The Very Reverend Michael J. Pitts

Greetings from the Dean,

Welcome to Christ Church Cathedral's web site. Whether you are a visitor to Montreal, looking for information, or a member of the Cathedral Parish, seeking the latest news, or whether you have found us while surfing the net, I hope you will find something useful and of interest here. I always enjoy trying to answer the messages I receive, or passing them on to the appropriate member of our staff.

We come now, in the Christian Year, to the season of Lent, traditionally a time to devote ourselves in a disciplined way to prayer and discernment. It is a time to seek new meaning in our own lives, and a time to discover afresh the vocation of the church, and of our particular community.

The mission statement of Christ Church Cathedral begins with the phrase "We are set in the heart of Montreal". Our vocation, like that of the church at all times and places, is to be the bearer and ambassador of Christ in our local context. Montreal is a large, exciting, bilingual multicultural, pluri-ethnic city. The concept of city denotes more than geographical location. It speaks of a network of relationships, economic, political, cultural, commercial, among many others. Today that network of relationship extends around the globe. The church, then, is called to an urban mission and ministry, which is in fact a mission and ministry to the global city of our new century.

Part of our work, particularly that of our professional ministers, is to care for the communities of the Cathedral and for the individuals who make up those communities. But a more important part is to enable the communities to carry out their vocation of mission and ministry in this global urban environment. For some this will be through activity in the social service and social justice aspects of our work. For others it will be through our partnerships with the church in other parts of the world. For many it will be through their daily life, work and leisure pursuits, and through their professional, political and secular social commitments.

During the Lent season, our educational program will continue to deal with some of these areas of our common life, as well as looking at the ecumenical dimension of the mission of the church. On Wednesday evenings, we shall begin a joint study program with our neighbors of St John's Lutheran Church, which will give us opportunities to worship with each other and to get to know each other, as we move towards the full communion of our two churches, which it is hoped will accepted in 2001. On Sundays in the Cathedral the sermons will concentrate on issues of social justice, new beginnings and jubilee, while following the 10 a.m. service there will be a program introducing some of the diverse riches of spirituality in the church.

May you and the communities of our Cathedral be richly blessed in this holy season of Lent.

Yours sincerely,

Michael J. Pitts.