All Saints Margaret Street.

Dear friends,

Visit to the National Gallery Raphael Exhibition TONIGHT

Don’t forget that there are still a few tickets available for tonight’s visit to the National Gallery to see the Raphael exhibition at 5.15 pm, and for dinner afterwards at Le Beaujolais restaurant at 7.30 pm. If you would still like to come, please leave a phone message on our parish office answer machine this afternoon, and we can easily provide you with a last minute ticket.

Assumption 2022

As I look ahead in our parish calendar, I note that our celebration of the Assumption will take place on Sunday 14th August this year, and is now not all that far away.

In the morning, there will be a High Mass at 11.00 am. Our procession will take place in the evening as part of Evensong and Benediction at 6.00 pm. Fr Graeme Rowlands, Vicar of S. Silas’ Kentish Town, will be our preacher in the evening and we look forward to hearing him speak to us.

Our Assumptiontide procession is one of the great events in the life of our parish. It is a wonderful opportunity to declare to the world our faith in the Word made flesh and our love for his mother Mary. Many people come to share in our celebration and speak warmly of how much they appreciate being able to worship with us.

We will shortly begin an online campaign of advertising to invite people to our evening celebration. Please let your friends, neighbours, and acquaintances know about our procession and invite anyone you think might be interested in joining us.

I am very grateful indeed to Richard Everton who has produced a wonderful short video of last year’s procession which will form the centre-piece of our online communication. If you are present on social media of any kind, please “like,” “share” and “re-tweet” the video when it comes out in a few days time to spread the news. I am sure you will be as impressed with Richard’s work on this as I have been. Thank you, Richard, for all the time and effort you have put into this!

Do put Sunday 14th August in your diaries, bring your friends, and come to celebrate the triumph of God’s grace in the life of Our Lady, and our participation in the communion of God’s saints.

Visit by Bishop Jonathan this Sunday 

We welcome Bishop Jonathan to All Saints’ this Sunday. He will celebrate and preach, and will also swear in our new churchwardens, Kate Hodgetts and Huw Pryce. We wish them well and assure them of our support and prayers as they take over this significant office in the life of our parish.

We also thank John Forde and Chris Self for their untiring service as our churchwardens over many years. We owe them so much and want to assure them of our gratitude and love.

Fr Peter

New Green High Mass vestments

This Sunday will see Bishop Jonathan bless a new set of green High Mass vestments, which were commissioned by our PCC upon receipt of a number of munificent benefactions and legacies.

The foremost amongst these donations is the very generous sum of money which has been given by Jean Castledine for the acquisition of these new vestments. We are very grateful indeed to her for her outstanding generosity and deep love for this parish.

In addition to the funds provided by Jean, the PCC has also used a legacy received from the estate of Margaret and Patrick Spencer. It has long been our PCC’s policy that we try to find something concrete and substantial to buy in someone’s memory rather than allowing legacies simply to be swallowed up by the day-to-day costs of running our parish – so the vestments will be also be blessed in memory of Patrick and Margaret.

It will be good, therefore, to remember and be thankful for so many people who have contributed to the life of our parish as we bless these beautiful vestments and dedicate them to the worship of God.

Green is the most used of all the liturgical colours, and it has long been recognised that our parish needed to acquire more vestments in this colour as the ones we have at the moment are swiftly wearing out. Having a wider range of High Mass sets in green will extend the longevity of what we have and make a significant contribution to the patrimony of our parish.

The vestments to be blessed on Sunday are made by Watts and Co. Their design and construction has been carefully thought through.  Watts used a series of heritage colours and silks closely associated with the history of our church.

The green silk damask used to make the vestments is a design known as “Cathedral.” It is a shade and pattern created in 1890 by Sir Ninian Comper, an individual intimately involved with the later design and decoration of our building (most of the decoration over the High Altar and our Lady Altar are by him and reconsidered as amongst his greatest masterpieces). “Comper Cathedral” is an intricate silk damask of stylised British flowers and foliage with a pine cone at its centre, symbolising regeneration and enlightenment. It is the same silk used in the green drapes behind the High Altar and matches the green frontal we already have by Comper.

The orphreys are in a gold thread brocatelle called, “Crevelli,” designed in 1875 by the leading architect and founder of Watts, Thomas Garner. Its design originating in an early fifteenth century painting by the Master of St Bartholomew, and is a classic example of the kind of cloths of gold, inspired by authentic Medieval designs, that were re-created in the latter stages of the nineteenth century gothic revival.

The intention is that this set of vestments will extend our range of High Mass sets, but in a way that complements and honours the already existing textile heritage of our sanctuary and building, along with the traditions of the gothic revival in England.

The new vestments comprise a chasuble, and two dalmatics with appropriate stoles, maniples, burse and veil. A next step might be to enlarge the set if further donors were to be found, to add a green Low Mass set for use on weekdays, and a cope for use at Evensong and Benediction on Sundays. If anyone would like to donate funds in memory of a loved one for this purpose, or would simply like to contribute to this project, please be in touch with Fr Peter.

