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Dear friends,

So Lent is finally upon us! Not quite as late as it could be but not far off – all to do with the calculation of the phases of the moon.

Before we look at Lent, what about the keeping of Candlemass last month? That great Feast of Light was celebrated with devotion by those who braved the cold and the snow. I use the word “devotion” because it is an aspect of the Christian life which seems to get little mention in modern Christianity and, indeed, the wider perception of Christianity. “I don’t go to church but I live a good, Christian, life.” people often tell me. “What do you do about praying?” I ask. “Well, I ask God to look after me and my family.” There is no thought that prayer may be about offering to God love and thanksgiving, worship and praise.

As some of you know, I have a thing about S. Thomas of Canterbury. He is a favourite because he is so complex. A middle-class man who rose to become Chancellor to King Henry II before being appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. As archbishop, he led a more than devout life and was much given to penance and prayer. He also championed the cause of the church and its authority within this realm of England. Clashes with his former friend, the king, led to times of exile in France before his return to Canterbury and martyrdom at the hands of the king’s knights. What I didn’t realise, before reading a new book about him, was his devotion to God throughout his life. Records reveal that he, as chancellor, would be found prostrate before the altar or crucifix in what was obviously a combination of penitence for sin and sheer love of God. Short accounts of his life seem to suggest a magical switch from a secular life to a religious one. He was a devout Christian full-stop.

My own journey to becoming an active Christian was strongly influenced by the praying of the people around me in church. Elderly people creaked to their knees in genuflection and prayer. Worship at S. Mary’s Birkenhead and, later, S. Luke’s, Tranmere, introduced me to the concept of prayer being valid for its own sake. We are put on this earth to “know God and enjoy him for ever” – which includes a life of devotion and sanctification. We may lose our way in the busyness and distraction of life, but that is our goal and it is what heaven is about.

So Candlemass was a lovely offering of worship. Meanwhile, in Burslem, all sorts of things were happening. “Light Night Stoke on Trent” was a wonderful celebration. The town centre was closed off to traffic for three nights and we were treated to flaming torches, a silver band (the players were truly lit-up), a dancing, walking, glowing figure (who got bigger and bigger) – and a number of buildings used for light projections which music played. People turned out in the freezing cold in their droves. The pubs were full and so were the streets. I went on the Friday evening and returned on the Saturday, meeting up with members of the church and people I hadn’t seen for a while. Well done, the people who were the movers and shakers – and all who provided the entertainment. It all reminded me of the celebrations at Santiago da Compostella on the eve of the Feast of S. James the Apostle. The only difference being the temperature difference -5 to +25!

Back to Lent and devotion. For a number of years we preceded masses with thirty minutes silent prayer before the silent Jesus who gives Himself to us in the Blessed Sacrament of his Body. In recent times, this has extended to an hour, not least because there was always the possibility of starting late and/or saying Morning or Evening Prayer during the time. This year I have decided to begin the prayer time with the recitation of the Rosary. If you have a set of rosary beads and have either not used them or don’t know how to, come and join in. If it doesn’t connect with your prayer life then give it another go before doing something else. Don’t let Lent pass you by. The Lent Lunches used to be very well supported – now we see only a couple of extra faces. Put time aside for God and for each other within the church family. The study course will be after mass on a Tuesday. No idea, yet, what we are going to do – which makes it all the more exciting. Then there are the LENT EXTRA magazines for sale -with spiritual exercises for you to do at home.

Have a good Lent.

Every blessing,

Dear friends,

I declare this “Vicar’s Window” a Brexit-free zone.

Last month we celebrated the memorial of S. Francis de Sales. He was a Roman Catholic bishop who sought to encourage a spirituality appropriate to the lifestyle of the person concerned. He rightly discerned that the praying-pattern of a monk could not be the same as that of a bishop or a builder. He also argued that it would be better if Christians did not serve the Lord in order to avoid hell or gain heaven. He believed it more important to love God simply for God’s sake.

This is a revolutionary understanding. Revolutionary because it was proclaimed at a time when salvation was a major topic among Christians. The idea of offering worship to God simply because God is to be worshipped could be viewed as an entirely selfless activity. The very act of worshipping the Creator and Redeemer, simply because they are who they are, is far removed from the gaining of heaven and the avoidance of hell. As the angel with the bucket of coal and the bucket of water said to the man, “I am off to burn down heaven and put out the fires of hell so that people will worship God with no self-interest!”

However, there is no getting away from the fact that we are fallen, sick, sinful people who are in need of divine healing, not only from physical sickness but also from human frailty. I can’t remember who said that Holy Communion (the receiving of the Body and Blood of Christ under the forms of bread and wine) was “medicine for the soul”.

In the Letter of James there is laid out before us the tension between salvation through good works and faith. The pre-reformation church concentrated on the good works of various spiritual exercises combined with care for the poor etc. Protestantism emphasised salvation purely through faith in Christ. “Justification by faith alone.” was the rallying cry of Martin Luther, the primary force behind the revolt against Catholicism. To be justified meant to be put right with God – saved. Good works did not procure salvation, they were the graceful result of that salvation.

Now that I have reached the age of nearly 65, and no longer have to pay for prescription drugs, I am conscious of being diligent in taking the little pills that have been prescribed. On a much larger scale was the taking of many pills of a good friend who had been diagnosed with HIV and had many pills to take over the course of the day. Sadly, he died some years ago. Although the treatment now is less invasive, people still die of the virus, though considerably fewer than some years ago.

For many people, however, pills are not the only thing. An old friend fell and broke his hip and refused to do any of the post-operative exercises recommended. Although he took his medication, he was hardly able to move for the rest of his life. I recently visited a firefighter friend who has had his second knee-joint replaced. Although the pain has been excruciating, he has followed the exercise regime dilligently. He is well on the way to making a full recovery. The pills did their work but action was also required.

Which makes me think about the Christian Life. If the Blessed Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood is, among other things, “medicine for the soul” then, like all necessary medicine, it has to be taken. If the physiotherapy of “good works” is also required for full healing then it is equally necessary. Bible reading, daily prayer, study, the use of the sacraments, giving to the Church, giving to those in need, helping others, practising virtue and avoiding vice etc. are all vital to living with God and attaining heaven.

My question is this. If these are necessary aspects of the Christian Life, then why are people so slack in their discipleship? I find it curious that people can be well enough to go to work – but not well enough to receive the Sacrament. People who are unable to get to mass in mid-morning do not seek out a church early morning or evening. One of my boxes of pills instructs me to take the pill later in the day if I have forgotten in the morning. This I do. A group of the congregation will be confirmed in a few weeks time. I was confirmed 49 years ago and have only missed receiving Holy Communion on an holy day of obligation (every Sunday and Feast Day) on three occasions – through extreme illness. This is nothing to do with virtue. It is to do with recognising that the Blessed Sacrament is necessary to the health of my soul. It is more important than taking pills. Better to die than to miss out on salvation!

I only wish that I was better at the list outlined in the eighth paragraph!

SACRAMENT OF CONFIRMATION

On Sunday, February 24th, the Bishop of Ebbsfleet will be celebrating mass and confirming members of the congregation who desire the completion of their Christian initiation. Some were baptised as children, others were baptised in adulthood. They now complete that journey of Christian belonging through the laying-on-of-hands and anointing with Sacred Chrism by the bishop. That belonging is completed in the reception of the Lord’s Body and Blood in Holy Communion.

These are all SACRAMENTS. A sacrament is a physical thing which conveys the presence of God and the conveying of GRACE to the recipient. Water is used in baptism; bread and wine in the mass; oil at confirmation and unction etc. A Sacrament is efficacious. It is changed and it changes. Water become holy and confers baptismal regeneration. The bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ and unite the recipient with the sacrifice of Christ and His Real Presence. “Christ within you, the hope of glory.” “Medicine for the soul.” as outlined in the Vicar’s Window this month.

