Compline Hospitality Ministers
on July 29, 2026
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Eucharistic Visitors
Saint Mark’s Cathedral's team of Eucharistic Visitors is a vital part of our sacramental life. This team of licensed lay ministers is available to take Holy Communion to those who are shut-in, hospitalized, or unable to attend because of health. A Eucharistic Visitor (EV) is not a substitute for clergy, but rather provides a way for the parishioner to have a direct connection to the faith community, participating in the nurturing, strengthening, healing, and renewing of communion that their fellow parishioners experienced shortly before during worship services.
We commission EVs during the service as a sign of our being “one body” in Christ, no matter where we are. Anyone who feels called to this ministry is invited to a process of discernment and training. EVs are licensed by the diocese after being trained. We ask that prospective visitors go out with a licensed visitor at least twice before being licensed, and then training and the license application process can occur.
Contemplative Prayer
About Centering Prayer
Prayer is relationship with the divine. There are lots of expressions of relationship, each with parallels in prayer—talking to each other, listening to each other, doing things together, and, sometimes, when you're with a loved one, you aren't doing or saying anything; you're just being in each other's presence. That's what meditation is in the Christian tradition: sitting in the presence of the divine, or, as St. Gregory the Great in the 6th century described it, “resting in God.”
For 1,600 years in the Christian tradition, prayer was understood to include formless contemplation. Starting in the 1200s and deepening in the 17th century, there was a shift towards scholasticism and rational study, away from the mystical and contemplative, until most Christians thought it something only for the odd mystic.
Centering prayer brings the Christian meditative tradition out of the monastery to make it more widely accessible again. The contemplatio phase of lectio divina is part of its foundation. The example of Jesus in the Gospels, who often went off alone to be with his Father, forms another part. Centering prayer is also inspired by writings of major contributors to the Christian contemplative tradition, including the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing, and John Cassian, Symeon the New Theologian, Francis de Sales, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Thérèse of Lisieux and Thomas Merton.
In this video, Phil Fox Rose presents a brief introduction to Centering Prayer.
Ushers
In addition to serving as an usher on Sunday mornings, we also have ushering opportunities at monthly Choral Evensong, funerals, and Compline.