Fr Gerald Reddington

A homily preached by Fr Peter Anthony at the High Mass of Requiem for Fr Gerald Reddington on Saturday 25th June 2022, reflecting on why we celebrate the Eucharist when we pray for the departed and why it is a particularly appropriate thing to do for a priest. You can watch the liturgy again here.

We are all here today to give thanks for the life of Gerald Reddington, priest.

There is so much to give thanks for: a loving father and husband; a faithful friend to so many; an assiduous pastor; a wise confessor and confidante; an energetic parish priest; and a tireless champion of the homeless and the vulnerable.

It is only natural that we should make this act of thanksgiving for his life as part of the Eucharist. For the Eucharist is itself, the greatest act of thanksgiving the Christian community can make, and it lay at the heart of Fr Gerald’s life as a priest.

In the Eucharist, Christ is present with us. As we offer bread and wine in thanksgiving, those earthly things are transformed by the power of God’s Holy Spirit to become for us Christ’s living body and blood.

And as we are drawn into the presence of Christ who offered himself perfectly to the Father on our behalf, we are drawn afresh into that one single sacrifice of himself on the Cross – the thing that opened for us the gates to eternal life.

Christ’s giving of himself on the Cross is a sacrifice that can never be repeated, but is represented to the world of time and space at each celebration of the Mass. Its power breaks afresh into our lives and into the lives of those for whom we pray every time we offer it – even if we cannot see them; and even if they are on the other side of the divide between our world and the next.

So when we pray for Fr Gerald in this Requiem Mass, our thanksgiving is joined to the offering of Christ and becomes his, offered perfectly to the Father on our behalf.

It is only natural, therefore, that when we come to pray for our departed loved ones, we do it by offering the Mass.

And how appropriate it should also be to offer the Eucharist for a priest. For in this life, Fr Gerald was consecrated by the laying on of the bishop’s hands to offer the sacrifice of the Mass. From the moment of his ordination, his whole life itself became a sacrifice of thanks and praise lived in a particular way for the whole people of God. The Mass was the source and summit of his priestly ministry.

It has been a privilege to hear over the past few weeks from so many people about how much Fr Gerald’s ministry in this place and elsewhere changed lives: what a valued counsellor and guide he was; what a loving pastor and friend he was to so many; how he would go out of his way to be generous and kind; the sparkle and joie de vivre he brought to parish life and pastoral interaction.

So for all the love that we received from Fr Gerald, we give thanks to God. And as we give thanks for all that was good in Fr Gerald, we also ask God to forgive him his faults and make him ready for the life of heaven.

We ask that Fr Gerald might share there in the life of the God in whom he put his trust in this life, and whom he served so faithfully, and whom now we pray will give him the reward of his labours, and the fullness of eternal life. Amen.

Relic of St Paul the Apostle

Many will rejoice in the news that on his feast day, an anonymous benefactor entrusted to our parish a relic of St Paul the Apostle! This joined our recently donated relic of St Peter on the altar for the saints’ feast day and was available for veneration for those who wished to. Blessed be God in his angels and in his saints!

Online Zoom Theology

Once every two months, we organise a theology seminar by Zoom to discuss a particular idea, theme or text. We aim to make discussion as approachable as possible, and to give people the space they need to express their thoughts and questions.

Our next online Zoom Theology session will take place on Tuesday 12th July 2022 at 7.00 pm. We will look at the recently published novel, Cathedral, by Ben Hopkins

This theology session will be led by Fr Peter Anthony and will explore novels about the building of cathedrals. We will compare Hopkins’ Cathedral with other similar works such as Golding’s The Spire, Huysmans’ La Cathédrale, and Ken Follet’s The Pillars of the Earth.

What is it about great buildings that seem to speak beyond themselves about the divine and the power of human creativity? How do churches operate as sacraments of God’s presence and why do they feel so necessary for the offering of Christian worship?

It is suggested that participants read at least part of Hopkins’ Cathedral before the seminar.

Zoom link here.

Church Union Anglo-Catholic Theology Lecture 2022

Fr Peter will give the annual Church Union Anglo-Catholic Theology Lecture on Thursday 14th July 2022  at Holy Redeemer, Clerkenwell. Evensong and Benediction take place at 6.30 pm and the lecture follows Evensong. The lecture will be entitled, “Real Presence: on online worship from the Catholic Tradition.”

If you cannot make it in person, it will be possible to watch the lecture online via the Church Union’s Facebook page.

Flowers

The flowers for Sunday have been given by John McWhinney in memory of his brother Tedd.

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

The sick

Fr Harry Hodgetts, Elizabeth Lyon, James Shrimpton, David Robin, Gloria Fleming, Jim Strickland, Amanda Barrett, Tim Marland, Sebastian Taite-Ellis, Michael Lamprill, David Craig, Martin Berka

Those known to us recently departed

Leslie Routledge, Philip Sanders, Margaret Graham, Whidden, Walter Rainer, Sarah Yeager, Jane Pounds, Violet Mary Sanders, Frank Williams

Anniversaries of death

Our Assumptiontide procession on Sunday 14th August is one of the great events in the life of our parish. It is a wonderful opportunity to declare to the world our faith in the Word made flesh and our love for his mother Mary.

 

Service times this week