SUNDAY SERVICES
8.00am Holy Eucharist (BCP)
9.30am Parish Eucharist (Provision for accompanied children in the Long Playground)
11.15am Matins
The church will be open for private prayer until 6pm.
We will record one of our Sunday Services and upload it during the afternoon for those who are unable to come to the church. The link will be available by clicking on the poster below.
If you would like to come to a service, and so we can monitor attendance numbers, please chose a service time on eventbrite below.
You can also read our risk assessments for private and public worship.
8.00am Holy Eucharist (BCP)
9.30am Parish Eucharist (Provision for accompanied children in the Long Playground)
11.15am Matins
The church will be open for private prayer until 6pm.
We will record one of our Sunday Services and upload it during the afternoon for those who are unable to come to the church. The link will be available by clicking on the poster below.
If you would like to come to a service, and so we can monitor attendance numbers, please chose a service time on eventbrite below.
You can also read our risk assessments for private and public worship.
WEEKDAY SERVICES
9 am Morning Prayer on Zoom Monday - Friday. Email pa@smaw8.org to join
10 am Church opens for Private Prayer Monday - Saturday
12 Noon Midday prayer in the church Monday – Saturday
12.15 pm Holy Eucharist Tuesday and Thursday only
2 pm Church closes Monday - Saturday (6 pm on Sunday)
5.30 pm Evening Prayer said individually. https://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-and-worship/join-us-service-daily-prayer
CHURCH ACCESS
Access to the church will only be possible through the cloisters and the south door. Opening the church is dependent upon our maintenance of good practices including:
9 am Morning Prayer on Zoom Monday - Friday. Email pa@smaw8.org to join
10 am Church opens for Private Prayer Monday - Saturday
12 Noon Midday prayer in the church Monday – Saturday
12.15 pm Holy Eucharist Tuesday and Thursday only
2 pm Church closes Monday - Saturday (6 pm on Sunday)
5.30 pm Evening Prayer said individually. https://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-and-worship/join-us-service-daily-prayer
CHURCH ACCESS
Access to the church will only be possible through the cloisters and the south door. Opening the church is dependent upon our maintenance of good practices including:
- Sanitising our hands at the entrance
- Wearing masks in the church
- maintaining 2 metre distancing from others
- following the one way system
Dear All
Our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Beirut and Lebanon. God of love, whose compassion never fails; Gather our hearts, minds, and voices as one as we bring before you the grief and perils of the people of Beirut, Lebanon in the aftermath of the catastrophic explosions. United in solidarity with the Lebanese people, we pray: May the peace shattered in Beirut be renewed. May strength be given to those in the emergency and medical services and those making decisions that affect all involved. May all who seek to help the victims, tend the injured, search for the bodies of those who have died, be given particular strength in their harrowing work; Be close to those made homeless and who now live in fear and uncertainty. May your children taken from this world by the blasts in Beirut, be welcomed mercifully into your embrace. and, may their loved ones who remain, find comfort in the midst of their hurt, anger and bewilderment. Be with those of faith and of none as they try to make sense of this tragedy, And pour you compassion and love into all. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ we pray. Amen We have a festival filled week. On Monday and Friday we celebrate the lives of two martyrs separated by 1700 years. Laurence who was killed during the persecutions of Emperor Valerian and Maximilian Kolbe who offered his life in place of another prisoner at Auschwitz. On Tuesday and Thursday we will be remembering Clare of Assisi (one of Francis’ first followers) and Jeremy Taylor (mediaeval bishop of author) at our respective Eucharists. The week is headlined by our celebration of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Saturday. She is of course our patron and this is her major festival and we will be holding it with as much reverence as the current restrictions allow. As usual we will be transferring our patronal festival to September on the festival that celebrates her birth.
