St. Matthew's Episcopal vs Cephas

This is the app for the community of St. Matthew's Episcopal Church. We are a caring, inclusive community, centered in the Eucharist, grounded in the Gospel, so that we can reach out as Christ's hands to the world.

The New Testament is the most important story in human history. But it's difficult to piece together from the snippets included in daily and weekly readings. Cephas changes that. It tells the New Testament story in a linear way — from the Annunciation to the death of Saint John the Evangelist — with the seriousness and depth that the history deserves. Every day, Cephas presents the readings from the Catholic liturgical calendar - the same readings heard at Mass that morning, and in Catholic parishes on every continent. The Sunday Gospel, the daily readings of Lent and Advent, the proper feasts and the ordinary days. The full liturgical year, faithful to the Lectionary, available to read at your own pace. In addition to the daily reader, Cephas offers Christians the deeper story. The Story of the New Testament. One hundred and forty-four moments, from the world Christ was born into through the Acts of the Apostles, organized into ten movements. Each moment is paired with a great work of Christian art — Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Ghirlandaio, Mantegna, the masters who interpreted the Gospel for the centuries that followed. Each moment is tied to its place on the map, its date in history, and the figures who lived it. The Inheritance. The story did not end with the New Testament. Cephas's Inheritance modules tell what came after - the saints, the apparitions, and the devotions that carried the Gospel across two thousand years. Three modules are included at launch: Saint Pio of Pietrelcina (Padre Pio), Our Lady of Guadalupe, and The Sacred Heart Devotion. Each is roughly an hour and a half of serious reading, with curated public-domain art and the careful attention these subjects deserve. New modules will be added periodically. Voices and the Witness. For readers who want to go deeper, the optional Voices and Witness layer adds the Doctors of the Church and the great Christian commentators beside each moment: Athanasius on the Temptation, Aquinas on the Eucharist, Newman on the conversion of Saint Paul. The Witness adds non-Christian historical sources - Tacitus, Josephus, Pliny the Younger - that attest to the New Testament's events from outside the Christian tradition. Art Commentary. One hundred and thirty-one homily-style essays on the great paintings of the New Testament. Not museum captions, but reflections on what each painting sees in the Gospel. One purchase, yours for life. No subscription. Family Sharing included. Apple manages your purchases. Cephas is built for the Christian reader who wants to read New Testament seriously, with the art, the voices, and the inheritance the Church has carried for centuries. Hand-curated editorial work, public-domain art with verified provenance, and a quiet reader designed for contemplation rather than scroll. The Faith has a story. Cephas was built for you to learn that story through text, art, and historical context. No celebrity narrators and no music swells; just the work itself.