Sermon for St. Teresa of Avila The Rev. Conor M Alexander Christ and St. Luke’s Episcopal Church Matthew 5:13-16 October 15, 2009 I’m always amazed at how much history repeats itself. I feel like the times we are living in today are wrought with a lot of the same problems that existed during the last reformation in the 15th and 16th centuries. When I see Churches filing lawsuits against one another, I wonder if we value our power and authority more than we value charity and love. When I attempt to pray the Daily Office, I realize how far we’ve strayed from Archbishop Cranmer’s original vision of simply reading through the Bible once per year. And when I hear senior clerics preaching that it doesn’t matter what you believe, so long as you’re working for justice, I really have to wonder what happened to the faith that has made such a difference in my life. St. Teresa faced a lot of these same issues in her time. When she first entered the convent at age 20, she realized how lax the