Holy Cross believes that formation is for everyone, and during the program year children and adults meet for formation between the services from 9:15 a.m. until 10:15 a.m. We also offer weekly Bible Study on Wednesdays at 10:30 a.m., and we offer a variety of evening programs throughout the year.

During the pandemic, all activities at the church have been suspended. Please take a look at the resources on this page to continue your learning.

 

Check out the Children page for resources specifically for families.

Worship at Home

Hopefully you have been able to join your Holy Cross family in our new Sunday morning online worship.  It is a lovely offering, but geared for an adult congregation.  If you would also like to have a family worship experience that is geared to include children, Megan Hoskins recommends Worship at Home, a downloadable document by Mary Hawes. Worship at Home will guide you in setting up a simple family worship space and includes a do-it-yourself prayer service with links to songs and music.  This is super user-friendly -- no seminary experience required! Find Worship at Home at http://www.going4growth.com/downloads/Worship_at_home_March_2020.pdf

Holy Week Resources

If you would like to walk through Holy Week at home with a daily remembrance, please check out Sharon Ely Pearson's A Household Holy Week. Sharon's Holy Week Box is easy to assemble and family-friendly.  She includes lots of pictures and a link to all the readings. Visit  bit.ly/HolyWeekatHome.

Another Holy Week idea is to make your own Paschal Candle. A new large Paschal Candle is lit each year at Easter and placed prominently by the altar to represent Christ's light in the world. The candle is lit all through the season of Easter and is also used at baptisms and funerals during the year as a resurrection symbol.  At home, you can decorate a pillar candle with a cross design using paint, Sharpie, thumbtacks, or even cloves  Some easy inspiration can be found at bit.ly/easy-paschal-candle and at bit.ly/make-a-paschal-candle. If you are more crafty, check out  bit.ly/crafty-paschal-candle.  This is a lovely way to bring a visible reminder of the light of Christ into your home.

Podcasts

The Examen with Fr. James Martin S.J.

The examen is an ancient prayer practice that enables you to find God in your daily life. This podcast is based on a technique that St. Ignatius Loyola outlined in the "Spiritual Exercises," his classic manual for prayer.  Each 18 minute episode, Fr. Martin provides a reflection and then guides you through the examen prayer. Listen at https://examen.libsyn.com or download using your favorite podcast platform.

The Bible for Normal People

This weekly podcast, hosted by Pete Enns and Jared Byas, explores two questions: What is the Bible and what do we do with it? Pete and Jared are serious scholars of the Bible who also have a great sense of humor.  They interview prominent theologians  and explore tough issues, biblical interpretation, biblical history, and more. Listen at https://peteenns.com/podcast/ or download using your favorite podcast platform.

On Being with Krista Tippett

This Peabody Award-winning podcast examines the great questions of meaning at the intersection of spiritual inquiry, science, social healing, and the arts: What does it mean to be human? How do we want to live? And who will we be to each other?"  You can listen at https://onbeing.org/series/podcast/ or download using your favorite podcast platform.

 

 

The Irreverends

This weekly podcast, hosted by Gini Gerbasi and Tim Watt of St. John's Episcopal Church, Georgetown, explores the upcoming Sunday lectionary readings, along with a spiritual exercise and a dash of snark.  You can listen at https://stjohnsgeorgetown.org/the-irreverends/ or download using your favorite podcast platform.

"Honest to God" lecture

Washington National Cathedral 11/12/2019

Michael Gerson of the Washington Post leads a conversation with Dr. Francis Collins, former director of the Human Genome Project, and Dr. Jennifer Wiseman of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science. Both scientists and Christians, Dr. Collins and Dr. Wiseman share how their faith impacts their work as scientists and public figures and explore the intersection of faith, religion and science.

In the Cathedral’s "Honest to God" series, civic leaders share the ways in which their lives have been shaped by the practices of their faith and the interplay between religion and public leadership. Each event is an evening of conversation that invites public figures to pull back the curtain, revealing to us the faith that undergirds their public action. How have the values, teachings and worship of their faith community shaped their public works? What lessons might they draw for other public figures, or those aspiring to public leadership, about the importance of spirituality or religion? Through intimate conversation and the sharing of stories, participants courageously offer honesty, authenticity and faith at a time when our country is in dire need of such a generous gift.

Michael Gerson, columnist at the Washington Post
Dr. Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health
Dr. Jennifer Wiseman, Program Director of the Dialogue on Science, Ethics and Religion at the American Association for the Advancement of Science

Francis Collins

Francis Collins is a physician-scientist. Under his direction, the Human Genome Project produced the first finished sequence of the human DNA instruction book. His contributions to science, medicine, and society have been recognized by the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal of Science. A former atheist, Collins became a Christian during his medical training, and wrote about that in a best-selling book, The Language of God. Subsequently he founded the BioLogos Foundation, to provide a meeting place for individuals interested in serious and civil discourse on the potential harmony between science and Christian faith. Since 2009, Collins has served under two U.S. Presidents as the Director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the largest supporter of biomedical research in the world.

Jennifer Wiseman

Dr. Jennifer Wiseman is an astronomer, author, and speaker. She studies the process of star and planet formation in our galaxy using radio, optical, and infrared telescopes. She is also interested in national science policy and public science engagement. She served as a Congressional Science Fellow for the American Physical Society and directs the program of Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion (DoSER) for the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Wiseman studied physics at MIT, co-discovering comet Wiseman-Skiff in 1987, and continued in astronomy with her doctoral research at Harvard. She has worked with several international observatories and is currently a senior astrophysicist at the Goddard Space Flight Center. Dr. Wiseman is a Fellow of the American Scientific Affiliation, a network of Christians in Science.

Video Resources