I have to confess that, until I knew better, I thought that the candidate “confirmed” his or her belief in God. This suggests a movement from the person towards God. This is wrong. Sacraments are always the movement from God to us. In other words, it is God who baptises through the ministry of the priest (and, indeed, anyone, if the person to be baptised declares their faith and water is poured in the Name of the Sacred Trinity.) It is God who confirms through the ministry of the bishop. “Confirm, O Lord, your servant N…. with your Holy Spirit.” There is, of course, opportunity for the candidate to offer their testimony – but that is not the heart of confirmation. The candidate is there to receive a gift from God. Bishop Christopher Hill, former Bishop of Guildford and, prior to that, Bishop of Stafford, always made clear to the candidates that HE was the one confirming, not the candidate.

In the New Testament, Baptism is the Sacrament of initiation. Although Saul was converted on the road to Damascus, it was not until he had been baptised that he became a Christian. It is a new birth. Jesus is God’s Son by right – we are God’s sons and daughters by adoption and grace, by baptism. In the early church it was the norm for adults to be prepared for baptism and for the sacrament to be conferred on Holy Saturday night at the Vigil Mass of Easter. It was in this rite for adults that water was poured and/or the candidates immersed in water followed by the anointing and laying-on-of-hands. The new Christians were then given bowls of milk and honey – signifying their entrance in to the Promised Land, the Church. They would then present the gifts of bread and wine at the altar and be the first, after the bishop and clergy, to receive the Lord’s Body and Blood. Those preparing for baptism/confirmation would only be allowed to stay at mass up until the end of the sermon. Only when they were initiated could they stay for the whole liturgy.

While there is reference to whole families being baptised (adults and children) it was generally the case that individual adults would be initiated. For various reasons, not least the prevalence of infant mortality, it became the custom to baptise the children of Christians at an early age. The Orthodox church of Russia and Greece baptise, confirm, and give Holy Communion to babies. The Roman Catholic Church rearranges the order by baptising infants, admitting to Holy Communion at 6-7, and confirming at 14. (Adults receive the three sacraments at one service.) The Anglican Church keeps the original order but doesn’t allow the reception of Holy Communion until after being confirmed. The age of candidates can vary and provision is made for the reception of Holy Communion prior to confirmation.

PLEASE PRAY FOR THOSE BEING CONFIRMED ON THE 24th.

MAKE SURE THAT YOU ARE PRESENT AT THE MASS BECAUSE:

A) OUR BISHOP WILL BE THERE.

B) PEOPLE SUPPORTED YOU AT YOUR CONFIRMATION.

C) THOSE TO BE CONFIRMED NEED YOUR PRAYERFUL SUPPORT, BOTH NOW AND WHEN

THEY ARE CONFIRMED.

Dear friends,

Barbara Roberts, our church treasurer, received a lovely present from the Diocese of Lichfield just before Christmass. It was the notification that the parish share for Sneyd Parish has now increased by 5% for 2019. This is an increase of £1,248, bringing the total to £26,244 per annum.

We have to find £2,187 every month. This is about £511 per week.

On top of that is the cost of heating, lighting, maintenance of the building, teaching materials, insurance, vicar’s expenses and sundry other outgoings.

When I came to the parish in 1983, the parish share was £2,100.

Why has there been such a massive increase? Partly because wealthy parishes used to subsidise the poorer parishes. Wealthy parishioners in the shires, even though they had to share a priest with neighbouring towns and villages, were expected to pay a share often three times what we are expected to pay. This has now changed. Rather like the payment of taxes, the wealthy find ways of avoiding paying what is their due. The notion of the church having a bias to the poor no longer holds sway. This can be seen in the management of many of our cathedrals. A member of the congregation was shocked to see a recent programme about Canterbury Cathedral. The number of clergy. The cost to get into the blessed building! The income from properties held by the cathedral chapter. The fact that cathedrals do not pay any share. Part of the parish share contributes to the training of clergy. Cathedral clergy are trained within that same system. This must mean that parishes are, therefore, subsidising the cathedral clergy.

The problem is this. The Church of England argues that it costs upward of £50,000 to have a priest in a parish. This comprises the cost of the priest’s income, pension contributions, housing, clerical back-up, not to mention the so-called support staff to help parish clergy do a better job. (This usually means endless statistics forms and other e-mail nonsense.) This figure is, however, based on the number of clergy in any post divided by the number of clergy in parishes. It is only the parish clergy and their congregations who raise the money required. No one else is expected to fund-raise or up the regular giving. In addition, it is the parochial clergy who conduct weddings and funerals – and who don’t keep the fees involved. What used to be clergy fees are now termed diocesan fees. Looking at the number of funerals that Father Stather and Father Swift conduct, I would hazard a guess that their cost to the diocese must be well below the going rate.

It is a fact that some churches are always going to attract weddings and funerals. S. Werburgh’s, S. Paul’s, Sneyd Church do not. The magnet church in this neighbourhood is Swan Bank. S. Saviour’s is very much the church in the Smallthorne community – as is Christ Church Tunstall. Odd Rode, Barthomley, and Astbury are the big wedding churches. This means that the clergy contribute to the diocesan income and the parishes pay their share with help from the funeral and wedding fees which the church retains. (The fees are divided between diocese, P.C.C., heating, vergering, and music costs.)

You may well be asking “What about the Church Commissioners millions?” Apart from the fact that umpteen millions were lost in some speculation many years ago, not to mention the discovery that properties in the King’s Cross area were being let for dubious purposes, it is simply the case that clergy and their widows (widowers, more recently – not a sex-change but the advent of women clergy) are living too long and using up the pension pot. There are more retired clergy than there are clergy in post!

Then there is the cost of bishops and their staff, not to mention the astronomical cost of maintaining The General Synod.

In all fairness, the Church Commissioners have handled their assets well in recent years – far better than many other organisations. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the Church of England continues to spend money unwisely, continues to house bishops in ridiculously opulent properties (even if they only use a small part of the palaces and castles concerned), continues to maintain a “shop front” while the beleaguered clergy in money-poor parishes (together with their treasurers, wardens and church councillors) foot the bill.

Happy Christmass everyone!

Dear friends,

The holy season of Advent is upon us in a few days time. A short Advent because Christmass Day falls on a Tuesday so there is barely time between Advent Four (23rd) and Christmass Eve (24th). At long last, the weather has turned colder and I forget how much I enjoy celebrating mass in a cold church. (Others may find this hard to understand!) Robert Runcie, sometime Archbishop of Canterbury, complained that there was nothing less conducive to prayer than a centrally-heated church with fitted carpet. There was no substitute for a cold stone floor, hard pews, and a threadbare kneeler (hassock). Prayer, he argued, had to include an element of penitence and rigour. (I can think of occasions when, on a feast day, I have sat in church saying Evening Prayer and clutching a gin and tonic. Bob Runcie would not approve, but then he managed to pray with Pope John Paul II (now Saint John Paul the Great) in Canterbury Cathedral, both of them kneeling on deep-pile hassocks.)

What has happened to penitence and asceticism in the life of the church? Dan Brown raised protestant suspicions with his pseudo religious order complete with self-flagellation and the like. Anglicans just don’t go in for that sort of thing – unless it involves dodgy clergy instructing others and then being sent to prison for their pains. Hmmm! What has happened to kneeling? As a teenager I was immediately deeply impressed by the people at S. Luke’s Tranmere kneeling for prayer. (Anglicans did.) Now it is a rare sight. Even younger clergy loll about on on their seats following the verbal instruction in the Prayer Book to meekly kneel upon our knees.

