From the Vicar…
Dear Friends,
Next weekend, Canon Paul Dyer from Dunedin will be staying with us to oversee our Parish Review. In particular, he will conduct a consultation event next Saturday, to which we hope you will all come. Each individual contribution will help to stimulate everyone else’s. Out of this, we hope to have abundant material and motivation for our plans for the next 5–10 years.
Today with the Trumpet you have a yellow sheet with some questions you may like to consider beforehand. If you are unable to come on Saturday, please send in your written contribution. If you wish to speak to Canon Dyer privately, you may do so by making an appointment through the Parish Office or the Wardens. He is keeping Saturday afternoon for this purpose. Canon Dyer will be the preacher on Sunday morning, when we will celebrate Our Lady’s Assumption, and baptise Phineas Alexander Williams.
We have just heard that our new Bishop, Victoria Matthews, has finally been granted the appropriate visa. This means that her Installation as eighth Bishop of Christchurch will take place as planned, at 1:30 pm on Saturday 30 August in the Cathedral. Seating is limited, and so only 3 places are available for our parish. One of the visitors for the occasion will be another Canadian, Bishop Terry Brown, Bishop of Malaita in the Solomons. He had a significant part in the ending of the troubles there a couple of years ago. He will be staying at the Vicarage, and will preach at our Sunday Masses the next day.
It has become clear recently that a lot of our hymnbooks have disappeared. Sometimes we can barely supply the congregation. Some of these have possibly wandered into our homes. Would you please check and if you have one, quietly return it. They are extremely expensive to mend or to buy.
We are not celebrating the Assumption with the usual Sung Mass and dinner on Friday, because we want people to give their valuable time and energy to the Review the next morning. But there will be two Low Masses on Friday: 8:00 am as usual, and then 12:15 pm. And on Sunday we shall celebrate Mary at all services.
Last Wednesday we celebrated the Transfiguration of the Lord and were reminded of the permanent victory of hope in the world. This, ironically and appropriately, on the same day that we remembered the horror of Hiroshima, 1945. Jesus and his three disciples had retreated to the mountain as the threats of his opponents pressed upon him. There, for a moment, his human flesh seemed to shed its mortality, and the light of God’s glory shone through. They had a glimpse of the much bigger picture of the events that they were about to be involved in. Without knowing it, they even saw for a moment the new life of resurrection.
Some Christians ever since have had such moments, in special people, places and events, when the glory of God has shone through the gloom and uncertainty, and given new hope. There is a new and motivating assurance that in our trust of God, we are being changed from glory to glory with Christ. When we may well be weighed down by Hiroshima, and that terrible glimpse of the very worst that human beings can do to each other and to the world, such an insight is a great gift of God.
May God bless you all.
Peter Williams
