All Saints Margaret Street.

Dear friends,

What a joy it was last weekend to welcome the Friends of Pusey House to All Saints for their London reunion. I am very grateful indeed to the students who came down from Oxford to serve the Mass, to Bishop Jonathan for celebrating, to the excellent choir made up of former choral scholars of Pusey House, and to Fr George Westhaver for his first-rate sermon.

The liturgy was a splendid celebration of our faith, and a joy-filled opportunity for people to worship together and give thanks for the Catholic inheritance of the Church of England.

Pusey House and All Saints share so much in common. Pusey House is the memorial to one of the great founders of the Oxford Movement, who himself laid the foundation stone of our own church. Pusey House is now where his extensive library is deposited. It seeks to offer chaplaincy and pastoral care to students in Oxford, and to be a centre of study and research within the Catholic Tradition of the Church of England.

Just as our histories are interlinked, so are our present day charisms. Both institutions were founded in the nineteenth Century, but seek in our generation to be living exemplars and embodiments of the Catholic Faith as the Church of England has received it, and to be loving centres of learning, evangelism, and pastoral outreach.

One of the key aspirations our PCC has expressed in its most recent Mission Action Plan is a commitment to attracting, serving and nurturing younger people. It strikes me that forging links with institutions that particularly offer ministry to young students is an important way of making contact with and reaching out to younger Christians, and those exploring questions of faith.

I am pleased to announce, in a similar vein, that All Saints will be hosting a carol service for Queens’ College, Cambridge, in December. I hope the chaplain of Queens’ College will be able to come to preach for us at some point in the next twelve months. My prayer is that this, too, represents a forging of contacts and connections with younger students and the alumni of that college in a way that will be mutually beneficial.

I hope that increasing links and collaboration with external institutions that connect us to the wider ministry of the Church, and especially to the Catholic Movement within the Church of England can be a confident, life-giving, and positive part of our life together as a parish.

I was particularly moved by Charlotte Bradley’s sermon two weeks ago in which she spoke about the need for Christian faith to be lived out in service of our neighbour and interaction with the world. She also pointed to the role that service of others plays in the processes whereby people grow in faith and become Christians.

I hope this attractive image of gospel life that Charlotte gave us can be a lens through which we reflect on our parish’s life. As we pray for our parish over the next week during our All Saints’ Festival, and as we think about new projects and ideas that will help our parish thrive and grow as we emerge from COVID, I hope we can prioritise the need to look outward into the world God has called us to evangelise and serve, and to connect, collaborate, and work with others as we do.

Fr Peter

All Saints’ Festival Week

First Evensong of All Saints’ Day – Sunday 31st October 2021 6.00 pm
Canticles: Dyson in D; Ashfield, The Fair Chivalry; Caplin, O salutaris & Tantum ergo

High Mass for All Saints’ Day – Monday 1st November 6.00 pm
Preacher: Fr Philip Barnes, Vicar of St Stephen’s, Gloucester Road
Mozart, Krönungsmesse; Victoria, O quam gloriosum

High Mass of Requiem for All Souls’ Day – Tuesday 2nd November 6.00 pm
Preacher: Fr Andrew Zihni, Canon Precentor of Southwark Cathedral
Duruflé, Requiem

High Mass for All Saints’ Festival Sunday – Sunday 7th November 11.00 am
Preacher: The Vicar
Caplin, Missa Omnium Sanctorum; Whitlock, Glorious in heaven

Evensong, Te Deum, and Benediction for All Saints’ Festival Sunday – Sunday 7th November 6.00 pm
Wood, Collegium Regale; Moore, O quam gloriosum;  Henschel, Tantum ergo.

‘Unveiling Scripture: Seeing Christ and ourselves in his light’

Please put our Advent Study Day, entitled, “Unveiling Scripture,” in your diaries for Saturday 27th November 2021.

This will be an in person quiet day in preparation for the season of Advent with the Revd Professor John Behr, Regius Professor of Humanity at the University of Aberdeen.

