Vicar’s Newsletter archive
Newsletter for May 2010
The richest treasures of the Church are revealed in the Resurrection and Ascension of Our Lord, the gift of the Holy Spirit and the mystery of the Holy Trinity. Each mystery leads us deeper and deeper into who God is – and who I am.
If we get this wrong, the whole structure of creation begins to unravel. This has been the case from the very beginning as Adam and Eve were to find out. In each generation this original unravelling is sadly a reality and each generation has experienced the great “Fall” of humanity from grace. It is so important to know who God is for in this mystery is life or death.
The fullness of God was revealed in the person of Jesus. As our Lord was to remind his apostles, to see him was to see the Father and the Holy Spirit – for the fullness of God was pleased to dwell in the Son. The Father and the Holy Spirit are the unknown, unseen “wholly other” realities that are God. In Jesus, both became incarnate and both fully dwell. This wonderful unity in Trinity was something the world beheld and it was a glory beyond our understanding.
Even in our seeing and hearing the prophetic proclamation was true: seeing we didn’t see and hearing we didn’t hear. Our blessed Lord revealed a truth and a life beyond the ordinary within the ordinary and it seems only faith could penetrate this mystery. The outward senses, so dulled by the broken, fallen world, could only observe the outward and expedient – the mere shadow of a deeper and more glorious reality.
Our Lord asks us to see beyond, above, within the height and depth and length and breadth. He challenges us to push beyond our two-dimensional universe into the triune vision, the three-dimensions of reality. It is a single vision but it can have two or three dimensions. We view the world and our world view determines how we live and work and have our being. Is it just me and an observable, sensual universe or is it an eternal world, visible and invisible, material and spiritual? Are we material beings or are we spiritual beings? Or are we both?
In the Resurrection, Our Lord reveals we are eternal beings, deeply spiritual, and humanity is destined for glory. That glory is revealed in the Ascension. Here, within time, eternity breaks through and we see our humanity in its glory. Here time and place are put into their eternal setting and the within and beyond become now.
The world, elevated to such a wonderful mystery, becomes the place where three dimensions become what we see and who we are. No longer the two-dimensional world of shadows but the full-on, ever-present reality of the within and beyond and above. The Blessed Trinity enfolds us in a reality that by faith can determine who I am and who God is. As adopted children, a new relationship, both physical and spiritual, is possible.
This vision is made possible by the Holy Spirit, given and alive within us. By the power of the Holy Spirit the grace to enter into the ever “Three in One” is our journey into life. Guided by the Holy Spirit this three-dimensional life becomes part of our vision of the world we live in and the world we are creating. Enfolded in this great triune mystery we incarnate the creative energy to bring the broken pieces of a fallen world back together. Our Lord incarnate in us and in the Holy Spirit our lives create a world Our Lord called the Kingdom of Heaven.
The Father the Son and the Holy Spirit, this Trinity, is the fullest expression of the great mystery we call God. I am created by the Father, redeemed by the Son and given life by the Holy Spirit. These three are one in me, in the world and the love that unites them with me unites them as well. Our Lord prayed that we should all be one. And so we are. One God uniting the visible with the invisible, time with eternity, man with God.
The Feast of the Ascension will again be celebrated on Sunday (16 May). Pentecost is on Sunday 23 May and the Feast of the Holy Trinity on Sunday 30 May.
Newsletter for April 2010
I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?
At this very difficult and sad time for Mary and Martha, Our Lord Jesus Christ confronts the sisters of Lazarus with a question about their belief. But the question is prefaced by an amazing statement: I am the resurrection and the life. Life and death are put to the sisters and belief seems to be a key to unlock a mystery.
There seem to be two deaths: (1) …though he die, yet shall he live; (2) …and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. The resurrection life is a life lived after a death and this resurrection life is eternal. The raising of Lazarus is a kind of parable. Two kinds of life are presented, the one dominated by death and sin, the other victorious in fullness and love.
Throughout the Epistles we are given a picture of our human existence within the context of a world subject to sin and decay. Sin is the separation from the loving Creator who breathes life into his universe. To be separated from this life-giving breath is to slowly decay and eventually die. Humanity starved of the holy oxygen of grace eventually dies, suffocated by a self-willed separation falsely imagined as freedom.
Lazarus is recorded as being dead and all the detail of corruption is recorded. Our Lord is warned not to enter the tomb for he has been dead four days and the stench of the corrupted body would be overwhelming. This parable of the utterly depraved and corrupt nature of man’s fall from grace is contrasted with the victorious cry of Our Lord: …Lazarus, come out. Lazarus enters the scene …bound with bandages, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them: Unbind him, and let him go.
Resurrection life is different from the life offered by the world, the flesh and the devil. The death that leads to life in its fullness is, it seems, necessary. We are called to die to this world if we are to be raised into life everlasting. This death is to be experienced both in our life in the world and in the sacramental life of the Church.
In baptism we participate in that death which brought about the kingdom of heaven. The death of Our Lord was the worldly death brought about by the corrupt and depraved state of the Fall. Here the stench and decay of a world starved of grace is seen in Lazarus and ultimately of Our Lord. The defeat of this horrific situation was accomplished by Our Lord on the Cross. So though he die, yet shall he live;...whosoever believes in me shall never die.
Our belief, this precious key, is to be lived out in our lives. Our lives, lived between heaven and earth, constantly confront us with the two ways – the way that leads to life and the way that leads to death. Our freedom to choose is absolute and in our choosing lie life and death. Throughout the Gospel we are confronted with those who have chosen the easy way, the broad road that has led to death.