I think it is all to do with donkey stones. A childhood remembrance is of women kneeling to scrub floors and to wash the front step of the house. The donkey stone was to provide a white edge to the stone step. Labour-saving devices means that we rarely get on our knees to do the cleaning, hence the inability to kneel for any length of time. We have also lost the idea of offering up to God our aches and pains. “Offer it up for the holy souls in purgatory.” was the automatic response of RC women in the old days. Now, of course, everyone is bound to become an angel in heaven. (“Wrong!” is the correct response.)

Whilst on the subject of the avoidance of kneeling, I have to confess to the discomfort experienced through climbing the stairs in my little house in Norton Green. Having lived in a vicarage with shallow, wide treads, I didn’t realise how unaccustomed I had become to steep terrace-house stairs. Clambering up and down involved clutching the one bannister and contemplating getting another fitted – failing that, getting a stairlift installed. A month later and I was able to go up and down without even thinking about it. A form of natural physiotherapy.

Forgive the digressions. “And Christ is born.” writes John Betjeman in the midst of the hustle and bustle of his poem “Christmass Shopping”. One of the Breugel’s painted a wonderfully busy scene of Bethlehem at the time of the census. The painting teams with medieval villagers, soldiers, clergy, sellers, innkeepers – and Mary and Joseph and the donkey make their way through the busyness. There must be sixty or more people in the picture – and Mary and Joseph are painted to scale. It is the art of the artist which provides the sight-lines which draw the viewer to the apparently insignificant trio. The aim of the artist is to show that Mary and Joseph made their unobtrusive way into the Bethlehem scene. God’s Son equally made his way unobtrusively into the world. hose who read this column will know that my favourite Advent hymn is “When came in flesh the incarnate Word.” (number 13 in the English Hymnal) The verse continues, “the heedless world slept on, and only simple shepherds heard that God had sent His Son.”

That is the heart of the Gospel. God sends His Son in order to bring us, through the Cross and Resurrection, and Ascension, back to Himself. As with Breugel’s painting, our world is busy with preparations for a Christ-child-free Christmass – and, yet. Christ is there. He comes into the world. We make that moment present as we approach the altar-stable to greet, not a plaster Jesus, but the Lord of Glory under the form of bread and wine.

“O come let us adore Him.”

Every blessing for this wonderful and blessed season. Make way for Jesus.

Every blessing,

Fr. Patrick’s sermon for the Feast of Dedication

“Give thanks for a remembrance of his holiness” (Ps. 97:12)

The psalm has been reinterpreted by the early Church and makes reference to the presence of Jesus at the ancient Jewish Feast of Dedication – a festival which was observed each year to mark the anniversary of the cleansing and re-consecration of the Temple in Jerusalem, after Judas Maccabaeus, that great Jewish hero, had recaptured the city from the pagan occupying forces, in the second century before Christ. You can read the story in the First Book of the Maccabees, or listen to a musical celebration of it in Handel’s Oratorio about Judas Maccabaeus.

Our Feast of Dedication recalls that ancient ceremony, marking the purifying and rebuilding of the house of God, the dedication of the Temple; and what we celebrate, in the first place, is the dedication of this temple, this particular church building as a particular place of God’s presence with us in Word and Sacrament. But
there are several levels of meaning to be considered here. According to the Scriptures, the Temple means not only the building, but also the spiritual community which gathers there – “a spiritual house”, St. Peter recalls in his letter, “a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of God’s own possession”.

We can say there are two temples at work here: The Temple in the sacred building – the Temple as the spiritual community. And there is still a further dimension; the Temple means also the house of God within each one of us, for we ourselves are “living temples” of the Lord, “holy and acceptable to him”. On all these levels of meaning, the Temple is the locus of God’s presence, the place of the meeting of the soul with God, in knowledge and in love, and the building which we celebrate is, as it were, a sacrament – an outward and visible sign of that gracious indwelling presence within us. You look at a Church and there is a constant reminder that within the very ‘ground’ of your being there is that ‘high castle’ as Meister Eckhart calls it or a Cathedral in which the Lord is enthroned. That uncreated spark or essence caused by the passion and resurrection is yours by grace and participation in the holy mysteries.

This building stands here as a sign, a reminder, a call to remembrance, a call to recognition of a sacred reality, a remembrance of the holiness of God. In a very secular culture with its very secularized institutions, the church must be a continual reminder, (sadly this is perhaps all we can. be): the building and all that belongs to it, and all that goes in it, must reaffirm the sacred. Everything that goes on here, day by day – the faithful recitation of common prayer, the solemn commemoration of the work of our redemption, all the words and all the music of our liturgies – must be reminders: a remembrance of the holiness of God. That must be our dedication.

It is significant that this particular church building is part of the communities life: a reminder that our community, like most others, is historically rooted in the church; but also a reminder of something vastly more important than historical circumstance: a reminder that the integrity of our intellectual life ultimately depends upon our dedication to absolute truth which we seek to know and love. Without that dedication, without that unity of focus, there can be no genuine community, but only a plurality of information and techniques with no coherence of final significance. This is not just a building for the convenience of those who want to go to church, but the very heart of the whole community enterprise; and what goes on here, whether it be some great ceremony, or just a handful of people faithfully maintaining the daily offices, is of primary importance to the true meaning of the community. The truth is sacred, and to be sought with prayer.

Our dedication must be to the affirmation of the sacred as the true character of the church’s mission in this community and in a secular culture generally. We must insist upon the sacred in the spirit and the forms, and even in the language and the manners of our worship, in the music and the architecture and all the arts pertaining to worship; we must insist upon the sacred in those standards of belief and those standards of moral life which are founded in the sacred word.

And if we would be practical about our dedication, we must continually build up within ourselves the spirit of penitential adoration, and train ourselves to lift our eyes to look upon our spirits’ home, the new and free Jerusalem, which is above. That will be a renewing of the Temple, the rebuilding of God’s house, among us and within us; and that must be our dedication, and the meaning of our festival today in which we offer our praises to God, and “give thanks” for a remembrance of his holiness”.

And now we go on to complete that great act of remembrance, which sets before our minds and hearts the sign and means of our redemption. “We wait for thy loving kindness, O God, in the midst of thy Temple”.
Amen. +

war memorial

The centenary of the Armistice was commemorated at Sneyd Church with a mass of requiem. During the month of November, the war memorial was decorated with poppies commemorating those who served in the Armed Forces and died in the two world wars. White poppies signified all who have died in warfare, including civilians, together with prayer for peace. Purple poppies are a reminder of the dogs and horses who died.

Many thanks to those who knitted, stuck, cut out etc. etc. the many poppies which make up the display. The camouflage netting was originally used in army exercises. The statue of S. George was brought from the church in Nile Street in 1956 and was present at the consecration of the church in Hamil Road in 1958. The small plaque below the shrine was originally in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel of the former parish church.

feast of dedication

When the present Holy Trinity Church was consecrated on November 19th 1958, part of the marble floor of the Blessed Sacrament Chapel was inserted in the wall on the right side of the sanctuary. According to the account in the Sentinel, the Bishop of Stafford made the Sign of the Cross on the stone. Soon after the consecration, the cross was incised in the stone, as can be seen in the photograph. The copper plaque below the stone came from the church in Nile Street. This bears the inscription:

“The corner stone of the CHURCH founded for the District of SNEYD and intended to be dedicated to THE HOLY TRINITY was laid on the 8th day of July AD1851 by SMITH CHILD ESQ., one of the representatives of the Northern Division of this County in Parliament..”

Pray for those who founded the church and parish and for those who were instrumental in moving the church to its present location.

