Dear Friends,

It’s been lovely this week seeing more sunshine and feeling that the days are getting a bit longer again. There are snowdrops in the churchyard and there is the real sniff of Spring in the air-though I wish the temperature was a bit higher!

As we near the end of the Candlemas octave we also reach the end of the period of celebration and reflection that started back with Lent. I will miss the specialness of the services and the music but am also looking forward to what is to come. 

However, change is bittersweet. It’s endings as well as beginnings, and our Candlemas text reminds us of a moment of change and transfer. The Old Covenant becomes the New, with Jesus handed into the care of the aged Simeon to be blessed, knowing that at this supreme moment his role on this earth is completed, and he steps out of the narrative. Later, John the Baptist will do the same, notwithstanding the mix of drama and chronicle that ends his story.

This is a meeting of the human and divine, grounded in family and community. Jesus is explicitly anchored in his society, but Simeon prophecies that that same community will be fractured and reassembled to be a new thing by what is to come. He will expand and transform Judaism, embrace the Gentile, create something new but also that contains and continues what is right from what already exists. Luke very specifically reminds us that Jesus is Jewish and remains Jewish. All that he becomes-all that he does-needs to be interpreted in this context.

This Sunday (4^th Sunday before Lent)

08.00am – Holy Communion – All Saints

10:00am – Sung Holy Communion with Candlemas Procession – St. Mary’s

10:30am – Muddy Messy Church – All Saints

7:15pm – Generations – All Saints Link

The Week Ahead

Monday 10^th

10.30am – Tiny Tots – All Saints

Tuesday 11^th  

10:30am – M4T – St. Mary’s

Weds 12^th 

 9:00am – Celtic Morning Prayer – All Saints

Thursday 13^th 

10:00am – Holy Communion – St. Mary’s 

1.00pm – Funeral – St Marys

Friday 14^th

12.30pm – Concert – St Marys

Saturday 15^th

12.00 – 2:00pm – Saturday Lunches – St Mary’s

3pm – Interment of Judith West followed by refreshments

Next Sunday 16^th (3^rd Sunday before Lent)

10:00am – Holy Communion – St Marys

10.30am Holy Communion – All Saints

 

May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all evermore. Amen

 

Blessings

 

Fr Kester de Oliveira in