Fr Behr is an orthodox priest and distinguished theologian who will explore with us what is involved in reading the Bible as Scripture.

This series of talks will explore what it means to preach the gospel ‘in accordance with the Scriptures.’ We will explore the story of salvation that leads from Adam to Christ as the path of growth into becoming a living human being, ‘the glory of God’, as Irenaeus put it. Fr Behr will also examine the maternal and spousal dimensions of the Church as the context in which such growth occurs.

10.00 am First talk

12 noon  Mass

2.00 pm  Second Talk

Links for Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday

The links for the Propers for the 4th Sunday before Advent, All Saints’ Day, and All Souls’ Day are at the end of this email.

Click here for the YouTube live stream for Sunday’s High Mass.

Click here for the YouTube live stream of Sunday’s First Evensong of All Saints, and Benediction.

Click here for the YouTube live stream for All Saints’ Day.

Click here for the YouTube live stream for All Souls’ Day.

Flowers

We are looking for volunteers to help with the flowers in church. If you have a particular talent for flower arranging and would like to help from time to time or on a regular basis, please contact Shawn on 07988 287 663 or shawnwilbe@outlook.com. 

If you would like to make a donation for flowers, please contact Shawn or speak to Chris Self.

Prayer list

Prisoners and captives

Nazanin Zhagari-Ratcliffe, Ismaeil Maghrebinejad, Nasrin Sotoudeh
Maira Shabhaz
Rohingya Christians in Pakistan, Karen Christians in Burma, and Tigrayan Christians in Ethiopia

The sick

David Fettke, Vallery Tchukov, Sara Vice, Katherine Lee, Lorna Smith, Beth Klausing, Hilary Porter, Bruce Ross-Smith, Benjamin Woolf, James Shrimpton, Tony Rodger, Fr Michael Gudgeon, Chris and Carole Radley, Fr Harry Hodgetts, Rosemary Orr, Martin Berka, Joan Anna SLG, Sheila Wood, Jennifer Spreckley, Sue Yesnick, Elizabeth Lyon, Rosina Sargon Eskrya, Malcolm Brown, Geoff Vardy, Fr John O’Brien, Max Fernandes, Craig Williams, Ross Dixon, Bernard Holmes, Elaine Bishop, Kathleen McMorran, Sabria Systermans, Peter Hoyle, Bishop Andrew St John, Emily Borland, Hazel Duckett, Fr Bob Nind, Jack de Gruiter

Those known to us recently departed

Olive Robin, Muriel Woodhead, David Osborne, Elizabeth Lewis, Barbara Schiefer, Richard Wheeler Pr, Derek Rodgers, Bob Brice

Anniversaries of death

31st – Marian Ross, Frank Leeman, Dilys Thomas

November 1st – Bernard Dawson, Jane Pollard, Cecil Mead, Carol Searles, Janet Reid
2nd – Harold Wilson Pr
3rd – Gilbert Pickering
4th – Jack Fallon, Rosemary Crawley
5th – Helen St Aubyn, Curtis Berk, Daphne Gordon, Terence Duggan, Glyn Thomas, Rosemary Crome
6th – Philip Gould

Supporting All Saints

Parish Giving Scheme

You can set up a regular donation to All Saints here.

We use the Parish Giving Scheme, which allows contributions to be anonymous and deals with GiftAid, saving our office a lot of time. You can read about how the scheme works here.

Donations for general church purposes

To give by BACS please use the following details, advising the Administrator to collect Gift Aid:

PCC All Saints (Charity no. 1132895)
Sort Code 60-09-15
A/C 04559452

Parish Legacy Policy

We are always delighted to hear from anyone who wants to support us with a donation. Our PCC Legacy Policy encourages people to leave bequests specifically to one of our two related charities to be used for purposes of lasting value (rather than day to day costs):

All Saints Choir & Music Trust (Charity # 802994)

or The All Saints Foundation (Charity # 273390).