Dear friends,

I never approved of THE referendum – but I did vote, albeit with mixed feelings. What was interesting was the response of my fellow residents. People came out in their droves. Why they did so is not for me to comment, other than to say that it made me think that proportional representation might produce a similar response. What is the point of voting Labour in my brother’s leafy village of Hook? Hampshire is not likely to produce anything other than a Conservative safe seat. The fact is that people voted at the referendum because, just for once, they felt that their voices might be heard.

Now there is a clamour (mainly from London) for another referendum, in the hope that the previous response might be reversed. Labour is hotly in favour of this – which is surprising, given the fact that so many Labour supporters voted to leave the E.U. (This must say something about the division between the electorate and those representing them in parliament.) It is also horribly reminiscent of the good old Church of England. “Let us ask the Holy Spirit to guide us as we vote for women priests and/or women bishops. If the result is a no then clearly the Holy Spirit is being ignored and another debate and vote must be arranged.”* As one commentator said, “There is no appetite for a second referendum outside London.”

Surely people can see that the big divide is between London and everywhere else. It is also a problem that the majority of people in the media are anti-Brexit. The BBC is clearly biased and should be called the London Broadcasting Corporation. Radio Four may have an outpost in Manchester but rarely do reporters venture outside the M25 to interview, for example, black teenagers and head teachers. You may question my allegation of bias. How many radio or television comediennes do you hear who are right-wing? Either they don’t exist or the broadcasting mafia don’t give them a chance.

So what is Father Brian’s answer to all this? A growing devotion to Radio Cymru. Although my family originates from Welsh-speaking Wales (and Cornwall), my father never taught us to speak Welsh. (It wasn’t fashionable then.) This means that I drive around surrounded by a Welsh lilt, a wide range of music sung in Welsh, and, apart from the words “Brexit” and “Teresa May” I don’t understand a word of what I am listening to. The result? No more banging the steering wheel with frustration at the radio presenters and guests. Even the traffic news and sports commentaries are rendered innocuous.

“The Archers”, of course, are still part of my daily routine, so I cannot claim to being entirely free of English radio. Will someone tell me when Brexit has happened and there will be no more major businesses issuing threats and dire warnings. I might listen to Radio Four again – although I doubt it. Welsh is a beautiful language.

“Here endeth the rant for this month.”

On to other things. The 60th anniversary of the consecration of the former S. Werburgha’s Church, following the move from the church in Nile Street, will be celebrated on November 19th. This is a real milestone and a cause for celebration. I would love to know how people felt about having to abandon the old church. Grace Burgess (who was sacristan when I came to the parish) told me one or two things. I think it was the speed of the move, following stonework falling from the chancel arch, which must have caught people out. The intention was to set up a temporary home in Hamil Road until a church could be built in Moorland Road. Following the move it was decided that the present building was more than adequate. Lavatories, a kitchen, and a sacristy were added, following the move of altar, font, windows, pews, and statues. Come and celebrate and sit at the feet of Father Griffin!

Every blessing,

*The latest hot potato being handled by the Church of England (certainly by General Synod) is the pressure to solemnise same-sex marriages. A vote at General Synod seems to be being avoided at all costs. Most of society can’t see a problem – but then, most of society hasn’t a clue what Christianity is. The problem is a church which has broken with Scripture and Tradition in other things trying to hold together those who maintain Scripture and Tradition and those who believe the Church can decide what it decides. Jesus said, “The Holy Spirit will lead you into all true.” Is General Synod the body which knows the mind of Christ? Not sure.

Dear friends,

October is a wonderfully quiet month. No major feast days and time to catch up on all sorts of stuff ignored or pushed aside during the rest of the year. Who knows, we might even have a new mass book with all the different settings we use. The new rite for mass has been introduced on weekdays but is yet to be rolled out on a Sunday. Watch this space…

Last month I wrote about the problems facing the church through the bad behaviour of clergy. This month is equally clerical – but with the emphasis on good and holy priests who have served the church in different ways. The first is Father Alan Jones, who died suddenly a few months ago. Alan was a good support for me during a difficult second curacy in Walsall. He was in the neighbouring parish and was wonderfully out of step with the official Church of England. His parish was an huge council estate similar to the one I was ministering in – but on the opposite side of the M6. He and Karen were enormous fun and breeders of German Shepherds. I well remember calling to find them defrosting unbleached tripe in bowls on top of the vicarage radiators! Nice. I saw Alan’s widow, Karen, when I worshipped at Coven Church during my holiday. What a wonderful example of Christian living they both are.

The other priest is a former vicar of Sneyd, Father Jim Wilson. There is much about him in the parish history and he pops up in various books. Father Jim was at Sneyd in the 1920s. His grandson submitted the article reprinted elsewhere in a recent edition of New Directions, the magazine of Forward in Faith. Curious to see a part of the Majestas which hangs above the east window in the present Sneyd Church. In addition to this article, I was loaned a copy of Father Paul Hutchinson’s copy of a memoir about S. Boniface’s College, Warminster. This was the fourth year of training for those who studied at King’s College, London. Sadly, both S. Boniface’s and Christ Church, Canterbury had closed when I was finishing my training – which is why I went for my final year to S. Stephen’s House, Oxford. It was in this volume that I came across a recollection of Father Jim’s visits to the college to teach the ordinands. Below is the extract relating to this great priest.

I leave you with both accounts as a reminder of priesthood at its most positive and fruitful.

Then there were the regulars. Probably the most influential was Fr Jim Wilson from the Guild of Health, who came every year while I was there to lead several days on the ministry of healing. He was about ninety, but had lost none of his fire, and sustained a demanding programme of two lectures during the day and an open forum in the evenings. John valued him particularly for the prayer sessions that he led each morning, in which he introduced us to the form of prayer that had brought him back to health after a serious illness in his forties, which he called ‘contemplative meditation’. But he made a big impact in other ways too. The teaching at King’s was very much in the liberal tradition, and it was interesting to see the astonishment sometimes on the men’s faces when Jim talked about the healings he had known that had followed from prayer and ministry. Yet they couldn’t call him a liar, and a number confessed to having had their lives turned upside down as a result of his visit.

Every Blessing.

Father Brian.

The Reverend Prebendary Alan Jones

(1947-2018)

Richard Grigson remembers an inspirational friend, mentor, priest

To be the assistant curate of Fr Alan Jones at St Francis of Assisi, Friar Park, was to have an experience which is unique in the Church of England. Recently I was being interviewed for a training role by someone from the diocese and I was asked, ‘What was your curacy like?’

‘Brilliant’ I said, ‘I had a good relationship with my training incumbent. I was trusted, encouraged, expected and supported.’ My diocesan inquisitor was surprised by this, but I was so positive for two reasons: first, it was true – every word of it; second, I instinctively recalled the first rule of being Fr Alan’s curate: when talking to anyone from the diocese, we always back each other up. (This rule held good even when I became some of those someones’ from the diocese.)

One of the first conversations I had with Fr Alan, nearly 30 years ago, was at the time that my dad had just had cancer surgery. The surgeon had opened him up, had a look, and sewed him up to send him home. My unguarded reaction was to say about the surgery: ‘We thought it would be alright.’ At that point, Alan put an image into my mind which has stayed with me ever since. It was the image of the person clinging onto the burning building who has to let go, trusting that, below, there would be people who would catch them. It really would be alright, but only if I let go and trusted God’s version of alright.’ I’m sure he had used that image a hundred times before, and since. I’ve certainly quoted it myself. When I was asked to give the homily at his funeral Mass it struck me how much it sums up Fr Alan’s approach: the inter-relationship between faith and certainty.

