All Saints Margaret Street.

Apologies for the delay in sending out last week’s Parish email which was due to technical difficulties.

PARISH EMAIL 15th March

In the Welsh village where my brother and his wife live, there is a chapel called “Bethel,” after the site of Jacob’s vision of the ladder up to heaven. I like the way Welsh chapels are often named after biblical places: the equivalent of our churches being dedicated in honour of saints or Christian mysteries. I was sad to hear that this particular Bethel is now, like so many Ebenezers and Tabors before it, to close.

The Gospel at Mass today is Luke’s story of the anointing at Bethany. Bethany, like other other biblical places is more than the location of an event, but a place which continues to convey the significance of what happened there to the life of the Church today.

Close to Jerusalem, it was the home of Jesus’ friends Martha, Mary and Lazarus. He stayed with them during his last days. It was a place of welcome and hospitality, retreat and refreshment, in the dramatic days leading up to Passover and Passion. It was also, the scene of the beautiful story of Mary’s anointing of the feet of Jesus with precious ointment. It was the place where Mary had chosen the better part of listening to the teaching of Jesus.

Luke tells us that the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. We try to make our church a place of welcome for the weary. We try to fill it with the perfume, not just of incense but of our devotion and prayer. Some, like Judas, will scorn this as impractical waste, but others will sense that it is to choose the better part. “Why was the ointment sold and the money give to the poor?” We try not to forget the poor, so at the heart of our Lenten discipline is giving for those in need, be they the homeless of our city or those living with HIV-AIDS in Zimbabwe.

This weekend, a group from the parish will be in Ely for our parish retreat, conducted by Fr. Neil Bunker. For a short space, they will leave ordinary routines of life, in order to listen, pray and find spiritual refreshment.

We will hear that gospel again in Holy Week which is a time when the whole Church has a precious opportunity to go into “retreat;” to quite deliberately choose the better part of giving priority to sharing with our Christian brothers and sisters in the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus as they are celebrated in the great services of Holy Week.

Yours in Christ,

Alan Moses

Please pray for Mary Barnet, Eleanor Chapman, Rachel Clayton, David Day, Rosie Flack, Charles Forker, Cecil Garrett, Timothy Harding, Michael Harris, Mason Jacobson, Jonathan Jennings, Barbara Laws, Joshua Levy, Fred Mansfield, Timothy Montgomery, Linda Orme, Christopher Ryan, Martin Sergeant, Celia Shore, Stephen Short, Brian Sparkes, Ian Stevens, Isabelle Stoughton, Andrew Tillyard, Melanie Toogood, Heather Walker, Wendy Wall The Recently Departed: Daphne Langford, Diane Stonebanks, Florence Watts, Susan Hainsworth, Richard Turner, Canon David Crosfield, Robin Kay At the anniversary of their death: Donald George Stuart Faithfull, Hester Clere Russell, Edward Aubert, Frank Coomber, Jessie Thwaites, Edward Mann, Joan MacKintosh, Millie Cathcart, Christine Tagoe, Mary Steward, Hugh Wiley, Emily Pattisson, Margaret Louise Baker, Charlotte Read, Olive Evans