Mary Magdalen, Matthew Levi, the penitential thief, Zacchaeus, the prodigal son all become the objects of Our Lord’s love, as did the one wayward sheep, the penitent publican, whose single humble prayers become objects of special attention. Like Lazarus, they are all dead to the freedom of the resurrection life offered to the world in baptism. They are more and more isolated, their lives confined and restricted, and fear drives them further and further into themselves. They are in a prison of their own making. There seems no escape. The world of choices becomes smaller and smaller until Mary Magdalen and Matthew Levi and Zacchaeus have nowhere to go.
This death is the first death, the death we undergo not only in our baptism, but in the daily life we live. The faith that will provide us with a key is forged in this death. It is the realization that in Our Lord Jesus Christ we can pass through this death into life in all its fullness. The pains and humiliations, the failures and emptiness, the shallow life of expediency are the starting-point, the beginning of a new life not centred in our “self” but in the “other”.
The resurrected Lord stands at the entrance of the tomb we have created and commands us to come out. Here is a man who has experienced all the depravity of our fallen humanity. Here is a man who has been to hell and back, tortured, despised, rejected. Here are all the victims with whom he so lovingly sympathises. Here is the man who knows how it feels to be the lost sheep, the despised Mary of Magdala, the rejected Matthew and Zacchaeus. Sitting like the Prodigal in the isolation of hell, Our Lord knows the whole deathly life of the world.
Yet here stands the scarred yet triumphant Saviour of the world. He calls to all of us who stand afar off, too frightened to raise our heads. He calls us who are at the edge of the crowd or up a tree feeling abandoned. Here we are, wanting to be loved but having forgotten what to do and how it feels. He calls to us who are too afraid to return home and cannot remember the way back anyway. Here we are all tied up in the intrigues and schemes we weave to survive. Here we are and there he is. And he, triumphant in the resurrection, calls to us: Come out, unbind them, and let them go.
The clergy join me in wishing you every blessing this Easter with new life and deepened faith.
Newsletter for March 2010
Throughout this month the Church leads us to Our Lord’s final days on earth. The last week sees us in Holy Week which draws us into the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This heart, pierced by a soldier’s spear, opens “the shrine of heavenly bounty” that it “might pour forth upon us streams of mercy and grace; and, burning with unceasing love for us, might likewise be a place of rest for the godly, and an abiding refuge of salvation for the penitent”.
This Sacred Heart brings out two aspects of our relationship with Our Saviour and his with us. The first is that the heart of Jesus is pierced by our sins, and the second is his response – mercy, grace and unceasing love. The Stations of the Cross can also lead us to contemplate this mysterious paradox: the more we sin, the greater the love of God.
Each of the fourteen Stations of the Cross confronts us with Our Lord’s passion and our part in this tragic event. In our baptism we were made one with Christ, his life and our lives one and what we do now is enfolded in what was done two thousand years ago. Each time we follow the way of the Cross we are not just spectators but participants in the passion and death of Our Saviour. Each station can point to the many times we contribute to this suffering.
Station One accuses us of being judgmental, often choosing expedience over justice. Station Two, as Our Lord carries his cross and the cross for the world, we grudge carrying our own burdens let alone another’s. Station Three sees Our Lord fall for the first time and get up and carry on to his inevitable death. It sees us give up in despair and self-pity compounded by our hopeless inability to pick ourselves up after the second and third fall. Each station accuses us of so many failings. Our selfish choices lead us away from Our Saviour to the lonely place of Peter and Judas.
Jesus, abandoned by his cowardly Apostles, save John, and disciples, save his mother, Mary Magdalene. How this affects the heart of Jesus is the strange and wonderful mystery of our redemption. It is a crushing blow to our pride. We imagine that we are basically good and, on the whole, virtuous. We often compare ourselves to those less fortunate who, by foolishness and selfish indulgence, have got themselves into a mess. “I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even this tax-collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.”
In the world we create for ourselves we identify with a story even earlier than that of the Passion. “But the serpent said to the woman: ‘You will not die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God…’” In making ourselves “like God, we, like Peter and Judas, abandon “the truth, the way and the life” and find ourselves overwhelmed by a reality so terrible it shakes the very ground of our existence.
As Our Lord stands naked, stripped of his garments, we see at last how terribly he has suffered for us and the world. Unlike us his passion is not centred on himself but on the “other”, you and me. Stripped naked of our own creations we are seen as selfish, judgemental, weak – the list goes on – and, like Eve, we rush “to sew fig-leaves together” to cover our shame. But the tax-collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner”. The Stations of the Cross lead us to this awful moment. Our Lord reaches his final hour and, laid on the cross, the hammer and nails inflict the final blows. Like the penitent tax-collector and the Pharisee, we have to decide who we are and who this man on the cross is. It was the same decision the two thieves had to make. One derided and scorned Our Lord, the other asked for a place with him in paradise. “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we are killed justly: for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” And he said to Jesus, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
Here we see the true nature of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. We see the true nature of God himself. Here is a heart so full of love it created a universe only to find it was too small. He created last of all a humanity whose heart has the capacity to take all the love that God has to offer: a human heart in our Saviour like ours and like God’s; a heart that both craves love and gives love. And at this moment the Sacred Heart of Our Lord, broken by the most outrageous excesses of human depravity, responds with mercy for a thief and forgiveness to a world that does not know what it is doing.
Shortly after Our Lord’s death, the soldier’s spear opens the heart of Jesus and the life-giving water of baptism and the life-giving sacramental blood of the Mass are poured out for all humanity. In return for bodily torture, extreme human suffering, both physical and mental, a life abandoned of friends and a life’s ambitions dashed, Our Lord gives us resurrection life.
