Weekly Email – Trinity Sunday
Documents
As we came at Pentecost last week to the fulfilment of the liturgical celebration in our calendar of the Paschal Mystery, the Church calls us to keep this Sunday the feast of the Holy Trinity. This is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the fact that the God whom we worship is fundamentally known to us in love as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Many accounts of the divine in human history have exalted God beyond all human knowing and defined the divine as something we cannot understand. Others have proposed God as a gnostic secret experienced by a privileged few. Yet other accounts of who God is have reduced him to being a projection of our best thoughts, or tamed him as the subjective experience of each individual.
Yet for Christians, God the Father reveals himself to us in his Son, and continues to live in our hearts through the gift of the Holy Spirit. God’s divine life is not something that overwhelms our capacity to know him or evades it like a riddle, but is rather a loving mystery, which we are invited to enter into and share as creatures made in his image. It is both an objective truth beyond us and a deeply personal experience at the same time.
At the heart of this mystery lies a paradox: we can truly know and experience God, yet the more we know him, the more there will always be for us still to discover in the depths of his love.
Fr Peter
Parish visit to “Thomas Becket: murder and the making of a saint” at the British Museum
Friday 2nd July 6.00 pm – followed by dinner
One of the characteristics of our vocation as Christians is the call to deepen our knowledge of the faith we profess. All Saints has long had a reputation for the highest quality of teaching and preaching, but the city we live in is also full of cultural and artistic resources that can help us to deepen our Christian faith.
With that in mind, I am organising a parish trip to visit the recently opened exhibition into the life and influence of St Thomas Becket at the British Museum.
The Museum has drawn together a fascinating array of artefacts. They both shed light on the life and murder of Thomas Becket, but also reveal much about the cult of his martyrdom which exploded with extraordinary power and speed over Western Europe in the aftermath of his murder. The exhibition also traces the later destruction of his shrine by Henry VIII and new ways in which recusant English Catholics understood their faith and experience of persecution through the lens of the life of St Thomas.
Highlights of the exhibition include an array of fascinating Medieval glass from Canterbury displaying the miracles attributed to the saint’s prayers, numerous beautiful reliquaries, both medieval and Counter Reformation, along with extensive manuscript evidence of Medieval monastic and political life.
We will meet at the British Museum at 6.00 pm on Friday 2nd July 2020, and will be followed by the opportunity to have dinner together at Le Beaujolais restaurant in Litchfield Street. We have bought 20 tickets for the exhibition and they will be apportioned on a strictly ‘first come, first served’ basis. The exhibition tickets cost £17.50. A three course dinner at Le Beaujolais will be £36 (without wine – each person will be able to pay for their own wine on the night), so if you wish to stay on for dinner, the total is £53.50.
To buy your ticket – either with dinner or without – visit asms.uk/becket and select one of the two price options. If you are unable to make a payment electronically by card, the parish office will be able to receive a cheque.
I look forward to the re-emergence of a rich programme of opportunities for study, reflection, and Christian education at All Saints over the coming months as we emerge from COVID restrictions, and am excited that we will be visiting a fascinating and well-curated exhibition at one of the world’s finest museums.
Fr Peter
Links for Sunday
The link for the Propers for Trinity Sunday is at the top of this email.
And click here for the YouTube live stream.
Evensong and Benediction are back at 6pm on Sundays, for an in-person congregation only (not live-streamed).
Flowers
The flowers for Sunday have been given by Monica Hall in memory of her sister, Mary Woodward, whose anniversary falls at this time.
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 Roger, Martin Berka, Barbara Schiefer, Sybil Priestnall, Joan Anna SLG, Phil Gibbs, Poppy Harris, Sheila Wood, Jennifer Spreckley, Sue Yesnick, Elizabeth Lyon, Rosina Sargon Eskrya, Fr Charles Cloughen, Malcolm Brown, Fr Pip Bevan, Tim Knight, Alixe Bainbridge-Spring, Hillary Rodger
Those known to us recently departed
Philip Oswald, John Mather, Beverley Ward, Melanie Toogood Pr
Anniversaries of death
30th – Henry Pelham-Clinton, Constance Porter
31st – Olga Gaunt
JUNE 1st – Mary Bonar, Edna Hutt, Annie Key, Donald Barnes Pr
2nd – Ronald Self
3rd – Ada Tomlinson, Bob Terwilliger Pr, Vyvian Hall, Gwen Rice
4th – Joan Arnold
5th – Cyril Tomkinson Pr (seventh vicar of All Saints), Winifred Richards, Tony Pulleyn
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 Gift Aid, 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).