It has been a busy weekend for the parish as we hosted a special pre-Christmas lunch for the older members of the congregation on Saturday and then welcomed a visit from Archbishop John Wilson on Sunday. This was the first time in history that an active Archbishop of Southwark has visited St Anselm’s so it was a special occasion indeed.
The Archbishop preached a great sermon on our need to take faith seriously and strengthen our prayer lives individually. The great Advent hymns were sung and clouds of incense raised our worship heavenwards. The servers, cantor and choir were in tremendous voice and the congregation packed out with children and young families.
After Mass we shared a parish lunch together in the hall. It was packed out and only worked due to a fabulous effort from those who helped set up tables and lay out the goodies etc.. All the more impressive because most of those working today had also worked tirelessly yesterday to provide a full Christmas dinner with all the trimmings. Bravo to them!
The food, on both days, was very gratefully received and, as you can see, there were smiles all round. My Christmas jokes were especially welcome… I think?!
Lots of people have commented over the weekend on how encouraging it has been to see such growth in the parish since lockdown especially amongst the younger generations. So it was nice, for a change, to focus on those with more, shall we say, life experience on the clock!
Lots of people need thanking for their hard work this weekend from vegetable preppers to washer uppers and table layers. Trudy organised them with aplomb and they deserve to put their feet up this evening. Thank you to all who took part this weekend in any capacity. This is such a special parish and God is doing good things here. I shall end with a lovely photo of the Archbishop with Hayley.
This is irrelevant to your main piece but is actually relevant to everything since most else is froth. Where is the Catholic support for Isabel Vaughan – Spruce? The pitiful failure of Nichols is a given (Welby ditto, insofar as the left liberal idiot matters at all) but what about the rest of us? We play at our faith while innocents are industrially destroyed and while Satan’s agents persecute the righteous.
We should all be putting our bodies between the murderers and their victims and yet, repeatedly since 1967, we do not. We are fakes and what we do in the meantime in the name of the Lord means absolutely nothing since we are, by our silence and inaction, accessories to wholesale killing.
Do we believe what we say we believe or is it all a bit awkward?
I think this is the absolute question of our times and we are, in effect, silent in the face of it. Shame (and damnation) on us.