What a gift to such an undeserving world! How could a love be so strong, so determined, so victorious? From his heart was poured a grace that filled humanity and the world began to beat anew – a grace that transfigures our hearts with a bright beam of light so bright no fuller on earth could reproduce its gleam. In baptism and the Mass, the human heart is remade in the death and resurrection of Our Lord. The love that conquered death is also the love that conquered the human heart.
Like the penitent thief and the tax-collector, let us daily throughout Lent kneel before our crucified Lord and pray, beating our breast: “Lord, have mercy upon me a sinner.”
Newsletter for February 2010
Lent begins on February 17th. Each Ash Wednesday we are to bury our old self and, through the ashes, be reborn in the Gospel – the Good News that brings life from death, virtue from sin, light from darkness and hope from despair.
The world is a powerful force: it seems relentless and all-pervasive. Prayer and scripture, which are so powerful at Easter, soon are overwhelmed through the long weeks of Trinity and almost completely drowned out by the frantic activities and obligations of an ever-increasingly secular Christmas.
The dark months of January and February only heighten our sense of abandonment. Not that we have been abandoned by God but rather we have abandoned Him. And the question now is how to recapture that sense of God’s presence and how to experience his intimate embrace. We have become lacklustre and dull when it comes to the things of the spirit and that can often spill over into our daily lives as well.
Like small children, distracted by an ever-frantic afternoon of play, we need to be sat down and told to look into the eyes of a wise parent. Gazing into those caring eyes the message is clear – calm down, put your toys away and perhaps, in the few minutes before tea, read a book. It seems so simple but it is as true for all of us as it is for our children.
Lent is that time when the Church annually asks us to calm down, put away our distractions (those “toys" that amuse but never satisfy) and return to the Gospel. Like children we do not want to put away the distracting toys: the over-excited laughter is too beguiling and the inevitable “tears before teatime” beyond our understanding. But all the signs are there and if something isn’t done the tears will surely come.
God’s love for us is constant, never-failing and always protective. Our frantic lives lead us further and further away from that love. We forget the great sacrifices He makes for us and the pains we cause His most Sacred Heart when we abandon Him. The great truths of Holy Week are just this – the physical pain is only multiplied by His experience of abandonment by those he has so lovingly nurtured. Peter’s denial and the Apostles’ cowardice compound the final act of redemptive love.
The message of Holy Week – portrayed so beautifully in the liturgy – is that broken hearts are remade in the resurrection. And Lent is given to prepare the heart for this great act of creation and redemption. The distracted and preoccupied will never be able to participate in this annual gift, not because of the divine will but because of the human.
God wills us all to return to Him and He sent His only-begotten Son to bring us home. First we must get to know Him as did Peter and James and John and Andrew. Then we learn to love Him and depend upon His generous love for us. We do this by following Him as he leads us deeper and deeper into that heart that embraces the whole of creation.
Lent is for us this discipleship. Scripture inspires prayer because the Holy Spirit is at the centre of both. The return to scripture is the beginning of discipleship. In prayer, like the Apostles, we can ponder in our hearts the teachings so different, so foreign to a distracted and wilful world. As the Holy Spirit leads us in scripture, our Lord gives us His body and blood, His life in sacrament, to sustain us on this heavenly journey.
Scripture, prayer and sacrament are the eternal lessons of Lent. They prepare us for the life-changing events of Holy Week and Easter. It seems you can’t have the one without the other. Lent is necessary and essential for the redemption freely offered at Easter. These forty days are the Church’s gift to all believers. The slow and regular reading of the Gospels leading to prayer, pondering in our hearts each step of discipleship, will bring us to the Cross.
At the Cross our journey ends but our Blessed Saviour now takes over. Abandoning all things to Him, he makes the final journey that will change us and remake us. At the Cross, we give ourselves into His hands in full faith, in hope and complete love that His will be done in us. It is a difficult thing to do because the will is so strong and so vulnerable. But at the foot of the Cross, because we have prepared ourselves in Lent, we can make that final act of will and, thanks be to God, are rewarded with a resurrection to new life. All our faith, hope and love are returned one hundredfold.
Newsletter for January 2010
Many blessings for the New Year. The Christmas season flows into Epiphany and both celebrate the coming of God into our daily life. Christmas is God becoming flesh – God taking on all the limitations of our world and its history. Because God “became what He was not” so that our material world could become what it was not. God and man, heaven and earth are joined and men and angels behold each other in awe. We celebrate the reuniting of our life with eternity.
This fundamental change did not destroy our freedom. It is for freedom and in freedom we live. This freedom is the absolute authority to choose. We are asked to choose God as He chose us and in our choosing lies the way that God unites us with Himself. But how are we to choose, if we cannot recognise him?
The recognising of God in creation is the theme of the Epiphany. Our God did not come disguised, unknown, like the old gods of Greece, but eager to be chosen. God announced His Son’s arrival with a cosmic display unequalled in human history: stars and angels filled the skies; men and angels, shepherds and kings, beasts, gold and myrrh – animal, vegetable and mineral – all come.
The Epiphany is God’s manifestation of Himself to the world that we might choose Him as He chose us and, in our choosing, eternal life. But the Epiphany is so much more and colours all our life. What did creation see? It saw weakness and vulnerability, it saw poverty as bad as any that exists today. It saw homelessness, an unmarried mother and her baby. It saw a baby narrowly escape the deadly battering meted out to the infants of Bethlehem by Herod’s power-crazed jealousy. It saw a refugee in Egypt. God was to be the Saviour of all these and more – He came to save those millions of battered women and children still suffering in Darfur and the Congo. He came to save the homeless, the weak, the vulnerable, refugees, and the poor. And He made a promise: that whatever we do for any of these, we are doing it for Him.
