“As a body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also Christ…. Now you are Christ’s body, and individually parts of it.” -St. Paul the Apostle to the Corinthian Church
St. Paul the Apostle Episcopal Church
My grandfather Leon Harman Grayson was born in December 1907 in a simple townhouse on Anderson Street in Savannah, Georgia, the fifth of seven children in a working class family who would grow in influence and prominence over the next 30 years. Five blocks away at the corner of Abercorn and 34th Streets stands the beautiful red brick Church of St. Paul the Apostle, which was completed in time for its first service on November 17, 1907. Leon was likely baptized at St. Paul’s, and he and his extended family attended Mass there regularly.
A Funeral
When Leon’s great Aunt Mary Ellen died in April of 1928, he served as a pallbearer at her funeral at St. Paul’s and the burial service that followed. Doubtless it was just the latest in a string of Sacramental commemorations at the church – from joyous Baptisms, First Communions, and Confirmations to the more solemn funerals and penance services – which grew alongside Leon in stature and Spirit in early 20th Century coastal Georgia. The Universal Church was founded by Jesus Christ to build the Kingdom of God here on earth: to worship together our loving Creator, to spread the Good News of salvation from sin and death, and to serve as Christ’s hands and feet in our communities through the diverse gifts of each of His disciples. Thus the Grayson family would have found themselves involved in varied and sundry ministries inside and outside the red brick walls of St. Paul’s, a parish that has quietly served God and Savannah faithfully for more than a century. A list of the good works they do today includes sponsoring a home for single mothers, hosting and staffing a neighborhood food pantry, leading the conversion of a nearby building into affordable housing for seniors, and leadership and labor for various national and local charities. It is not the Church building that does these things, of course, but the people. That is what truly makes a church the Church.
Three Weddings
Family lore is filled with interesting stories, and the story of the courtship between Leon and Mary Bell is one of romance and intrigue. Because Mary was Roman Catholic, there may have been resistance from one or both families to the match. It is believed that the couple eloped in late 1933 in South Carolina, though finding confirmation of this has thus far proved futile. They were also purportedly married in an Episcopal service, possibly at St. Paul’s in June 1934. We now treasure a photo of the happy couple with the hand-written caption “Jacksonville, Florida enroute to Miami” and dated June 1934. We believe that this might be their honeymoon trip following their public wedding ceremony at St. Paul’s. Finally, we have documents supporting a Catholic Ceremony in Washington D.C. in 1935, where Mary joined Leon after his appointment as a lawyer in the Justice Department.
A Warm Welcome
I was in Savannah this past week doing some rudimentary research on Leon, Mary, and our Grayson and Bell ancestors. The welcome I received was remarkable, from the librarian in the Genealogy Room at the Live Oak Library to the Laurel Grove Cemetery office manager, and I was pleased and honored to have been greeted so amiably. But it was while taking photos of St. Paul’s that I felt the hands of Christ reach out most warmly and insistently: The church banner on Abercorn Street which listed the daily masses came into my frame. It read “Tuesday Mass 6:00pm.” It was 5:55. Had I come 30 minutes earlier or 10 minutes later, I would likely not have entered, but God’s providence is revealed every day in subtle ways if we are open to His message.
The service was deeply symbolic and beautiful, and I felt the presence of the Holy Spirit in the liturgy, in the consecration of the Eucharist, and in the lives of the individual people who worshiped with me. These were real people – flawed but filled with love and purpose in spite of their imperfections – genuine flesh and blood manifestations of the body of Christ. I was nearly overwhelmed by their greetings following the service, and spent many minutes in fellowship with these fine people on the steps of that beautiful red brick church. Father Charles, Ben, Tony, David & Sondra, and all the parishioners of St. Paul’s – thank you. Thank you for your worship, for spreading the Good News, and for serving your community so faithfully in the tradition of those like Leon who came before you, and those who will carry on after we are gone should Jesus tarry. Well done, good and faithful servants.
“Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.” -St. Teresa of Avila
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