News for Sunday 11th October 2020

We are told in our gospel reading this Sunday that the Kingdom of Heaven is like a King who gave a wedding banquet for his son. When all the invited guests made excuses, he sent his servants out again into the highways and byways to bring more guests in.

What does this tell us about the Kingdom of Heaven?

There are many things the image of a wedding feast might suggest to us, but the most obvious, the most basic, I think, is this.  If the Kingdom of heaven is like a wedding feast, then being a Christian is not something we do on our own.

Being a Christian is about being in community with others. And it is about inviting others to join in the feast that God prepares for us.  It prompts us to meet together and to reach out to those outside whom God wants to call, and feed, and nourish.

Let us contemplate this Sunday the ways in which God might be calling us to reach out to those who might usually be excluded from the feasting of our world, but whom God invites to take a place at his banquet in the Kingdom of Heaven

Fr Peter Anthony

A recording of this Sunday’s Mass (28th Sunday in Ordinary Time) with a homily will be available here on our parish YouTube channel from the evening of 10th October.This week’s pew sheet is available here.

Our collaboration with Pond Square URC Church and C4WS in manning a winter shelter is going to be run differently this year due to COVID19 restrictions.It will not involve the “rolling” shelter with a different church hosting the shelter each evening. C4WS has decided to hire a hotel in Victoria, and to man the homeless shelter in one location, so it can comply with social distancing and COVID regulations.

We are all being asked to communicate to C4WS the numbers of volunteers we can provide to man the hostel through the winter. The idea is that we would aim to staff it on the same night of the week as we used to at Pond Square – i.e. Sunday nights. However, if you are able to offer you time on other days, I’m sure they would love to hear from you.

We need a range of people willing to do shopping, make meals, wash up, do overnight shifts, wash laundry, and befriend guests.

If you are interested in volunteering in any capacity this winter, please be in touch with Fr Peter and indicate a general sense of your availability and time commitment so he can communicate that to C4WS.

Many thanks indeed to all our volunteers and to C4WS for responding so creatively to the present situation.

Our next theology book club session looks at an extraordinary new work called Ghost Ship just published this year by A.D.A. France Williams. His book tackles head on the problems of racism and prejudice within the Church of England.Sam Wells has the following to say about Ghost Ship: ‘France-Williams employs a formidable range of approaches – among them testimony, academic categories, careful research, interviews, anecdote, poetry, humour, parody, exegesis and close reading – to mount a compelling and urgent argument for the church’s institutional and personal failure to receive the gift the Holy Spirit in the lives, bodies and callings of its BAME witnesses. Most of all he models prophetic ministry: pleading, portraying, persuading and ultimately inspiring the church that has caused so much hurt and grief but that despite all he still bravely loves. This is a testament of truth; and an epistle of power.’

The purpose of the St Benet’s Book Club will be to offer a forum for theological reflection and debate in the light of a book that we agree to read together. The Theology Book club meets by Zoom. The idea is that a book is discussed each time we meet at 7.30 pm on a Tuesday evening. It would be ideal to have read the book before the seminar, but if you are still half way through or just starting, don’t let that stop you joining us.

It is expected that participants acquire their own copies of the texts to be discussed. All of the books proposed are currently in print as paperbacks and can be obtained on Amazon.
Zoom meeting ID for 27^th Oct: Meeting ID: 820 0252 0620

No Mass on Tuesday of this week

Please note that there will be no Mass on Tuesday 13th October.

Church Cleaning day

Saturday 31st October October will be a church cleaning day from around 11.00 am onwards.

Full details of all our Covid planning and liturgical arrangements can be found here.