challenge, to let our love shine like the star in the night leading creation to the fulfillment of the synchrony of love.

Merry Christmas.

4 Advent Year A 2023 RCL (2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16; Canticle 15 The Song of Mary Magnificat; Romans 16:25-27; Luke 1:26-38)

©2023 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Lanterns, Singing, Candy and Embracing Love

Yesterday was Sint Maarten’s Day (St. Martin). In the Netherlands, it is the evening (in reality in my experience usually late afternoon) on which children dress up, and with their parents in tow, carrying lanterns, go from house to house singing songs and expecting candy. (A good summary is here: https://expatshaarlem.nl/sint-maarten-day/ )

I know this because (a) I’ve worked in Amsterdam for decades and I’ve seen it more than once; and b) at 3am yesterday Thuisbezorgd (a kind of Dutch Doordash app) woke me up to tell me.

Kids carry lanterns because of course it’s dark from late afternoon. The difference between U.S. Halloween and Dutch Sint Maartensdag is subtle—after all both are autumn harvest celebrations, both involve kids and lanterns and candy—but in the Netherlands nobody is trying to scare anybody and nobody is trying to scare away monsters and nobody turns their front yard into a pretend haunted graveyard.

So, a good question is why? How did this cultural practice migrate so differently? The right answer is: I don’t have a clue!

But that’s not quite true, I have some clues.

One is, the US is dominated by autocratic religious cultures that depend on scaring the bejeezus out of everybody to keep them “controlled.” In the Netherlands those cultures were wiped out in the Reformation, which you might recall was 500 years ago. Spending real time in the Netherlands reveals a culture that not only “tolerates” diversity but actually embraces it, invites it, welcomes it. The idea of central “control,” such as the recently anointed house speaker’s idea that LGBTQ people should be outlawed, converted—controlled—just doesn’t exist there.

Another clue is simply the law of God’s love: you get more candy by giving love than you do by being mean. Dutch culture is very openly and directly loving.

Oh well …

In our scripture this week Joshua [24:1-3a; 14-25], having taken Moses’ mantel, now makes a covenant with the people. It is a long back and forth (go ahead, read it!). He reminds them that while they were escaping slavery and crossing seas held back by God like walls for them to cross on dry land, they were still carrying their idols from before. He reminds them God knows this. He reminds them, God demands that they reject all other Gods.

Why is this important? Because, God is love, the only law of God is love, and the only way to love is to focus on love. So long as you rely on idols—like the notion that people who are other than you can be “controlled”—you are worshipping those idols and not God and therefore not love.

Love is the only answer. Always.

The simple truth of love is that life is full of exigencies, but it is the simple love of those around us that sustains us. Whether it is your spouse or the neighbor across the street or the usher at church, it is love, and it sustains us. We give thanks, recounting the love we know, in order to build more love [Psalm 78:4].

Paul says people must “encourage one another [1 Thessalonians 4:13-18].” Yes, I have taken this out of context. But I think the importance of the phrase is the synchrony of love in community, the kids sing and raise joy, folks give them candy, everybody smiles, the love is spread, the community is engaged, the love is synchronous and it is expanded exponentially.

In Matthew’s Gospel [25:1-13] Jesus says “the kingdom of heaven will be like this” and then he tells a complex story about a bridegroom and bridesmaids and lamps and oil … who can keep it all in order? And at the end the point is that the details didn’t matter. Only having and giving love mattered; without love one is never “ready;” walking in love means one always is “ready” or as Jesus put is “awake.”

Because the only law is love.

Embrace love, invite love, welcome love, sing, create joy, expand God’s love exponentially.

Proper 27 Year A RCL 2023 (Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25; Psalm 78:1-7 Attendite, popule; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; Matthew 25:1-13)

©The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Keep on

Time is, as Einstein pointed out, an illusion. All time is all time all at once. The dimension of love is always not past or future but always now. We must live in it always now.

And, therefore, we must always be one with God. God wants us like a lover. God wants us to be always one with God. We must let God know we are there for God.

The life God wants us to live is a life of love, a life of realizing joy, a life of giving joy.

God wants us to understand that the message of salvation is that it always is always ours. There are no conditions other than that we walk in love in the dimension where God is.

Jesus pronounced “blessings”—promises of acceptance already given—to those who were willing to walk in love. All he asked in return is that they should rejoice and be glad.

My husband gave me a CD called “ExtANNAganza” from the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus singing songs from Abba. It is an amazing gift for a whole lot of reasons. Of course, because he knows the music makes me joyful. It is music that just makes you feel good. But it particularly seems to me to be the hymnary of the LGBTQ community.