Our love of God’s redemption, His bringing us back to Himself, can find its supreme expression in charity. “The word was made flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory, the glory of the only Son of the Father.”
My grateful thanks to all who made the Christmas so memorable. It was wonderful to see so many families and children at the Crib Mass at 4.30pm on Christmas Eve and equally thrilling to see so many hundreds fill the church at the Midnight Mass. Despite the very large congregations the night before, Christmas morning’s congregation was surprisingly full.
All the Christmas celebrations were made the more special because the newly-gilded cross and the (“petrol pump”) standard candles were both restored and shining very brightly. It was a real joy to place the bambino in with the newly-restored crib figures. Truly the prophecy “and all things shall be made new” has come true here at St Bartholomew’s.
Yet another plea: we still need more donations towards the restoration of the “Petrol Pumps. I hope that seeing them will encourage you to give towards their restoration.
I have asked if an article by the Bishop of Beverley might be included in this magazine. It is written to congregations like ours at St Bartholomew’s. These are very confusing times for Anglo-Catholics and this, I hope, will help some way in moving forward. Whatever happens in the Church of England, this coming year will see many choices, changes and decisions. I pray that God’s grace and His most Holy Spirit will direct our hearts and minds in the choices and decisions that we will all have to face.
Newsletter for December 2009
Advent is the beginning of the new Christian year. The four Sundays before Christmas mark the preparation of the Christian soul for the renewed life of Christ. That life of Our Lord, the majestic King of kings and Lord of lords, enters our human arena – not as the all-powerful conqueror but in infant fragility, struggling for new life.
Such a fragile and precious gift must be lovingly received and warmly tended. And our brutalised lives are ill-suited for such a task. The daily contact with the forces at large in the world hardens and hurts us. The hurt is covered over, protected until we hardly feel anything. To cope is often to deaden. Life’s painkillers kill more than the pain.
It is so hard to take the world undiluted. The reality of our suffering is just too awful. Both collectively and individually we need all the help we can get. Often only the “blind eye” saves us from a pain too deep to bear. We can turn a “blind eye” much more easily than the other cheek.
But without the tenderness of Our Lord Jesus Christ right in the heart of us, we would never be able to face the day. The Christ-filled centre enables us to face the world. For all things can be taken to the centre and enfolded in the soft, warm tenderness of Our Lord. The hard, cold reality can be drawn in and enfolded in the soft acceptance of our infant Saviour. His meekness and gentleness deadens every blow.
It is the softness that absorbs the shock, the force, cushioning and distributing it. We can face the world because every blow goes straight to the heart and there it meets Our Lord Jesus Christ who melts the frozen, warms the cold, forgives the sinner, heals the sick, calms the violent, disarms the clever and raises the dead. The blows the world meets out go straight to the heart and there are met by Our Saviour, and by his wounds we are healed. He saves us from the crucifying pain by taking it upon himself, placing his hands on our hands, his back on our back; his side receives the piercing lance meant for us.
Without his tenderness the world would be just too brutal, too hard, too cold. God placed his gentle, soft warmth right in the midst of the world when his son was born. He became the manger of the world, the straw that makes the stable bearable. While all around the brutes were reaping a harvest of blood and the bodies of the gentle babies of Bethlehem were piled as testaments of inhumanity, Our Lord began his work to make men human. His little body was to be saved for an even greater sacrifice, one that wouldn’t end either at Bethlehem or when the brutes tired of killing. His body has become the only hope for us in the world. Without his body and blood our bodies would be so bruised even the blind eye and the turned cheek could not save us and the bloodletting would never ease the pain.
On Christmas Day God will give us the body and blood of Christ and his infant softness and warmth will go straight to the heart of each one of us. As he becomes our centre, so we become human. We can face the world with both eyes open and we can turn the other cheek. We can take up those who have been brutalised by the world and left half-dead by the roadside, binding their wounds, pouring on wine and oil. We can mourn with those who mourn and weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice. We can do all things in him who loves us and comes to us and calls us and draws us to himself.
As neither birth nor death was able to separate Our Lord Jesus Christ from his Father, so now with us. As we are in Christ and he in us, nothing can separate us from Our Father who is in heaven. The world can do what it can, and the brutal and clever can terrorize our bodies and minds, but Christ is in the centre of each of us absorbing the shock, covering the pain and drawing us closer and closer to heaven.
Joy to the world, the Lord has come!
The clergy join me in wishing you all every blessing at Christmas and throughout the coming year.
Newsletter for November 2009
As we draw near to the close of the Christian year, the church focuses on the great truth of the Christian faith: that God’s love triumphs.
It is his love that draws all men to himself. That great gathering of the redeemed is celebrated on All Saints Day, 1st November. The whole story of the redemption is brought to play in the great feast. The prefiguring and preparing in the Old Testament and the incarnate life of Our Lord in the New Testament finds its culmination in the heavenly life of the saints.
Drawing all men to the everlasting life of man with God is the work of the All-holy Trinity. God’s work to save his children from themselves and each other is chronicled in the Old Testament. Over the thousand years’ experience of the children of Israel it becomes clear that God is constantly drawing, leading and restoring his people.
In this picture there emerges a figure, a Messiah, who would ultimately lead, draw and restore the children of God to the everlasting habitations prepared for them from the beginning of time.
At the birth of Our Lord the Old Testament, the Old Covenant, became a new testament. In Jesus the Christ, the Messiah, a new covenant was being forged. A new humanity was created, God and man dwelling together in the new creature. In Jesus Christ, God and man existed in perfect harmony. And it was from this beginning that the new Israel was to be created.