Sacramental certainty is central: provisionality would be pointless. The church itself moves from one state of certainty to another, by clarification. When I heard of the suddenness of his death my mind went straight back to his words about moving from one certainty to another: get on with it.’ That certainty derives, eventually, from our doctrine of the incarnation: ‘At various times God spoke through prophets [who occasionally misheard], but now he has spoken through his son.’ (Heb. 1.1)

Fr Alan Jones never went far from his roots in Bilston, in the Black Country. After university in Nottingham and training at Mirfield, and a brief sojourn in Coventry he devoted himself to priestly ministry in the area which he knew best. Yet ministry in Sedgley, Friar Park, Wednesbury, and Ettingshall on the outskirts of Wolverhampton was to open up the vision for the people of God in those places. Just as he had a glimpse into heaven when he got off his bike, first pushed open the door of St James’ Wednesbury and met the formidable Fr Husbands.

In making the quality of worship paramount, he was no high church antiquarian. He had no time for old fashioned navel-gazing high churchery. The worship of God is to be renewed by a glimpse into heaven as a preparation for ministry in the world. As he put it: ‘we’re here to worship God, not entertain the troops’

Fr Alan and I knew where we were because we always worked from first principles. Some principles were absolutely clear. After being ordained deacon at Lichfield Cathedral in June 1988, my first funeral was in the following week, and I had two weddings the following Saturday. As he put it, you’re either in holy orders or you’re not.’ A trainer of curates would not be allowed to do that today. In truth I don’t think he was supposed to do it then, but it was a training in the importance of the bread and butter of parish pastoral ministry— an outworking again of incarnation, reaching out in the name of Jesus Christ to people at particular points in their lives, which has served me well to this day.

And there was fun: there were trips to Liverpool to be introduced to Peter Carrara, and to have a rummage in the second-hand room at Hayes and Finch. We came back via fish and chips at Formby or Southport. Fr Alan would make me drive so that he could give full concentration to what he wanted to say. That was just as well, because if he drove he would still give full concentration to what he wanted to say! Some situation would develop on the road ahead which he would eventually notice and greet with the exclamation: ‘Jesus Mary and her Husband.’

His was a clarity of principle, sometimes at personal cost. The closure of St James’ Wednesbury must have been intensely painful, yet he recognised that, with the parish demolished, there was no job to do there. Move on, let go. Or there was the new ecclesiastical vista after 1992. The issue for him was simple: authority. The Church of England had done something which it had no authority to do, but this conflicted with his confidence in his own Holy Orders. It was not a question of being old fashioned, or high, or responding to feelings, or sexism. He certainly could not be dismissive of the achievements of women, as anyone who knows Fr Alan’s wife, Karen, will attest.

That clarity made him easy to deal with—you know exactly where you were—and also impossible to deal with: there was no pushing back to an imagined line drawn in the sand, as the line was stated at the outset. There was the principle that if a difficult decision has to be made, for the good of the church make it clearly, and stick by it.

One of the many sayings of Fr Husbands which he quoted was ‘If you try to keep people happy, nobody will be happy, Please yourself, that way one person will be happy Fr Alan was a great devotee of the principle of one man one vote. He was also absolutely clear that, as parish priest, he was that one man who exercised that one vote. But this was not bombast, it was the responsibility of pastoring the people of God. If I look back at some recent events in my ministry, at things which have not gone as well as they could have, I see that I should have made difficult decisions earlier and more decisively. I should have learnt better the lessons given by my training incumbent.

There was, alongside the principle, a pragmatism. When I was offered the move from Smallthorne, in Stoke-on -Trent, to become Rector of Stafford, I knew that it would mean setting sail from the safe harbour of Ebbsfleet into other waters. I phoned Fr Alan, clear about what this would mean. His immediate reaction was good.’ Then he issued me with words of encouragement which were principled, pragmatic and pithily expressed. Indeed, so pithily expressed were they that they are quite unrepeatable. But encouragement it was, and which I value greatly.

And he could surprise. Invited into the fringes of a right-of-centre political group in Wednesbury, by those taken in by a forthright exterior, he criticised their sloppy, thoughtless opinions, because he had met and been influenced by that turbulent priest Trevor Huddlestone at Mirfield.

So what advice would my training incumbent have for me if he were listening to this sermon? Confronted by the totality of the justice and mercy of God, and therefore his own sin and God’s overwhelming redemption, it is unlikely that he would be interested in listening to a sermon from me. But if circumstances were different, and I were delivering this homily in his presence, he would be sitting, eyes fixed on a spot on the floor about two metres in front of him. His face would be impassive, maybe allowing himself an occasional wry smile, or polite chuckle. He would probably be thinking ‘Cut the character stuff. Tell us what the church teaches.’ So, fathers, sisters, brothers, the gospel: Luke tells us about two people on their way to Emmaus, wrapped up in their confusion, after the betrayal and crucifixion of Jesus, faces downcast. They had their version of what should have happened, and they so clung on to that (as someone clings to the burning building) that they did not recognise the risen Jesus walking with them. Jesus opens the scriptures to them, and although afterwards they recalled that their hearts burned within them as he spoke, it did not shake them from their backward-looking version of the paschal events. Only when they reached their supposed destination, which turned out to be a mere staging post, and the stranger broke the bread, as he had done so many times for the thousands on the hillside, and in the upper room, did they recognise that the Lord is risen.

Luke is insistent: they rushed back immediately to the eleven and their companions, to test their experience with the nascent magisterium of the church. There they spoke and heard of the resurrection of Jesus. Talking between themselves, a committee meeting with the creativity of the oozlum bird, gets them nowhere. Even the ultimate bible study does not shake them from their introspection, although their hearts were strangely warmed. It is only when they are in the presence of the broken bread that they recognise that they can let go of their disappointment in the face of the certainty of the joy of the resurrection. That is why, today, in the face of the certainty of death, we have the faith to assert the certainty of the resurrection. So we break the bread, and pour the wine. We offer the holy sacrifice of the Mass for the repose of the soul of Alan Jones, priest. May he rest in peace. ND

The Revd Preb. Richard Grigson is Rector of Stafford St. Mary and Marston and Vicar of Stafford St Chad. He gave this tribute at the requiem of the Revd Preb. Alan Jones.

 

Dear friends,

The Church Catholic does seem to have gotten itself into a real mess during the past decades. The Pope’s visit to Ireland was a prolonged declaration of regret and sorrow for the sins of the clergy since the 1950s. This was certainly how it came across in the newspaper reports. The poor man must be shaking his head in sorrow and anguish!

What caused such dreadful things to happen? Why were people not believed when they spoke out? Probably a culture of superiority, of “Father knows best.” taken to ridiculous and dangerous lengths. Even clergy can experience this with fellow clergy. I can remember being in conversation with a public school educated, 6′ 3″ bishop. During our conversation, the grand (and equally educated and tall) vicar of an “important” parish, came to join in the discussion. It was quite clear to me that the lad from the back streets of Birkenhead (me) no longer had a place in the ensuing conversation. I stood my ground and didn’t allow the clerics concerned to push me out. (The fact that the conversation was of the utmost tedium was not the point.) On another occasion, a young man tried to introduce me to his college chaplain – who dismissed me with a mumbled “hello” and a wave of his arm. In an instant I realised that he didn’t see me as a step on the road to becoming the bishop he did, indeed, become.

Clergy can behave very oddly. There is always the danger of being the big fish in the little pool. “Angela’s Ashes” describes a young boy growing up in difficult circumstances in Ireland. It is a long time since I read it but I do recall the (RC) priests not always treating him with the love and respect a brother-in-Christ should expect. (Or, indeed, any fellow human being.) The exception was a young priest who didn’t give him a penance for stealing his (drunken and asleep) father’s fish and chips in order to feed his brothers and sisters. If I can recall the priest’s words, “I should be kneeling down and washing your feet, not you kneeling before me in the confessional box.”

I fear that the problem has been caused by a number of reasons.

1) The isolation that many priests feel – even from fellow priests.

