Approaching Holy Week - and April

The last few days have seen a lot of energy expended - much of it at the desk, but also in church as a good number of people ready the building for our celebration of Holy Week. One of the desk products is our Parish Magazine for April. It's available in print - and the online colour edition is to be found here. For those who like that sort of thing, it includes most of the reports to be given to our Annual Parochial Church Meeting. For those who don't like that sort of thing, I commend it nevertheless: printing them in the Magazine means we don't have to print them separately; and it keeps the APCM short, because we don't have to listen to them.

Because Holy Week falls across the boundary of March and April, we don't have the full details in the April Magazine (but they're  all in the March issue). So here's the Holy Week menu at St. Cuthbert's:

Sunday 28th March: Palm Sunday
 8.00a.m. Eucharist (BCP)
10.00a.m. Procession of Palms & Sung Parish Eucharist
 6.00p.m. Evening Prayer

Monday 29th March: Monday in Holy Week
 2.00p.m. Eucharist - at Derwentdale Court
 7.30p.m. Ecumenical Service with Churches Together
- in St. Cuthbert’s Church

Tuesday 30th March: Tuesday in Holy Week
7.00p.m. Eucharist & Prayers with Anointing for Healing

Wednesday 31st March: Wednesday in Holy Week
10.00a.m. Eucharist & Stations of the Cross

Thursday 1st April: Maundy Thursday
7.30p.m. Sung Eucharist of the Last Supper
followed by a Watch of the Passion

Friday 2nd April: Good Friday
10.00a.m. Before the Cross: All-Age Service
2.00p.m. Liturgy of the Day & Holy Communion

Sunday 4th April: Easter Day
8.00a.m. Eucharist (BCP)
10.00a.m. Sung Parish Eucharist with Easter Ceremonies

May the love of Christ, crucified & risen,
fill your life with his joy this Holy Week & Easter-tide

Passiontide begins...

... Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha, never has anything to say. You might wonder about that. I would say, look at how important he is in his silence. Loved by his sisters - and he really needs their love. Silent in the grave - and from the grave Jesus calls him to life. Sitting with Jesus at table - Lazarus stands for all people who are there simply to be served, honoured or cared for in their need. Lazarus is the silent companion of Jesus - so perhaps he stands for us, when we are lost for words.

There is though, something more...

From my homily for Passion Sunday - find it all here.

And there's a reminder that this week sees the 30th anniversary of the murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero, a man who should still inspire us.

A Run of White Feasts

Today is actually the Feast of St. Cyril of Jerusalem. But at St. Cuthbert's we've been celebrating St. Joseph instead. I know it's his Feast Day tomorrow, 19th March, but we're using Friday evening instead for our own Patronal Celebration, keeping the Eve of St. Cuthbert's Day. So there's a plug for our Patronal Festival - join us, if you can, for a Sung Eucharist at 7p.m. There are more celebrations to follow. If you can't be there, remember us in your prayers.

The Diocese begins its celebrations the same evening in Durham Cathedral, but for the Feast Day itself moves north for a Pilgrimage to Holy Island off the Northumberland Coast. Pilgrims are to gather at 10a.m. - and there'll be a Eucharist in the Priory ruins. If the weather is inclement, it'll be in the Parish Church next door. After lunch everyone is to move off to Durham and there's an invitation  to walk back across the sands on the Pilgrim's Route (hoping the motorised will pick them up on the mainland). It may seem strange to have the pilgrims walk the return route rather than the approach - but there is the question of tides (and just how early they would want to start!). Anyway it's part of the pilgrimage, because the idea then is to go on to Durham for Choral Evensong - I've said I'll join in at least for that part.

And yesterday of course was St. Patrick's Day. I found myself back in my last parish, presiding and preaching at St. Patrick's, High Spen on the 120th anniversary of the church's consecration. St. Patrick's has the distinction amongst Durham churches of having been consecrated by a Bishop of Newcastle. Bishop Lightfoot had died leaving an episcopal interregnum at the time he should have made his way to St. Pat's. But Bishop Westcott turned up the following year to check that all was well.

The people were certainly in good spirits - with visitors too. But they are themselves in  the midst of an interregnum (the third since I left). Pray for them, and for a speedy and good appointment. This is what I had to say in my homily.

Fables, figs, parables and politics

The title of this post is inspired by the content of the sermon preached by our Reader, Rosie Junemann, yesterday - click here to find, then twiddle the tools to look at it.

This morning in the parish feels like a bit of a lull before it gets very busy... Probably as in most Anglican churches in this country, the emphasis here on the Fourth Sunday of Lent gets placed firmly on Mothering Sunday. So there needs to be thought as to what approach can be taken this year - and prayer that we will get children and mothers/ parents in church on Sunday. Then a certain wistfulness that we've disrupted the flow of Lent.

Or have we? This year the Churches of Orthodoxy and of the Western Rite will celebrate Easter at the same time. So it's worth checking the Orthodox Calendar as we progress through Lent. And you find that the Third Sunday of Lent is observed by the Orthodox as "The Sunday of the Cross." Rather earlier than we begin even the traditional observance of Passiontide, but at least a Lenten theme. But what about keeping the First Sunday of Lent as "The Triumph of Orthodoxy," commemorating the end of the Iconoclast struggle in the ninth century? Or celebrating St. Gregory Palamas on the Second Sunday and St. John Climacus (see above for his Heavenly Ladder) on the Fourth?

In the end, Lent is what we make it. It's certainly not to make us miserable. So let's celebrate Mothering Sunday (10a.m. at St. Cuthbert's - All Age Eucharist with presentations of flowers etc...), but let's not be twee.