By the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, Mary was the first at the Annunciation, then the twelve apostles and they became the new patriarchs of twelve new tribes at Pentecost. These tribes were to take their members from every nation on earth. The apostles founded new communities of the new creation throughout the known world and in each generation. The apostolic presence, through the bishops, extended that community.
Men and women throughout the world became part of a life that would lead them to heaven. These saints, those who had died in baptism and were raised with Christ, took their place with the apostles, Our Lady, angels and archangels and Our Lord seated at the right hand of the Father. All Saints and All Souls celebrate the work of redemption in the creative Father, the redeeming Son and the life-giving Spirit.
We celebrate our inclusion in this great company which no man can number. On these two days we take our place with them and the numberless unborn in an eternal celebration of God’s triumph over evil, darkness and isolation. God has triumphed in you and in me. He is drawing us, leading us and restoring us. He, in us, has overcome all the temptations and follies of this world and by grace we are being changed from glory to glory.
Let us now live up to this wonderful calling. Let us put aside all wickedness and evil, all sin and selfishness, and push forward, led by Christ, drawn by the Father and restored by the Holy Spirit to the place where angels and archangels and all the company of heaven sing: Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of Hosts, heaven and earth are full of thy glory! Glory be to thee, O Lord most high.
Newsletter for October 2009
From time to time it is a good thing to let everyone know what’s going on. Many people who receive this magazine live a great distance from the church and it is easy to feel cut off.
October proves to be a very busy month. The crucifix above the High Altar is scheduled to be taken away to be re-gilded. It is very exciting. For fifteen years I have looked up from the High Altar to see a badly-painted cross with a figure whose left arm is increasingly detaching itself from the body. It will be amazing to see the re-gilded crucifix and the impact it will have on the whole sanctuary space. Once the crucifix is taken away, it will be about six weeks in the workshop of Howell and Bellion, who have promised to have it back before Christmas.
There is one more project that I have wanted to take up for a long time. The two beautiful pillars with the wonderful Arts and Crafts bronze tops (known at St Bartholomew’s as the petrol pumps!) are in need of some tender loving care. The bronze tops which hold the two large candles need cleaning but, more importantly, are in desperate need of repair. Few people have been up close enough to see what a beautiful piece of Arts and Crafts design they are. But, sadly, some of the inner work has collapsed and has fallen into the inner space. Over the years the bronze has darkened and dirt and dust have rendered it almost black.
Mark Scofield, who has done the work on the Silver Altar and the three silver lamps above the High Altar, is looking at restoring them. It will involve constructing scaffolding around the pillars; then the delicate job of dismantling the bronze tops from the pillars; the pieces then removed to his workshop in Hove; in the workshop the pieces cleaned, lacquered and put back together.
The result should be stunning. Firstly, they will be repaired with all the pieces in place and in their original form and, secondly, cleaned of all the dirt and grime, we will be able to see clearly the beautiful design of Henry Wilson. If we can complete this project, three of the main features of the sanctuary will have been restored: the silver lamps, the gilded crucifix and the pillars.
I have been given a “ball-park” estimate of £5,000 for the work. If anyone would like to contribute to this very exciting project, I would love to hear from you. In the past, many of you have asked to be involved in similar projects – only to be told that the sum has already been reached! This is a chance now to make a real difference to our beautiful Grade 1 listed treasure. Please contact me if you are interested.
On October 1st Question Time will be televised again from St Bartholomew’s. They were with us two years ago, again when the Labour Party Conference was in Brighton. The BBC have very specific requirements and we are on of very few venues in Brighton that can accommodate them. They need a large enough space to construct the set (the main body of the church), a programme room for the production team (the Parish Room) and a space large enough to accommodate the 150 people who make up the audience (the hall in the school). They also require a “Green Room” to entertain the guests on the panel (the Community Room in the school). The people we worked with two years ago were lovely, helpful and appreciative and we look forward to working with them again.
There is a very heavy concert schedule in October. The Brighton Early Music Festival are using St Bartholomew’s as their major venue. Again, we have worked with then before and they are very helpful and accommodating. John and Delia desperately need people to help with concerts and would very much appreciate anyone who would volunteer to help.
The beautiful painting of the Madonna and Child given to St Bartholomew’s earlier this year has been made into a Christmas card. The painting itself is still in my study and during the month of October (a month of Mary along with May) will finally be hung in the church for all to see. It is very beautiful and those with an eye for colour tell me it is a perfect colour match for the Stations of the Cross. (I am desperately colour-blind so will have to take your word for it!) There is also a Christmas card showing the sacred ministers at the High Altar carrying the child Jesus. Both these cards will be on sale from October.
All of these and many more activities and projects are the result of much hard work and the help and support of many people – so many people lovingly support us by their practical help and financial support! These are difficult financial times for us all. The work and witness of St Bartholomew’s becomes even more important. We see an increasing number of people visit us daily, many, I am sure, as a result of the economic downturn. But they come into St Bartholomew’s, finding it not only open but warm and clean and welcoming.
The projects we embark upon shine out with the love and prayers of many thousands over the years. During the hard times, people need to know that the human spirit and the Holy Spirit united can rise above all earthly troubles and survive. Our mission to the poor and poor in spirit is as important today as it was a hundred years ago. Times have changed “but the poor you will always have with you”. We need your financial support to help us continue this daily work – but more of that next month.
Newsletter for September 2009
Our Lord’s gospel truths are mainly explained and illustrated from the agricultural experience of the listener. Wheat and tares, abundant harvests of sixty fold, eighty fold, one hundred fold, sheep and goats all feature in the deeply complex message of Our Lord.
In England this world of seedtime and harvest, sowing and reaping is shrinking. Our relationship with this basic aspect of human life is disappearing. Parishes like Saint Bartholomew’s are an extreme example of this urbanisation of society. There was a time, less than 100 years ago, when for most people in England it was only a few yards from the garden to the larder.