2) The training in the fifties and sixties that didn’t take into account the increasingly sexualised nature of western society. (Not the modern return of the usual sexually-transmitted diseases of the past, AIDS apart.)

3) The inability of the church authorities to deal with the growing sexual awareness of the men they were training for the priesthood. Even my own college didn’t deal with the questions raised, or not raised, simply because of the mores of the times. Sex was not discussed. Was it in the film “If” that the boy who asked the chaplain about his sexual desires was simply told, “Fight the good fight, Binns! Fight the good fight.”

4) Cardinal Heenan, Archbishop of Liverpool and, later, Westminster, wrote in the 1960s of the Catholic Church being a leaky sieve. He was writing when Catholic churches were packed and mass had to be offered on an hourly basis in order to cater for the crowds. Yet he could see clearly that the numbers making their first communions did not add up to the numbers in church week by week. Could it be that priests, even then, began to realise that things were changing. Did it induce a depression due to an increasing lack of role within that society?

5) The combination of loneliness and sexual frustration, not to mention the emergence of a greater awareness of homosexuality, together with other societal changes, must have affected a number of priests. Then there the culture which developed. There used to be a joke about clergy being like manure, effective when spread thinly on the ground but nothing more than a pile of s**t otherwise. There is no doubt that evil breeds when the circumstances are right – or wrong.

The sad thing is that, like a marriage going wrong, people look for reasons and excuses for giving up a relationship, be it with God or a fellow human being. There are many wonderful, hard-working, self-effacing, holy priests (and laity) – but even they are human. There are, sadly, others, who have been damaged, damaged others, and have caused damage to the Church. Equally sadly, others have turned a blind eye – or not even comprehended that such wickedness could even happen.

Pray for the Holy Father – and for the healing of the Church – and for faithful priests and people.

 

ASSUMPTION MASS

A wonderful gathering on August 15th to celebrate Our Lady’s taking up in to heaven. People came from all over the place to join in the concelebrated mass. The barbecue ended up in the church hall – so much easier to sit and eat and to avoid grit and grass in the food. There must have been seventy people in church to honour God’s Mother – but God first of all.

Can I record here my thanks to Father Kevin for maintaining the weekday masses during my holiday. It has to be said that the rest of the congregation hardly made much effort to join in the worship. I was conscious at the Assumption Mass just how the presence of the faithful is an encouragement to clergy and laity alike. One visitor travelled from HIXON (the other side of Stone) in order to keep this Holy Day of Obligation.

God bless your faithfulness.
Father Brian

 

SERMON FROM FATHER PATRICK GRIFFIN

You are what you eat? Have any of you heard that before?

I remember eating bran flakes with that logo printed on the back of the box. Whether we give ot credence or not the phrase does stick with us because it touches a reality that we know to be true. That which you consume not only physically but emotionally and spiritually begins to dictate ones life. Like our beloved Fr. Brian here today with 35 years of service at Holy Trinity we trust that what he has ‘consumed’ simply by ministering there through his experiences both active and passive have in turn, over many years become in part who he is today joining us at worship here. More about that another day perhaps.

These verses in John’s Gospel appear at the end of the lengthy Bread of Life Discourse.  Scholars remind us that in this Gospel Jesus is depicted as drawing on rich motifs in the Hebrew Scriptures to speak of who he is and what he does for those who believe in him. In the earlier sections of chapter 6, the symbol of “bread” refers in a particular way to the  revelation  that Jesus offers. Jesus feeds people by revealing the Father to them in word and deed. He is the enfleshed or the manifest wisdom of God who satisfies people’s hunger for God, a hunger we all have. In verses 51-58, the language of “bread” contains a clear allusion to the  eucharist.

Francis Moloney, a scholar of the Gospel of John, says this: “The eucharist renders concrete, in the Christian reader, what the author has spelled out throughout the discourse. The eucharist is a place where one comes to eternal life” (The Gospel of John, Sacra Pagina Commentary  , p. 224).

What does it really mean to encounter Christ in the celebration of the eucharist? What does it mean for our relationship with Christ and with other people? For Catholic Christians, celebrating the eucharist is part of our normal, routine life of faith. We do it all the time and know it by heart. It can seem quite ordinary. It becomes so familiar to us that we can sometimes go through Mass with our minds a thousand miles away from what we are doing. Even for me as a priest who presides at the eucharist, I can sometimes find myself distracted with worries and concerns and not concentrating very well on what it is that I am doing.

In a pastoral letter written some years before he died, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin said this:  “It is in the eucharist that we discover who we are and whose we are.”  I have always found that statement to be illuminating. In the eucharist we discover our true identity as Christians because we come to realize to whom we really belong. This means that we Catholic Christians are at heart a eucharistic people.

The eucharist is a mystery that is very rich and multi-dimensional. It is like a magnificent diamond that has many facets to it. For our purposes today, I would simply like to suggest one dimension of what it means for us as Catholic Christians to be a eucharistic people. As those who come to Christ the Bread of Life, we are  a people who keep a memory and who live by a story.

Stories are so important in our lives. Just think of some of your own treasured family stories that you share with parents, siblings and other friends. Call to mind, too, stories of important moments with good friends that have shaped your life. These remembrances help us to keep in mind who we are and where we have come from. Our personal identity comes from our memories, and the important stories housed in our memories shape that identity. They enable us to come to a deeper appreciation of the people we love. Those memories also help us to keep hope alive, especially in difficult times. This view is rooted in St. Augustines view that the soul, the very essence of who we are is comprised of three facets, intellect, will and chiefly in this context memory.

Growing up in a large family, I listened to my mother and older siblings tell family stories around the dining room table. They would often launch into these stories, both serious and humorous, after big family dinners. I would listen intently to those stories, no matter how many times I had heard them before. They always seemed fresh and new to me. It was through those stories that I came to know my who I am through who others were. It was through those memory-filled meals around the dining room table that I became present to me, a companion to me.

Every time we celebrate the eucharist, we tell the story of God’s saving love for his people. We make memory of the redemptive, life-giving love of God that culminated in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. We tell that story by proclaiming and listening to the Scriptures. We continue to recount that story throughout the liturgy, especially in the great eucharistic prayer that the priest prays in the name of all the people. The center of that story is Jesus Christ, in his self-offering for us. All of us in the congregation give our assent to the truth and significance of that story as we sing the “great Amen.” We make memory of this Jesus, who is the Bread of Life, who gave himself completely for us and who continues to give himself to us in the eucharist. In that living memory, through the power of the Holy Spirit, we experience the real presence of Jesus as we receive his body and blood. We experience communion with this Jesus who lives, who is risen and alive. As Jesus offered himself for us on the cross, so he offers himself to us in this sacrament to be our food, our strength along the way of life.

Stories help to shape our vision of life and of people. Certain stories have a profound impact on our personal and spiritual development; they become guiding narratives for our lives. We internalize those stories from many different sources: from our families and friends; through the education we have received; from our national and ethnic heritage that we must never be ashamed of or apologise for. Sometimes these stories can be conflicting and can have a negative impact upon us.

So, in our society we are constantly bombarded with the message that our worth as persons depends upon how much we accumulate for ourselves. We are presented with “success stories” of people who have managed to accumulate massive amounts of money, possessions, power, influence and/or prestige. This is a story — a kind of social narrative — that has a deep impact on the way we see things and the priorities we set in our lives. Our vision is also shaped by the stories we hear in movies, books and music. Did you ever listen closely to the stories about people and life that are told in old folk and country songs especially those of that great Christian Johnny cas? In our own personal development, we may have heard and internalized a story that subtly told us we would never amount to very much. We may have a harmony playing inside of our minds and hearts that tells us that we will never quite amount too much in the strength of our own merits.