There are two saints I want to tell speak of a little further who both share the idiosyncrasy of their lives not being without controversy. Exciting Holiness describes Jeremy Taylor’s life like this: Jeremy Taylor was born in Cambridge in 1613 and educated there at Gonville & Caius College. He was ordained in 1633 and, as the Civil War got under way, he became a chaplain with the Royalist forces. He was captured and imprisoned briefly but after his release went to Wales, where the Earl of Carbery gave him refuge. He wrote prolifically whilst there, notably The Rule and Exercise of Holy Living in 1650 and of Holy Dying the following year. In 1658 he went to Ireland to lecture and two years later was made Bishop of Down and Connor. He found many of his clergy held to Presbyterianism and so ignored him; and the Romans rejected him as a Protestant. In turn, he treated both sides harshly. His health was worn down by the protracted conflicts and he died on this day in 1667. The penultimate sentence is the one that captures attention. In their usual understated way the authors point to a depth in the narrative that a surface biography can’t fully illustrate. Taylor, on finding the Presbyterian ministers in his diocese suspicious of the episcopate, offered them an ultimatum. They were to submit to episcopal ordination or be evicted from their churches. This brash effort only steeled the resolve of a good number of them. Taylor made good on his threat and declared their churches vacant and repossessed them. Meanwhile he sought to win over the Roman Catholic population by forcing them to attend protestant worship. Not only did they dislike the worship but it was in English which the majority of them did not speak. Nevertheless Taylor did not encourage his clergy to learn the local language but simply tried to more firmly enforce church attendance. One can only imagine that conflict resolution courses were not mandatory at the time in theological colleges… Exciting Holiness describes Maximilian Kolbe’s life like this: Maximilian Kolbe was born at Zdunska Wola near Lodz in Poland in 1894. His parents were Franciscan Tertiaries and, beginning his training for ordination in 1907, Maximilian joined the Franciscan noviciate in 1910. He studied at Rome but, suffering from tuberculosis, he returned to Poland and became a lecturer in church history. After suffering a severe illness, he resolved to publish a magazine for Christian readers and this soon gained a huge circulation. Soon his community was producing daily and weekly journals. After the Nazi invasion of Poland, Maximilian was arrested as an 'intellectual' and taken to Auschwitz in May 1941. There he continued his priestly ministry, secretly celebrating the Eucharist. When, after an escape, a prisoner was chosen to forfeit his life as an example, Maximilian stepped forward to take his place and be put to death. Two weeks later he was injected with phenol and died on this day in 1941. On this occasion there is no mention of any scandal. He appears the archetypical martyr; a picture of Christian self-giving generosity. There is no doubt that his actions at the end of his life were heroic, noble, brave and loving. Nevertheless in the wake of his canonisation in 1980 and to the present day controversy surrounds him because of the anti-Semitic material that was regularly published in the magazine he founded and edited. He himself wrote disparagingly of international Zionism and gave credit to the idea that there was a powerful Jewish organisation working to, amongst other things, destroy the church. The reason I raise these two saints’ chequered lives is not to seek to discredit them or belittle them. Rather it seems that as we as a nation and a world reassess the lives of historic figures we ought to do likewise in the church. It is of primary importance that we can be honest about the shortcomings as well as the achievements of the saints. And we would do well to remember that the saints are not separated from us by a gulf of perfection. Their lives contain as much complexity as ours. Following Government and Church policy announcements it will become mandatory to wear face masks in church. We will have a supply of these by the door and also the hand sanitiser which will help to keep you safe. To save time filling in the Covid track and trace form on entry to the church you can book a place at any of our services by registering at Eventbrite here. https://st-mary-abbots-church.eventbrite.co.uk As before the links to last week’s sermon and this week’s 8am Holy Eucharist (BCP) can be found by clicking the poster link below. I look forward to seeing you on Sunday. Father Jonathan MacNeaney 
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VIRTUAL DONATION PLATE
If you would like to make a donation during our services, or at any time, we have set up an online virtual collection plate below. Click here for this week's Newsletter
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"Transforming St Mary Abbots" is a fundraising project, for works to the fabric of the building, which operates within the PCC of St Mary Abbots, a Registered Charity : Number 1132235