Dear Friends,
Next Sunday at 10:00 am the whole of the S. Michael’s School Community will join with the Parish congregation, as we celebrate School Founders’ Day. At the Solemn Mass, we shall affirm again the foundations and priorities that we regard as so vital for the School we own and oversee as a part of our parish ministry. The visiting preacher will be the Revd Dr Peter Carrell, who is based at Theology House in Merivale.
It was good to meet Jolyon White last Sunday when he preached at S. Michael’s. I hope that we can spend more time with him as he seeks to connect us with our call to provide social service and to seek social justice.
We welcome back John De la Bere and are able to report that those who stood in for him, publishing the Trumpet and overseeing liturgical things, did so with distinction. Thank you to those people for keeping the standard high.
From now on, the Friday morning Mass at S. Michael’s will be at 10:00 am instead of 8:00 am. I hope that some others of you may consider committing yourselves to this or another morning, so that the offering of a daily Mass, which began at S. Michael’s 100 years ago, may continue.
Although at S. Michael’s we read the Bible extensively and in a disciplined way, we should be concerned that not only in our society but even in our church communities, we are losing familiarity with its texts. Dr Chris Marshall, who once gave superb talks on the Sermon on the Mount at our clergy conference, has remarked with concern that “the Christian community is becoming increasingly estranged from its sacred text, the Bible, increasingly deaf to its witness, bewildered by its contents, unsure of how best to read it or apply it, and unable to explain just why the Bible ought to be esteemed so highly.” Another said recently that “the less we listen to Scripture, the more we will accept the world as we know it as out default setting, and the less we will have to offer the world that is fresh and powerful and redemptive.” And the great Anglican priest and educator John Westerhoff says, “Unless the story is known, understood, owned and lived, we and our Church will not have a Christian faith. Transformation takes time. It requires disciplined engagement over an extended period. The Bible needs to be at the heart of what we do, an undergirding of all our ministries.” Our problem today is that many of us are not hearing or reading Scripture on a daily basis at all, let alone seriously wrestling with it. And the fundamentalists who make most noise about the Bible, and claim to own it, discredit it by idolising and misusing it so badly. Those who do expose themselves on a regular basis to the Bible texts, and seek food along their way from there, will say how confronting and surprising and worthwhile that can be. Though many questions are raised in my mind when I read the Bible, I always find that in some way I am fed. I encourage you all to persist, and if you want help, to ask for it.
May God bless you all.
Fr Peter Williams
