All Saints Margaret Street.

Dear Friends

No issue before the church today is of comparable importance to the truth of the Resurrection; together with the Incarnation there can be no issue of comparable importance to Christian faith. And it was only, as we’ll hear on Sunday, when Thomas was welcomed back into the Christian community that he encountered the risen Jesus and so found his faith again. That wouldn’t have happened if he’d stayed away, or the community had reacted by finger-wagging and condemnation.

Christian life is inherently relational; it requires a community. The doctrine of the Trinity teaches us that the unity of God consists of essential relationships, between Father, Son & Holy Spirit. We cannot be Christians on our own. When we try to do that our own poor resources of faith inevitably run dry and desert us. This is a reminder and an encouragement that we can be the best evangelists in the detail of our daily lives. If you know someone who has a sense of God but, for whatever reason, has fallen away from church or never much joined in worship, you might want to try and see whether they would find their faith extended and enriched by joining or rejoining us. As we can now offer an online point of entry that is a very easy and nonthreatening invitation.

We see the kind of community enjoyed by the first Christians delineated in Sunday’s first reading, from Acts. They supported one another by praying and worshiping together, and by looking out for each other. Above all they did it by welcoming those with whom they disagreed to fellowship at the one Eucharist: the story of Thomas is a parable of that. Our ministry to one another consists not so much in doing things for one another, as in travelling together.

The Church has mostly got its teaching about family the wrong way round, often exalting the human nuclear family as an ideal, even a perfect institution. Jesus did not teach that the nuclear family was the perfect community; on the contrary most of what he has to say about it required his followers to leave it behind. Rather, he taught that the Church is to be our family, one in which we are necessarily related. Speaking in a culture where blood ties were understood as primary, he said that our church relationships were not only more important than those blood ties, but also that they make the same demands of us. As in the most functional families, the church is to be a family where we can disagree profoundly and yet remain bound together, inextricably. That is the Gospel.

Fr Michael

Walsingham Devotion & Monthly Requiem

Tomorrow our monthly Walsingham Devotion, in the form of the Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary with intercessions, will be offered at 1130 before the noon Mass.

Tomorrow week our monthly Requiem Mass will be celebrated: please let Fr Michael have names of those you’d like remembered at that Mass.

Links for Sunday

The link for the Propers for Easter 2 is at the top of this email.

And click here for the YouTube live stream.

SUNDAY IS THE LAST DAY FOR DONATIONS TO THE LENT APPEAL 2021

Thank you to those who have already contributed.

Proceeds from this year’s Lent Appeal will be divided between:

American Church Soup Kitchen in Tottenham Court Road
towards the costs of their mental health worker.

Anglican Communion Fund
supporting communities throughout the Anglican Communion often in the poorest and most dangerous parts of the world.

Bishop of London’s Lent appeal
focussing on Youth Violence – supporting three charities working in different ways with young people.

How to donate

The Lent Appeal closes on Monday 12th April. Please give generously by visiting our donation page.

Or you can send a cheque to the Parish Office, made payable to: “Parochial Church All Saints (Lent Appeal)”. If you qualify for Gift Aid, please write ‘Gift Aid’ on the back of the cheque.

Lent Boxes will not be issued this year.

Flowers

The flowers today have been given by Jack de Gruiter in memory of Robert Streit.

If you would like to make a donation for flowers, please contact Shawn on 07988 287 663 or shawnwilbe@outlook.com or speak to Chris Self.

Prayer list

Prisoners and captives:

Nazanin Zhagari-Ratcliffe, Ismaeil Maghrebinejad, Nasrin Sotoudeh                                                    Maira Shabhaz

Rohingya Christians in Pakistan and Karen Christians in Burma

The sick:

David Fettke, Joan Cooper, Vallery Tchukov, Sara Vice, Katherine Lee,  Lorna Smith, Beth Klausing, Hilary Porter, Bruce Ross-Smith, Benjamin Woolf, James Shrimpton, Tony Rodger, Rachel Pereira, Fr Michael Gudgeon, Chris and Carole Radley, Fr Harry Hodgetts, Rosemary Orr, Andrew Rodger, Martin Berka, Barbara Schiefer, Sybil Priestnall, John Mather, Joan Anna SLG, Elizabeth Dennis, Phil Gibbs, Poppy Harris, Sheila Wood, Jennifer Spreckley, Sue Yesnick, Beverley Ward, Elizabeth Lyon.

Those known to us recently departed:

Beatrice Ansah, Nicky Yeo, Joyce Bevington, Stewart Lyon, Anne Grew, Benedict Reid OSB Pr , Keith Peers, Hisami Kanno, Polly, Ken Nicola, Bob Birbeck.

Anniversaries of death:

11th – Maud Woodin, Mildred Banyard, Roy Sutherland

12th – Edith Malcolm Wood, Norman Peryer, Eric Yates

13th – John Rogers, Dennis Burke, Justin Kelly

14th – David Evans, Stephen Woolley, Friederica Swinburne

15th – Rose Lethbridge, Christopher Dean

16th – Evelyn Cowie, Mary Gotts, Geoffrey Heald Pr, Marilyn Goggin, Ian Miller

17th – Basil Harris, Margarita Clark

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).