And the following week... St. Patrick's Day back in my last parish, St. Cuthbert's Day here and in the Cathedral. Roll on Passion Sunday!

Foxes, hens and the divine motherhood found in Christ (via Anselm)

Living in an area with quite a bit of wildlife, today's Gospel reading about the fox and the hen always rings a bell for me. And I love the way the imagery of the hen's care for her chicks is drawn out in St. Anselm's Canticle, " A Song of Christ's Goodness," not least because the modern form it has in Common Worship - Daily Prayer was composed by my Litugy Lecturer and College Tutor, Michael Vasey. You can read what I had to say when preaching by clicking here. This is a taster (from the middle of the homily):

.... “How often I have desired to gather your children as a hen gathers her brood under her wings…” says Jesus. We find these words in St. Matthew’s Gospel too – but in a different context. It’s Luke – in today’s Gospel reading – who makes the connection between Jesus, acting like a hen, and Herod, the fox. It’s the hen who has most to lose when the fox is on the prowl. But this one is not fearful – this one wants to gather the brood of chicks beneath her wings… and this is an image of warmth and safety.

There’s a marvellous drawing out of this image in some words of St. Anselm of Canterbury which were translated into a modern canticle by the man who taught me liturgy, Michael Vasey – they’re words now used in daily prayer by those who use the books “Celebrating Common Prayer “ and “Common Worship”. With the title, “A Song of Christ’s Goodness,” it has the refrain:

Gather your little ones to you, O God,
as a hen gathers her brood to protect them.


And it looks to a divine motherhood in Christ:


Jesus, as a mother you gather your people to you,
you are gentle with us as a mother with her children.


Often you weep over our sins and our pride,
tenderly you draw us from hatred and judgment.


You comfort us in sorrow and bind up our wounds,
in sickness you nurse us and with pure milk you feed us.


Jesus, by your dying, we are born to new life;
by your anguish and labour we come forth in joy.


Gather your little ones to you, O God,
as a hen gathers her brood to protect them.

Could there be a better image for describing the costliness of a mother’s love, the warmth and tenderness which at the same time require sorrow and sacrifice? And isn’t this also a call to see the feminine side of God, whom so easily we depict as a divine male autocrat upon his throne?

It may seem a world away from the Old Testament story of God’s covenant with Abraham. But there is a connection. If our Gospel reading shows us something of the Motherhood of God in Christ, then the story of Abram tells us of the yearning of a father who is without children...



As ever, after clicking on the homily link and waiting for it to load, you'll probably need to use the scroll button to make the text appear. The same is true for Paul Heatherington's sermon for last week, the 1st Sunday of Lent.

But I had success first time in getting into our newly uploaded Parish Magazine for March, online here. You can read it in all its colourful glory online. And we hope the hard copy will be out in a day or two.

Retreat - and ready for Lent

It's probably a good sign that I'm not blogging much! Last week I was in Walsingham for a Priest's Pilgrimage Retreat. I gather there's a Wi-Fi connection in the Norton Cafe Bar - but nowhere else, and my laptop remained zipped up in my bag throughout my stay. What a wonderful experience that was - and the Retreat!

A letter from the Shrine Administrator, Bishop Lindsay Urwin, before the Retreat began said that 65 priests had signed up - but in the event there were rather more. All men, I'm afraid + one woman Permanent Deacon. But happily it was a non-contentious experience. The only reference to events that week in Synod was when we happened to see the TV news one night. And no one seemed bothered to discuss these issues which can be so wearing.

The Retreat itself was invigorating. I stayed awake during the addresses - an achievement for me and a tribute to Bishop Lindsay and Brother Paschal SSF. I found myself reflecting on them and on the larger experience when I preached on Sunday on St. Luke's approach to the Transfiguration. While Matthew and Mark tell us that Jesus takes the disciples up the Mount of the Transfiguration as a "place apart," it's only Luke who is explicit that the intention is to pray. And only Luke tells how hard it was for the disciples to stay awake. "They were heavy with sleep but managed to stay awake," Bishop Tom Wright translates it. You can read what I had to say by clicking here. To make the text appear you've got to move the scroll button - I don't know why, but it makes it work!

And you can find what our Reader, Rosie Junemann said the previous week as she looked at the meaning of faith when things go wrong - with special reference to the Haiti earthquake.

A late post for Candlemas

I still have a memory which must go back to the time after the birth of my brother. I would have been six - nearly 48 years ago. It’s the memory of sitting in a pew at the back of our local church, the one my parents still attend, while my Mother went to the front of the church and the Vicar said prayers with her. I don’t think anyone else was there. My Father was probably back home with the baby. I didn’t really know what was going on - but I suppose it was that service which the Prayer Book quaintly calls, “The Thanksgiving of Women after Childbirth, commonly called The Churching of Women.” It’s a service I’ve never used. It is a thanksgiving service - appropriate after a child is born. But the way it was used made it more of a service of purification. This was something that had to be done - and done to a woman. I have had the experience of a new mother ringing from hospital to say that she needed to be “churched” before her own mother would let her back in the house - I’m glad to say that it was a long time ago. But it begs the question about expectation, superstition, getting thanksgiving right, and what faith is truly about...

Well that's the second paragraph of the sermon I preached last Sunday as we celebrated Candlemas. You can read the whole thing here. Sorry it's appearing rather late. With the end of the "Christmas cycle" I'm rather relieved to have a couple of Sundays of Ordinary / Green Time, but we're already gearing up for Lent.