One of the many reasons that you and I need to celebrate the eucharist faithfully is so that more and more we will allow this story – the story of God’s faithful, saving love in Christ – to become the guiding narrative of our lives. If we truly enter into the mystery of the eucharist, the truth of Jesus Christ begins to shape our vision of ourselves, of others, of what is really significant in life. This story reminds us again and again how important — how treasured — each one of us is in the eyes of Christ. Through our communion with Christ in this sacrament, we deepen our friendship with him and allow him to shape the ways we see, decide, and act.

In and through the eucharist, we experience communion with Christ and communion with one another. There is a oneness with Christ in receiving him that is unique in our human experience. It is a closeness that exceeds expression in words or even in fancy theological explanations. And there is also meant to be a communion with our sisters and brothers in the eucharistic assembly and all those with whom we are united in faith. In his encyclical, God is Love, Pope Benedict XVI speaks about this communion that takes place in the eucharist. He writes,  “Union with Christ is also union with all those to whom he gives himself. I cannot possess Christ just for myself; I can only belong to him with all those who have become, or who will become, his own. Communion draws me out of myself towards him, and thus also towards unity with all Christians”  (n. 14).

At the end of every celebration of the eucharist, the priest or deacon says, “The Mass is ended. Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.” The eucharist never simply ends, as a play, movie or folk song ends. No, we are  sent forth, sent forth with a  mission  . In every celebration of the eucharist, you and I are commissioned to go forth and to proclaim the story of Jesus Christ with our lips and our lives. As we have been blessed with the real presence of Christ in the sacrament, so we are sent forth to make Christ’s presence real to others. As Christ the Bread of Life has given us himself to be food for the journey of our lives, so we are sent forth to feed the hungry people we meet. As we have experienced communion in this celebration, we are sent forth to work to strengthen the bonds of communion between the people with whom we live and work. As a eucharistic people, we Catholic Christians are a people with a mission.
As Cardinal Bernardin expressed it, in the eucharist we discover who we are and whose we are. We are blessed to recognize again and again that we belong to Christ. We discover how worthwhile we are in his eyes. In the eucharist Christ the Bread of Life gives us himself in order to make us his own. In your prayer on this 12th Sunday after trinity, I invite you simply to express your own gratitude to Christ for the gift of the eucharist. If your regular practice is to celebrate the eucharist on Sundays, you may wish to participate in this celebration one extra day this week. Ask Christ for a deeper appreciation of this sacrament and a willingness to enter into it with faith and enthusiasm. Pray for the grace to make his presence real to others. The eucharist is a gift, and in this life, there is no greater gift that we could ever receive.

Preached at S. Margaret’s Wolstanton – in the presence of the terrifying Vicar of Sneyd!

A few photos from the recent celebration of Father Brian Williams 40 years of serving as parish vicar at Holy Trinity Sneyd.

Dear friends,

Last month’s letter certainly produced responses from various quarters – all in agreement and not all from the elderly like myself. I even had an e-mail from a man who said that he followed by articles and agreed with everything I said. “You say what a lot of people are thinking and are afraid to say.” We live in a world of little true freedom. In the various spheres in which I move, I am constantly aware of people whispering parts of their conversation for fear of being overheard. Big Brother – or Sister!

Enough of this – on to the various events involving ordinations. Fewer ordinands, grander and grander events – a bit like the “putting-in of clergy in parishes. All very wonderful.

As I wrote last month, I have attended the ordination of priests at S. Giles’ Newcastle and at Longton. This Sunday I will be at the cathedral for the ordination of deacons. Then there are two first masses, a silver jubilee (Father Alan Townsend) and my own bash last Monday on the 25th.

What can I say about that? Lovely to see so many friends and supporters making the effort and putting up with the wonderful weather. Fr. Glyn (my brother) deaconing – as he did 40 years ago. My sister, Val, reading a lesson. The S. Cecilia Singers did me proud and Father Stephen Young’s sermon was spot-on, talking about priesthood and the primary task of the priest. (I will include the text of the sermon in the next edition.)

Being a parish priest in the same parish for a long time produces some interesting combinations of ministries. As parish priest, I am responsible for the daily round of worship which, in a catholic parish like this one, is complex and demanding. By the time we get to Corpus Christi (signalling the end of the feast and fast season which begins with Advent) I feel a sense of liturgical exhaustion. I remember saying to a fellow priest, “I could do without Corpus Christi mass this evening.” to which he replied, “Well give it a miss.” My reply? “Not possible. It is what the Church does.” In other words, not this church, or even the Church of England, but the universal Catholic Church. Retirement will not result in absence from the feasts – or even absence from regular attendance at mass during the week. Worship is the calling of the baptised, not the domain of the priest.

Worship apart, there is also the care of the actual congregation of the church. I recognise that the priest can take the congregation for granted – perhaps increasingly so as the time in office stretches out. The fact is that the priest is also the priest for the parish. As time passes, so the demands of the unchurched can increase. When I came to the parish I did few baptisms, weddings and funerals. Certain clergy and funeral directors were in league with each other so a number of clergy, like myself, were not the first choice. I can recall a vicar of a local church having seventy weddings a year, most of them from neighbouring parishes. These days they either go for the prettiness of Astbury Parish Church or the grandeur of Crewe Hall. Funerals, on the other hand, have increased because of knowing either the deceased or their families. Ryan Evan’s dad knows me through the good work of the Baby and Toddler Group. (See elsewhere in this mag. for a fuller account.)

Then there is chaplaincy. Very much on the increase. Fire, police, football clubs, not to mention contact with schools and shops. I am not talking about myself exclusively. These are connections made by many clergy, and with people who work in the parish but don’t live in the area. In fact, there are families and other institutions (pubs, for example) who see the priest as their priest, regardless of affiliation to a particular church. There may be some evidence of a decline in belief but there is little evidence of priests and ministers not being needed. I have been surprised over the years just how grateful people are for being prayed with or who know that someone is praying for them and lighting a candle for their intention. This is a ministry for all the baptised. Let people know you are praying for them. Several members of the congregation have, over the years, told me that they prayed daily for me. What an encouragement. What a wonderful thing to know while going about ministering to others that one is being ministered to in this way.

Then there are the demands of the diocese and the Church of England machine. What used to be A4 sheets to be filled-in and returned are now several sheets of e-mail to be downloaded, fill-in, whatever else you have to do before e-mailing back. They take longer than licking a stamp, definitely cheaper – but time-consuming. Which brings me on to health & safety, safeguarding, appropriate behaviour etc. etc.

Have a lovely summer. Don’t moan about the heat- I think it’s great and long may it continue.

Every blessing,

Father Brian

R.I.P. DOROTHY JONES – 25th June 2018

Dorothy Jones was a faithful Christian now known to only a few members of Holy Trinity Church. She, with her three sisters, May, Florence, and Betty, were born in “The Sytch” in Westport Road. They originally worshipped at “The Sytch Mission”, moving to S. Paul’s Burslem when the mission closed. They moved to a lovely house in Dartmouth Street before moving, in 1982, to a fine detached house in Woodland Avenue. When I became vicar, Dorothy and May were worshipping at Holy Trinity while Flo and Betty were at S. Werburgh’s. (They had fallen out with Father Colin Crumpton over the replacement of pews with chairs at S. Paul’s!) I fell out with May when she was unable to come to church owing to ill health – but still managed to attend matches at “The Vale”. (You will be surprised to know that many priests have housebound parishioners who receive holy communion at home and have to fit their visits in between hairdresser or bingo appointments.)

Dorothy worshipped at S. Werburgh’s with May until failing health caused the necessary move to Newford Nursing Home in Milton. It was while visiting Hilda Burgess (former worshipper and organist) at Newford that I reconnected with Dorothy and, later, May. (She moved from another nursing home.) Dorothy received Holy Communion with great devotion and was always firmly responsive during our worship. Equally, she was very pleased to see her visitors, not least Cindy, my dear-departed German Shepherd.

