All Saints Margaret Street.

Dear Friends

I would like to say a huge thank you to all who contributed in any way to making our celebrations of the Assumption last Sunday such a success.

It was such a heart-warming sight to see so many people gather at All Saints’ for the feast. After so many months of social distancing and empty churches, All Saints’ was packed to the gunnels without a single seat spare. Both our High Mass in the morning and our procession in the evening were joyous proclamations of our faith in Jesus Christ and our love of his mother Mary. Thank you to everyone who came for your support and enthusiasm!

A huge thank you must go to our servers and stewards, and especially to Cedric Stephens, Nick Gralka and Chris Swift for organising them so well. We are very grateful to Chris Self for his presiding over welcome in church and the marshalling of the procession, and to all who helped prepare refreshments, especially to Kate Hodgetts and Martin Woolley.

The music for the solemnity was superb – we owe a great debt of thanks to our Director of Music Stevie Farr and Associate Director of Music Jeremiah Stephenson, our organ scholar William Forest, and our whole choir for a wonderful feast of music during the liturgies – and also for keeping us in step and in tune during the procession!

It was a great joy for us to have a contingent of Chelsea Pensioners present for our procession. They formed a guard of honour around the image of Our Lady. What a magnificent sight they were. We are very grateful to the Chelsea Pensioners who came, and to their chaplain, Fr Steven Brookes. We assure them of our prayers for all who live at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea.

I also want to thank the churchwardens of St Benet’s, Kentish Town, who kindly allowed us to borrow their best monstrance for the evening. It is a stunning piece, hails in origin from Belgium, and at 3 feet high, is enormous. It looked wonderful on our beautiful altar and made a fitting and gracious throne for our Lord’s sacramental presence at Benediction on Sunday night.

Above all, I want to thank my clergy colleagues Fr Michael and Fr Julian who have worked tirelessly over the past few weeks in organising this celebration. Our parish is so lucky to benefit from their ministries and we are very appreciative of all they do for us.

I hope we received from God on Sunday a renewed vision of what All Saints’ can be at its best: a place of welcome and hospitality for Anglo-Catholics in the Diocese of London and in the wider Church of England more generally; a place where the Gospel is proclaimed confidently and thoughtfully; a place people can look to as a locus of support, encouragement, and inspiration as they live our their Christian discipleship; a place people see interacting with the world and joyfully taking the Gospel of Jesus Christ beyond its church walls.

I firmly believe that when we make ourselves open and welcoming to God’s Spirit, the Spirit himself makes us open and welcoming to others. Let us take the spirit of joy and confidence that we experienced on Sunday and allow it to influence our thinking in other areas of our parish life as we plan for the future and emerge from COVID.

God clearly wills for us to grow in faith, number and love of him. Let us open our hearts to that divine will and desire, and allow God to work through us so that his name may be glorified.

Fr Peter

Coffee after Mass

We are hoping to return to the regular serving of coffee after the High Mass from Sunday 29th August onwards. However, we really need some new volunteers who are able to help prepare and serve drinks. This is a crucial part of how we welcome people to All Saints’.  Janet Drake would love to hear from anyone who would like to help with this important work. Please contact her either in person or via the parish office email.

Hassocks

We are very pleased to announce that the first shipment of new hassocks should be in church by Sunday. Our old hassocks were removed during the COVID lockdown and were condemned as a fire risk. Our knees need groan no more, as these lovely new ones will be with us from this weekend.

The new kneelers have very kindly been donated in memory of Clive and Joy Wright by Pat Philips and Nick, Clive and Joy’s son. Once the full shipment of hassocks has arrived we will have a Sunday morning when Clive and Joy’s family can be present in order to we bless the new kneelers. We are very grateful indeed for this generous donation.

Monthly Requiem

Tomorrow 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 Trinity 12 is at the end of this email.

And click here for the YouTube live stream.

Evensong and Benediction at 6pm is not live-streamed. This Sunday the music includes Byrd Fauxbordon canticles and Christe qui lux es et dies, Handl O salutaris, and Victoria Tantum ergo.

Flowers

The flowers are given by Aiden and Ashley Hargreaves-Smith in ever-grateful memory of their beloved mother Valerie and grandmother Irene, whose anniversaries fall at this time.

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, Rachel Pereira, Fr Michael Gudgeon, Chris and Carole Radley, Fr Harry Hodgetts, Rosemary Orr, Martin Berka, Barbara Schiefer, Joan Anna SLG, Poppy Harris-Thompson, Sheila Wood, Jennifer Spreckley, Sue Yesnick, Elizabeth Lyon, Rosina Sargon Eskrya, Malcolm Brown, Tim Knight, Hillary Rodger, Geoff Vardy, Fr John O’Brien, Max Fernandes, Mark Willoughby, Craig Williams, Ross Dixon, Bernard Holmes

Those known to us recently departed

Julia Flack, Doris Lyons, Olivier Maire Pr, Benedict Reid OSB Pr, Charles Hoff

Anniversaries of death

22nd – Marion Ginger
23rd – Elsie Faithfull, John Hawkins Pr, Patricia Jones, Peter Vickers, Geoffrey Hughes, Lily Caplin
24th – Mary King, David Harris Pr, Linda Clarke
25th – Irene Harford, Elvira Dibley
26th – Robert Corbin Pr
27th – Ellen Noble, Lucy Cook, Dawn Hart
28th – Christine Sanderson, Michael Bull, Nora Leyland, Kenneth Eaves, Evelyne Mginah, Donald Black

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).