There are two extraordinary spiritual experiences in my life. I’ve written about them before, I know. But here I go again. The first was at the consecration of The Right Reverend Barbara Harris, the first woman bishop in the church of God (ok, since Joan the Pope) in Boston in 1989. Wikipedia tells me I was one of 8,000 people there that day. The thing I remember the most clearly was the moment in the liturgy when the 8,000 all rose to sing the Nicene Creed in unison. I could never ever have expected such a moment of power to come from the repetition of an ancient rite, I could never had imagined such a diverse crowd of witnesses coming together in the one thing that we all shared. It was almost an overpowering moment.

The other was, at the closing ceremony of the Gay Games in Amsterdam in 1998. I had been ordained a priest two months at that point. My friends who had supported my decade-long journey to ordination had all chipped in to give me the gift of that trip. And it had been an amazing couple of weeks, learning about the Netherlands, experiencing the thing the Gay Games gives, which is the sense of belonging no matter what. And now here we all were at the final evening, under the warm summer sky. And as the ceremony opened the strains of “Dancing Queen” began. And 50,000 (count us, 50,000!) queers all rose at once to sing and dance along. I remember my own joy. But I also remember the tears streaming down the faces of those all around me as we all stood and sang and dance. What amazing joy. What amazing reality. What amazing participation in God’s dimension of love.

And here is the message for us now—we must always hang onto that love that we all share, that joy that we alone can bring. Because our joy can change the world.

Look what we have done in three decades since—two lesbian governors, a gay former presidential candidate now in the cabinet, a trans-person in the cabinet—gay and lesbian bishops of the church, even a Roman pope who admits it is wrong to persecute us.

Keep on loving, keep on dancing, keep on creating joy, keep on keeping on.

Fourth Sunday After Epiphany Year A 2023 RCL (Micah 6:1-8; Psalm 15; 1 Corinthians 1:18-31; Matthew 5:1-12)

©The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Palpable Real Joy

Beauty is everywhere in God’s creation. Beauty is the physical manifestation of the love that is God, that is the breath of God, that is the power and glory of God. Beauty is the love that made us and is within us and that propels us into loving synchrony with each other and with all of creation. Beauty is the power of love spinning the wheels and meshing the gears that move all of us constantly forward toward God’s dimension of love.

And Christmas is the annual celebration of this beauty, the ritual feast when we not only prepare for beauty but we express beauty in every way we can, from weird sweaters to fruit cakes to special cookies to the love expressed in every gift.

Thus, the message of Christmas is that God is inviting us to palpable real joy, the kind that comes with the reality of babies and immigrant journeys and meals and wonder and the joy of feeling warm and feeling loved. God is inviting us to feel loved.

God is inviting us to invite each other to feel loved. God is inviting us to love, to give love, to “build up the highway, clear it of stones” to make the way of love the way of joy and gladness.

God is inviting us to rejoice that we, too, are loved. God is inviting us to listen to the earth give thanks to God, God is inviting us to rejoice in the snow and the ice and the bitter cold and the relief that comes after in the gentle rain and the cool crisp air and in the beautiful colorful lights in the night.

God is reminding us that we are already, by our creation in God’s own image, heirs of God’s eternity.

Yes, all of us– gay men, trans folks, lesbian women, bisexual and queer and nonbinary and questioning people and all who wish they did not have the curse of being who they are in a society that is often oppressive in its homogeneity—yes, all of us: God is inviting us to rejoice in our creation in God’s own image. God is inviting us to rejoice in the persons we now are and always are becoming. We all, always, are becoming. That is the grace of the life God has given us.

“Do not be afraid.” To fear is to give yourself over to the absence of love with which God created you. When you can set aside fear you too will see the multitude of the heavenly host and you too will sing “Glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth peace.” And then, like the shepherds of yore, you must “go” to “see.” Because life is to be lived on a forward trajectory.

The message of Christmas again, is that God is inviting us to palpable real joy.

Merry Christmas.

Christmas 2 All Years RCL 2022 (Isaiah 62:6-12; Titus 3:4-7; Luke 2:(1-7)8-20; Psalm 97)

©2022 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Prayer, Joy, Faith

We are on a prayer trajectory it seems. Last Sunday I wrote about sustaining, connecting, present prayer. This week the scripture again points us directly to prayer, but this time with an emphasis on the expression of faith.

Is your prayer “lead me, guide me?” This is the prayer God, creation, the universe, the power of love, is looking for. “Lead me, guide me.”