This season of harvest is important, perhaps more important today than in years past. For the vast majority of the world’s population the difference between a good harvest and a bad harvest is the difference between life and death. Our dependence on nature is as great as ever but we have become so distanced it hardly features in our daily lives.
At the heart of this relationship is our dependence on God, our creator. In the agricultural communities of Our Lord the connection between the Creator and his creation was very real. Jewish laws were very clear on land management and animal husbandry. Jewish law was also very clear on how the produce from God’s bounty was to be used and distributed. Our Lord draws these spiritual truths out in the Gospel.
As God is bountiful, so we, if we love Him, must also be generous. The poor, the sojourner, the foreigner are to be a touchstone on our understanding of who we are in relation to God and the world. If we build barns and hoard selfishly the gifts God gives so freely, what will happen when, one night, he calls us to himself? Whose will they be?
Global warming and vast numbers of the world’s population starving or malnourished are contemporary examples of how this has gone so terribly wrong. For us the supermarket shelves are always groaning with abundance. If green beans fail in Kenya, they are sourced in Egypt. But the failure in Kenya or Egypt is only a tip of the problem as neighbouring countries much poorer, much more vulnerable will be suffering the same climatic conditions with little or no infrastructure to support them.
Our distance from what was once very real has a very deep spiritual significance. The nature of prayer is about a longing: a longing to be loved, a longing to be secure, a longing to be free. In a life based on seedtime and harvest, all these longings are at stake and prayer becomes real. The survival, security and freedom from poverty, starvation and death for your family intensify prayer and it becomes honest.
These honest longings offered to God our Father, the broken and contrite heart, so move the Creator that blessings abound. You and I, living the lives we do, cannot return to this agricultural, pre-industrial landscape. But this season reminds us that our prayer must be filled with a deep longing, a passion, based on a knowledge that we are utterly dependent upon God.
The “barn” mentality will not do. That is to say, “Well, if God fails me, I can always rely on my bank account, my investments, my pension, the welfare state. In the end I’m OK with or without God. I quite like church and going to Mass but …!” Our relationship with God is far more fundamental and basic.
We go to church and receive the sacraments because that is the way the relationship between God and his creation works. God chose humanity as the vehicle of grace. Through you and me the very energy and power of creation flow. Our prayers effect and affect the world we live in. That means the natural world as well as the spiritual. The mess we see today of global warming, pollution, social disintegration follows the decline in the rich countries of prayer with its honest longing for love, security and freedom.
It is the old gospel truth, it is the lesson learned time and time again in the Old Testament. But salvation is not about our longing: it is about God’s. God’s longing for the children of Israel, his longing for their love, their security, their freedom, saw him forgive them seventy times seven. As sheep, when they were lost, he searched for them and carried them to the security of the fold.
Prayer becomes so easy when we respond to such divine longing. his love for us is the security we so deeply long for. And in that loving security we are free from all fear. This fearless freedom is the aspiration of all humanity. Harvest is a call for all humanity to “return to the Lord your God”. This month, rededicate yourself in prayer and sacrament to be a faithful and loving servant of grace. As in your baptism and confirmation, become God’s agent of grace. May his grace change you and the world you live in. By grace may God’s longing for his children be realised and his heaven and his earth unite in the Kingdom we all long to establish.
Newsletter for August 2009
In the short ministry of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ we begin to see a pattern emerging of how God works. We begin to see how all God’s power and sublime knowledge work in his creation. We begin to see the part humanity plays in the divine scheme of things. We see in Our Lord what God and Man can do.
In Jesus Christ God chose humanity as his agent of grace. God and man, divinity and humanity, united in the whole creative process. Creation, constantly being recreated, and given new life. This Trinity of the Father’s creative energy, Our Lord’s redemptive power and the life-giving power of the Holy Spirit united in a new order – the Kingdom of Heaven.
Throughout Our Lord’s ministry he asked of his apostles and disciples small things. He asked for Peter’s boat from which to preach, his house as a centre for healing and teaching. Small gifts of bread and fish were offered on the hillside. Water from a well from a woman with “history”. The man who had no home, a wanderer, a teacher, asked small things of those he met and the response made a life-changing difference.
The boat from which the fishing brothers toiled all night catching nothing became a vessel too small to receive the draught of fish Our Lord provided. The five barley loaves and two small fish became a banquet on a crumb-strewn hillside. Time and time again the small offerings of Our Lord’s fellow-travellers became a potent teaching opportunity about our relationship with God.
God in Christ learned how frail and limited our humanity is. It is so weak that temptations overwhelm us and in fear we make choices from expedience not grace. We make short-term decisions to eternal problems, fear drives us into the known when the real answer lies in “launching out into the deep” unknown of God’s grace and mercy.
Fear drove Peter to denial and the disciples away from their dying Saviour. Fear saw them huddled into a locked room after the crucifixion. Fear drives us into the small confined space of the known and familiar – the very place the problem began and exists.
God in Christ knows this and so it is precisely in these small things, the familiar places, in fear and weakness and all the limitations of time and space Our Lord has promised to meet us. Perhaps in Peter’s boat or house or your workplace or home, or a familiar hillside on the downs, when big choices need eternal answers Our Lord will ask the smallest and almost insignificant favour.
His yoke is easy and the burden light. But from the little we can offer a whole new world opens up, a whole new life is offered. These small beginnings, these almost forgettable moments become a turning-point, a conversion. Peter was led to his papal throne not by cosmic signs and wonders, but in a fishing-boat and an ordinary Galilean house.