Dorothy was a great character and very glamorous – to the end of her life. I think that she tolerated women but preferred male company. She drove fast cars. Loved football (“The Vale” in particular). Loved the pottery industry. She was an enthusiastic person and a joy to be with. Later illness meant that she wasn’t always responsive – but she bounced back. She celebrated her 98th birthday with great pleasure only a short while before she died, very peacefully, while resting after a meal.

The last of four spinster sisters, may she, with them, rest in the peace of Christ, know the healing balm of purgatory, and come to the heavenly banquet that Christ has prepared for His people.

R.I.P. RYAN EVANS – 25th June 2018

On the same day that Dorothy died, Ryan Evans, a young man from the Park Estate, died while swimming with two friends in Westport Lake. This tragedy has touched people throughout Stoke on Trent and beyond. I did not realise that I had seen Ryan many times around the area and in school. His dad brought both him and his younger brother to the Baby & Toddler Group many years ago. You will all know the circumstances of his death – and the difficulty the police and rescue services had in recovering his body. Please keep the family and friends (especially his two swimming companions and other fellow students at Haywood Academy) in your prayers. Funeral details have not been finalised yet. His father has asked me to take the service. Ryan was a big Vale supporter and a quiet and likeable lad. Being a bit of a risk-taker myself (climbing and swimming in not always safe places being my specialities) I can both understand the demands for safety but also the need to stretch the boundaries. Such a tragedy is dreadful – but we live in a world to be explored and are not to be locked away in computerised safety. I am sure that God is weeping with those who weep – and taking up the pieces of a life that has been cut short.

Father Brian

Dear friends,

June is a month with only two major feast days – the Birthday of S. John the Baptist (24th) and the Feast of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul (29th). The former falls, fortuitously, on a Sunday. It is, of course, the feast day for the Mother Town. Burslem Wakes used to take place around the feast day until moved to the first weekend of May. (This year, for the first time ever, the festival was graced with lovely weather and the town was packed.)

The end of June (and the beginning of July) is also the time for ordinations and anniversaries of ordination. Derek Pamment and Catherine Leighton are to be ordained deacon. Patrick Griffin and Richard Hulme are to be ordained priest. I shall be singing in the visiting choir at Father Richard’s First Mass as priest – and preaching at Father Patrick’s. All very exciting.

I was ordained deacon on June 26th 1977 and priested the following year on June 25th. It is for this reason that I am keeping a low-key celebration on that day with a mass at 1930 followed by a party. I have already told various heathen friends that they can’t come to the latter without attending the former.

So, given that this is a special occasion for me, I can’t resist using the rest of this “Window” to drone on about various things that arose from the recent royal wedding. I didn’t intend to watch the event but I was visiting family and we watched it over lunch. (My excuse.) All in all, I thought it was not bad bash. The Arch. seemed a bit lack-lustre – but then he would in the presence of the American bishop. Not sure about the sermon but the rest was ok – although I have to confess to not really liking gospel choirs. (Why are they called that? Most music sung in cathedrals and parish churches comes from the Gospels! Perhaps we should rename the Sneyd Singing Group!) Then there was the chewing of gum during the service…which brings me on to the subject of chavdom. (My word. Definition: The kingdom populated by chavs.)

So how do I define chavdom? A place of little or no taste or decorum. Here are a twelve examples, and I don’t excuse myself where number four is concerned.

1) Chewing gum – any time, any place. Yuk.

2) Dropping and leaving litter – deliberately or unintentionally. (That includes the by-product of dogs.)

3) Sorry. Tattoos. I don’t like them. Stoke on Trent is, apparently, the tattoo capital of the world.

4) Swearing and making rude gesticulations in public, especially from a car.

5) Ghastly bumper stickers with rude and vulgar observations. I add to this category “Little princess on board.” and the like.

6) “High fiving” in Great Britain. We shake hands. That is enough.

7) Not holding the door for another person to pass through – or standing to allow a woman or elderly person have a seat.

8) Men wearing hats indoors – and not only in church! Only clerical headgear of one sort or another allowed – and even that has to be doffed at the Holy Name of Jesus, the Holy Name of Mary, and the saint whose feast day it is. (It is all there in the Bible.)

9) Singing songs with an American accent while not being American. It is no different to “Allo allo” speak.

10) Speaking in local dialect when not a local. Patronising. (Not sure if that is a chav thing but plain wrong.)

11) Nearly forgot. Body piercing which involves big holes, tongues, noses, nipples, belly-buttons.

12) Priests who use their magazine articles as a vehicle for griping and grizzling! (Also, anyone using !!!!!s)

Many blessings for a lovely month,

Father Brian

the sacred ministry and the church in 2018

Given the slightly frivolous nature of my “Window” this month, I thought I had better produce something to explain the nature of what is happening to the people I mentioned.

The Sacred Ministry of bishop, priest, and deacon was developed in the early church from Our Lord, the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The apostles began what became known as church councils. It was the later councils, meeting at Nicea and elsewhere, which decided on the what we now call the “Nicene Creed”. This is recited or sung on all major feast days and is the proclamation of the Gospel in a nutshell.

The ordained ministry grew out of apostolic times. Bishops were the successors to the apostles while deacons were ordained to care for widows, distribute aid to poor Christians and to assist the bishop in the celebration of the mass and to proclaim the Gospel. Priests were ordained to carry out various functions under the bishop’s authority, normally in his absence. Celebrating mass, hearing confessions, blessing, baptising, anointing, marrying were delegated to the priest – and confirmation when necessary.

It is this same Sacred Ministry which continues in the church today. As directed in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, all ordinations take place with prayer and through the laying-on-of-hands by a bishop or bishops. (Bishops are always ordained by three other bishops to ensure the validity of the ordination.)

Why is this Sacred Ministry so important? From earliest times it was seen as the guarantor of the right faith and practise. The bishop had to be ordained by three bishops who were adherents of the true faith, the apostolic faith, the faith delivered through the apostles from the Lord. This does not mean that God does not work through “irregular” orders or ministries. That is up to God. It does mean, though, that a rightly ordained person is a celebrant of the sacraments without question. It is for this reason that S. Chad was ordained bishop a second time in order to ensure that his orders were valid according to the rites of the universal church, England having agreed at the Synod of Whitby to accept papal authority. It is for this reason that many Anglicans cannot accept the ordination of women to priesthood. The guarantee of validity is put into question. (Some would add that it is out of kilter with the practice of the universal church.)

People often ask if I am a priest or a vicar. It doesn’t help that uninformed bishops often refer to vicars when they mean priests. The order of priest is indelible, it cannot be taken away, like baptism. In order to be a vicar (ministering within a parish, sharing the “cure of souls” with the bishop), dean (ministering in charge of a cathedral), or curate (assisting the vicar) the office holder has to be in priest’s orders. (It used to be the same with chaplains but bishops, deacons and lay-people can be chaplains.) When Father Paul ceased to be Vicar of Lower Gornal he didn’t cease being a priest.

So, in a few weeks time, Cath and Derek will be ordained deacon. This means that they will be able to wear a “dog-collar”, baptise, proclaim the gospel reading during mass, preach and teach. They will not have the authority or charism (grace) to do the things referred to at the end of the third paragraph. I can well remember the novelty of the clerical collar. The weight of responsibility which comes with priesthood came as something of a shock the following year. Harder to define, it has a lot to do with the very “being” of being a priest. It certainly has little or nothing to do with what one is wearing. Pray for those to be ordained. Pray for those preparing for the newness of being a deacon – and for those putting on the authority of priesthood – and for old lags like me who, possibly, take it all for granted. FB