This week my husband and I drove up (okay, we drove to the east) the Columbia Gorge and back so he could have a fun outing and a good sandwich. It was great. Portland and environs were engulfed in smoke from a wildfire in Washington State, but the Gorge was clear, with marine winds sweeping up the river. The big water of the Columbia River is soothing all by itself in its power and majesty. My husband ate an enormous bratwurst. I bought a whole salmon from the good folks under the Bridge of the Gods. It was fun, but it also was tender for the love we shared in the quiet moments in the presence of nature. We loved each other even more as we were doing it and yet more still in the evening at home, basking in the joy of the day.

I think we all as LGBTQ people are feeling threatened, for good reason. Those of us who are old enough probably know that LGBTQ people had vast liberation in the early 20^th century but it was all pulled back by oppression from the right wing in the 1930s and that lasted until the 1970s. We all know it could easily happen again.

Whatever else we do in the political world, which is not my mandate here, we must follow the law of love that God gives us. We must have faith expressed in the love we share. Hope must persist in the plans we make. And charity is how we make sure that both faith and hope persist—we must remain in the aura of love, we must constantly “be glad and rejoice.”

LOL there is a lot of scripture this week about rain. Well I can tell you we had months of 100 degree heat, and then we had a week of air quality nightmares with yellow foggy skies, and then God’s rain began and now even my lawn that looked like hay after one night of rain is green again. Hallelujah!

The sky is blue and hope has returned to us in creation.

In Joel 2:23-32 the prophet is led by God to proclaim the relief of rain “[God] has given the early rain for your vindication, [God] has poured down for you abundant rain, the early and the later rain, as before.” It is a sign that faith has been rewarded by equilibrium, it is the basis of hope for fertility and growth and of course for love. The psalmist (Psalm 65: 9, 11) responds “you visit the earth and water it abundantly; you make it very plenteous; the river of God is full of water … you drench the furrows and smooth out the ridges; with heavy rain you soften the ground and bless its increase.” At the close of his second letter to Timothy (4:6-8, 16-18) Paul stands firm on his own faith “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”

Luke 18:9-14 records a parable of Jesus comparing the prayer of the self-righteous to the prayer of a sinner.  Jesus reminds us “all who exalt themselves will be humbled, ….”

“Lead me, guide me” indeed. Pray. Have faith.

The rain will come, the earth will nourish all creation with love.

Above all else have joy. Because joy is the beginning of love, given, which is faith expressed.

Proper 25 Year C 2022 RCL (Joel 2:23-32; Psalm 65 Te decet hymnus; 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18; Luke 18:9-14)

©2022 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Nonconventional Joy

These wonderful stories from the Acts of the Apostles are often considered to be about the founding of the church but it is clear that they are really about how the Gospel of love spread (did spread, can spread, does spread) from household to household, primarily through nonconventional populations. That’s an academic way of saying the people we see being baptized and embracing the Gospel in these stories are the outcasts of their time and place. This is surely directly a call to LGBTQ people. Look at what it says! Last week (Acts 16:13-15) we had “Lydia the woman who sold purple cloth.” She listened and understood and heard the message and her whole household was baptized. This week (Acts 16:16 ff.), we have gone out from Lydia’s household in Thyatira to Phillippi and now we meet a carny, described as a “slave girl who had a spirit of divination.” Later, after a fantastic earthquake comes as the climax of a prison hymn sing along, the suicidal jailer receives the Gospel and invites the whole community into his household. Does any part of this story ring any bells for you? How about a pride fest? How about a gay bar? How about drag and dancing queens? What do all of them have in common? They all have embraced joy and full out humanity as life’s path.

So it is to the people who embrace joy as life that first Jesus and then his apostles appeal. And it is these LGBTQ people who were and are the first missionaries of the Gospel, the first apostles of love.

The Revelation (22:12 ff.) reminds us that the reward of a life of love is to know timelessness. Jesus always is coming, Jesus always has come, Jesus always is to come; love always is coming, love always has come, love always is to come. Time is not linear, time is all at once. That is how love is forever both the beginning and the end. Jesus’ high priestly prayer in John (17ff.) points to the same idea, that love is all and love is always timeless. We must learn to embrace love in all things. We who love are love.

Where are we in this timelessness today? Are we on a linear path or are we living in the timeless reality of God? In the United States it is a holiday weekend—Memorial Day. COVID is rising relentlessly again even as people ignore means of mitigation, every other day it seems I learn another friend of mine has succumbed to it, after more than two years of careful avoidance. War in Ukraine plods on. The week just past in which we planned a remembrance of the murder of George Floyd we wound up sandwiched in what surely is timelessness between mass shootings in a supermarket in Buffalo and an elementary school in Texas. One of my cooking magazines is filled with references to queerness even as the threat of institutionalized violence against a woman’s right to choose hangs over us. How do we choose love in this time, in these times?