I write all this as an introduction to our Novena of Prayer. Each year that I have been at St Bartholomew’s I have called the congregation to nine days of prayer for our church and our parish. Those first months and years were very difficult. It seemed an impossible task. Problems faced us in every direction. When we pray the Novena each year certain phrases and petitions cry out from those early days. In the “Litany of Our Lady” said each day of the Novena: For generosity in our hearts… for generosity in our giving…For the resources to do God’s work…For the upkeep of this church building…For the survival and growth of this church community… Also in the Novena Collect: …and let the whole world feel and see that things which were cast down are being raised up and things that have grown old are being made new and that all things are returning to perfection… And form the Litany of the Blessed Sacrament at the end of each day of the Novena: That Thou wouldest stir the wills of thy faithful people here to give generously of their time, talents and worldly goods for the furtherance of Thy Kingdom.
Each year Our Lord asks us if he can use this house as a centre for his teaching and healing. He asks for bread and wine to feed a hillside full for the poor, weak, hungry. He asks that this house should become a house of prayer where the lonely and depressed, the lost and frightened, those hungry for forgiveness and a new way of life might come. He asks if he might come in the bread and wine and satisfy the needs of all God’s children. He asks if he may make his presence known in the Blessed Sacrament and change lives in the sacraments of baptism, marriage, confession…
Our Novena is an answer to his prayer. It is our response to his generous offer. We simply offer nine days of prayer that his work be done in earth as it is in heaven. And see what he has done for us! These nine days have seen St Bartholomew’s grow and expand. It has seen our finances support a parish committed to the poor and poor in spirit – open every day to receive all and any of God’s children who come to find Him here.
Perhaps God’s blessing has dulled our response. When times were hard there was an urgency, a heartfelt desire. Our work is expanding – a new part of the parish, an expanding Family Mass, new pastoral opportunities, baptisms and marriages, the support of our school, its staff, children and parents. Renewed vision for the future, for us and for the Church of England.
In September the PCC will have an away-day to plan for the next few years. It is to be a formative time in the life and history of this great church. All this needs the response to Our Lord’s simple request, “Do you love me?” Will our answer be, “Yes, Lord, you know that we love you”? Will his response be, “Feed my sheep”?
I pray you will all join me this year in the Novena. The times and dates are printed below. May I particularly point to Sunday, 23 August at 10.30am: it is an opportunity for both the Family Mass and the 11 o’clock Solemn High Mass to join together for the prayers of the third day of the Novena.
Newsletter for July 2009
High Altar Crucifix
Last month, tucked away in the notes on the PCC, it was reported that I had got a quote from Howell and Bellion, church interior decoration experts, for restoring the High Altar crucifix. It has been a dream for a long time to restore this central figure and feature of St Bartholomew’s Church. Standing as I do Sunday by Sunday beneath the crucifix, the split in the right shoulder and the very badly painted figure became more and more depressing.
There was a mystery as to its original decoration. What was the paint covering up? Thanks for Howell and Bellion, that mystery has been solved. The original 1911 crucifix by McCulloch of Kennington was originally solid gilded. The cost to restore and re-gild seemed to me beyond our reach.
However, to my very great delight, the money for this project was forthcoming. The donor shares my interest and enthusiasm for this project and it means we can begin to make plans for its restoration. It is a project close to my heart and will greatly enhance the impact of the sanctuary and the general view from the back of the church. When visitors first come into the church, the first thing they look at is the stunning view of the High Altar and then the great height of the building. The crucifix is at the centre of that first view but has, over the years, become so dulled that I appears mainly in silhouette.
Re-gilded, the crucifix will give us a glimpse as to the original design and appearance of the High Altar almost one hundred years ago. I publish below Howell and Bellion’s report which I found very interesting. After a brief discussion with Kevin Howell we have pencilled in 7th September for the crucifix to be taken to their workshop in Saffron Walden, Essex. Kevin Howell seemed confident that the work would be completed within the estimated five weeks. This means we might be able to have its unveiling some time from mid to late October.
As with the re-silvering of the Lady Altar several years ago, I hope we may be able to present a photographic record of the work from its leaving St Bartholomew’s through the various stages of reconstruction to its return.
As various details emerge I will keep you posted. My great thanks to the fellow-dreamer who has made this exciting work possible.
Howell and Bellion’s report
St. Bartholomew's Church, Brighton - High Altar Crucifix; 135" high x 80" wide.
We were pleased to meet you in church to look at the fine high altar crucifix by McCulloch of Kennington, circa 1911. The design, with the cross formed by a series of pierced roundels, strikes a bold yet subtle balance which works well in the context of the Arts and Crafts setting of the sanctuary. However the crucifix is now quite dull having been painted with bronze (“gold”) paint which has now tarnished, so its intended lightness and delicacy has been lost.
Samples were taken from the fourth roundel up from the bottom of the cross and from the hair, loin cloth and right thigh of the corpus. Investigation of these revealed that beneath one or more layers of thick bronze paint there was gold leaf laid on oil size over a lead white ground. This was the same in all the samples indicating that the whole crucifix was originally solid gilded. Instead of the existing bronze paint, the glister of genuine gold leaf would recover the intended diaphanous appearance of the original design. We therefore recommend that the crucifix should be re-gilded with genuine gold leaf.
The Work.
• Using alloy access towers take down the crucifix and transport to workshop.
• Clean and prepare surfaces, rubbing out the numerous drip and runs in the existing bronze paint.
• Apply two grounds coats of alkyd oil paint.
• Apply long-drying linseed oil gold size and gild with genuine gold leaf.
• Skew off to a fine lustre.
• Transport back to the church and re-fix in position.
• Carry out any final gilding in situ.
Estimated time: 5 weeks
Estimated cost: £15,520 + V.A.T.
Appearance in Context.
The new gilding will at first appear quite bright, but it should not necessarily be toned down to balance it with the surrounding surfaces. They are overlaid with a film of dirt and grime which lowers their tone significantly, so it would be advisable to wait until they have been cleaned before deciding whether or not any further adjustment is necessary. Within six months or so the gilding will in any case be moderated by atmospheric dust adhering to the surface which will soften its initial glitter.
Newsletter for June 2009
Pray, brethren, that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God the Almighty Father.
For many years now June has been a focus of ordinations. Fr Geoffrey and I were ordained deacon on Trinity Sunday 1969. Lately, ordinations have been held on or near the feast of St Peter, 29th June.
Ordination is one of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church. It has been associated with a “call” from God to do a very special work for him in creation. Bishops, priests and deacons are called by God from the priesthood of all believers to offer creation to God that it might be redeemed, and to offer divine grace to creation. The ordained ministry of the Church is a unique relationship which is ordained by God and given to humanity in the Church.
The creative Father redeemed the world in the life, death and resurrection of His Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ. That work of restoring creation to its original state of grace was ordained by God. Our Lord’s ordination, to carry out God’s will, provides a model for priesthood. This priesthood is shared by bishops and is supported by the deaconate.
Our Lord, born of the Virgin Mary, worked from within humanity, offering up creation that it might, by grace, be restored to its former and future glory. A creation and humanity broken by sin and disobedience had died to grace and was buried in guilt. The power of grace alone could change this death to life and guilt-filled sin to freedom. Our Lord established and put in place the way that this process was to continue.
In his life Our Lord demonstrated that the grace of the Holy Spirit could take disfigured humanity and restore it to its former glory. Living parables of the deaf, blind and physically handicapped, the parables of the mentally disabled gave proof to the truth that creation was moving in a heavenward direction. Contact with the divine within our humanity, contact with Our Lord changed everything.
This good was established by the death of sin. Christ the sin-bearer carried our sinful humanity to the grave and the death of sin established the life of righteousness. Christ’s position on the cross places humanity and creation between two realities: heaven, man and God together in the light, and hell, man separated from God in darkness. His offering, his sacrifice, abolishes the old state of humanity, imprisoned by sin and guilt, and establishes a new kingdom of freedom and life – a new humanity, a second Adam, a kingdom ordained by God in the world but not of the world.
At Pentecost, this divine work of God the Father and the Son was continued by the ever-present work of the Holy Spirit. The priesthood of all believers was established. The high priests of all creation offered creation to God. Through the redeeming work of Our Lord and by the power of grace given by the Holy Spirit, creation receives all the benefits of the cross – forgiveness and everlasting life. Our humanity, created in the image and likeness of God, daily offers Our Lord’s sacrifice for the redemption of the world.
Our sacrifice of prayer and praise in linked with Our Lord’s sacrifice and this union became the Church. United in the Holy Spirit by the work of Our Lord accomplished on the cross, the Church was founded to carry out the work of man’s salvation. On the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles who were ordained by God, called by God, empowered by God with the task of leading the Church and ordering this work. The chaos of sin and evil, in the new order, was to mirror the old. It was out of chaos and darkness that God ordered creation. And it is out of the chaos created by sin and evil that God orders a new creation, the Kingdom of Heaven.
The Holy Apostles were to order the new kingdom into a force for good. This force for good, known as grace, changed lives. These men, inspired daily by the Holy Spirit worked within our humanity but were guided and linked by the Holy Spirit to God Himself. Guided by the Holy Spirit other men were found to carry out this special work. This Holy Order saw the founding of the Church and ordered its growth and direction.
At the heart of this new order was a singular act that was to change the very nature and way we view the world we live in. Our Lord took bread and blessed it and said: “This is my body” and the wine: “This is my blood”. Christ, born of the Virgin Mary, a part of creation, was also the eternal Word and one with God the Father. Here the bread, the product of creation and the work of human hands, was to be changed by the grace of the Holy Spirit into the eternal word made flesh, the very body and blood of Christ.
In baptism this same process takes place. The old man, the man of sin and darkness, is by grace nailed to the cross of Christ, taken to the place of darkness, and dies. With Christ a new man is raised and is given the Holy Spirit and becomes like Christ. Christ, human and divine, now humanity also shares in divinity by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
From this redeemed humanity the Apostles ordained men to carry out this special work. The work of redemption was ordered and consecrated by God as he had ordered the prophets, priests and kings of the Old Testament. The priest of the new covenant, however, stood at altars where Christ Himself is present. In the new kingdom where two or three are gathered together, there he is in their midst. Heaven and earth have passed away and man and God in Christ are united. Humanity, the new high priests of creation, bring the whole earthly order to the altar, Here in a sacrifice of prayer and praise the whole of humanity is offered in the body and the blood of our brother and redeemer, Jesus the Christ.
Each priest stands at the altar: they are chosen from among his brethren and ordained by God to offer this sacrifice. Special grace is given in ordination that he might be a channel for this change. This sacramental calling was ordained by God that he might dwell among us and that we might behold his glory. The priest is called to lead us by grace into union with God. This union was won for us on the cross, given to us by Our Lord at the Last Supper and made present by the Holy Spirit.
Christ’s sacrifice, his offering to God and to humanity, is united to our sacrifice of prayer and praise and with the whole of creation. The created order, both visible and invisible, with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven join Our Lord’s once and eternal offering, uniting all things in the One Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The priest at this offering stands before heaven and earth and humbly asks: “Pray, brethren, that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God the Almighty Father”. And all creation replies: "May the Lord receive this sacrifice at thy hands, to the praise and glory of his name, to our benefit and that of all his Holy Church.”