God’s eternal message to us is that we need to learn, to practice, to constantly improve, to appreciate truly how to love. It is this sense of love within us that is the manifestation of the Holy Spirit. We must embrace joy, we must follow the example of the LGBTQ lives we have been created to live by learning not only to lead lives of joy but to spread our love. Love builds up. Love help us! Amen.

7 Easter Year C 2022 RCL (Acts 16:16-34; Psalm 97 Dominus regnavit; Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21; John 17:20-26)

©2022 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Easter Joy is Easter Love. Alleluia!

The magic of Easter is the magic of new things, of springtime, of sunshine and flowers and let’s just admit it—hope. And yet, the magic of Easter is the magic of old things made new, of regeneration, of sunshine and flowers and springtime yet again and again and again, and the reassurance of that is the reassurance of the certainty of love. And hope.

We know the Easter story so well we sometimes forget to focus on its meaning, the immanent eternal universality of love. God is love, and the actions that help us understand the elements of the Christ event are the actions of transmitting love.

Acts 10: Love shows no partiality. We who are love are witnesses to all that love has accomplished. Everyone who walks in love receives eternal connection to the source and power of love

Psalm 118: Give thanks to love, to the source of love, to the building up of love. Love’s mercy endures for ever. Love is my strength, love is my song, love has become my salvation. Love’s doing is marvelous in every way. On this day love has acted, we rejoice in love with love.

In the story of the resurrection told in John chapter 20, we have clearly a logical family, like the logical families of so many of us who are created with love as God’s LGBTQ people. This logical family is created by love, sustained by love, walking in love, and yet is forced to persist in love when pain is inflicted.

John 20: The “other” disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, outran all the others so powerful was the love and hope within. The “other” disciple saw and believed in what the power of love had done. Mary Magdalene’s love was so powerful he heart was broken, she wept, but angels comforted her. When she saw Jesus she supposed him to be the gardener, who was tending creation, as always, with love. She knew him when he spoke her name. She praised the power of love which had yet again transformed her.

The truth of the resurrection is this: it is not just as an event in history that we honor. Rather, it is a timeless event in our own hearts. We go through cruxifixion and resurrection daily, constantly even, in our lives. We depend on the promise of the eternity of love to restore and replenish us. That is the promise of Christ.

For us in the LGBTQ community, it is the promise that the love with which we are created in love’s very image is not only real but powerful and eternal. It is the knowledge that our loves and logical families are honored by love, that there is always another morning, that the tulips always will bloom in spring, that love is everywhere that we can embrace it.

Easter joy is Easter love. Alleluia!

 

Easter Day Principal Service Year C RCL 2022 (Acts 10:34-43; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24  Confitemini Domino; 1 Corinthians 15:19-26 ; John 20:1-18)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Making Room for Love

I now declare it officially Christmas; Advent has ended, the expectation is fulfilled. Go ahead, light up your lights, power up the Christmas tree, knock yourself out with Christmas music.

The solstice is imminent, soon there will be more daylight than dusk in our days, soon love will blossom.

The Jeopardy professor’s tournament is over, Amy Schneider, trans-glorious champion will be back tomorrow.

Love will blossom this week, its power growing day by day until we reach Christmas Eve on Friday night and then Christmas itself on Saturday. We will sing “Joy to the World” and we will feast and we will hug and kiss. We will exchange gifts, because they are symbols of our love. My husband put all the ornaments on our enormous tree himself last weekend, and yesterday eagerly piled wrapped presents under it, his smile ebullient, his joy permeating the whole house. It made me love him even more, if you can imagine such a thing. Love builds up. We are so blessed.

It’s Christmas. Christmas is all about making room for love. God has prepared a mansion of love in which God has called us to dwell. God has prepared the path for love into our hearts and from our hearts into the world, a synergy of love building up joy and peace and righteousness and justice. Our souls proclaim God’s greatness and our spirits rejoice. In God’s love we are blessed, and with God’s love we bless each other.

The pandemic surges again, but this time we are prepared, we know how to take care of ourselves, we will not let even this suppress the love God has called us to live into, to share, to build up.

Go ahead, embrace joy.

4 Advent Year C 2021 RCL (Micah 5:2-5a; Canticle 15 Magnificat Luke 1:46-55; Hebrews 10:5-10; Luke 1:39-45 (46-55))

©2021 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.