Advent to Easter

Tomorrow we begin Holy Week when we can live Christ’s last days on earth in real time. So where is Jesus tonight? He and his close followers are arriving at Bethany which is close Jerusalem. They are welcomed by Martha and Mary. Also there is their brother Lazarus who was recently brought back to life […]

This weekend was going to be significant: UK leaving the EU, change clocks, abolition of three south coast councils* and Mothering Sunday. The first has been postponed but Mothering Sunday cannot as it is the mid Lent Sunday and Easter must start on the night of 20 April whatever else happens One Mothering Sunday tradition […]

Monday 25 March is The Annunciation when we think of Mary learning that she was pregnant with the Christ Child. This is why we shall celebrate the birth on 25 December. There are Annunciation celebrations today in Nazareth’s basilica, Loreto and Walsingham as well as other churches. Today in Lent there is spark of colour […]

Today Tuesday 19 March is St Joseph’s Day. If you live in Italy you will find St Joseph buns, called seppole, on sale. They look like the Shrove Tuesday semlor buns enjoyed in Sweden although this time the cream is ricotta. Joseph has two feast days. Today as spouse of Mary mother of Jesus and […]

Is it St Patrick’s Day on Sunday 17 March? He does not appear in the calendar this year because 17 March is the Second Sunday of Lent. But this is not as difficult as the rare year when 17 March falls in Holy Week. It can be St Patrick’s Day on Sunday where the local […]

This Friday 15 March is Family Fast Day when CAFOD suggests that we forgo our main meal and donate the normal cost to the poor via the charity. CAFOD, the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development, works alongside Christian Aid to build a world without hunger and war by putting faith into action. Below is soup […]

‘The Christians go mad but thanks to ashes that the Church puts on their heads they come to their senses and are cured of their madness,’ commented the Turkish ambassador to Rome in the 1690s. Carnival ended last night and today, Ash Wednesday, we can receive ashes in church at the start of the Forty […]

Keeping Lent & Easter is a paperback guide to following the forty days of Lent and the forty days of Easter. Buy your copy at Church House Bookshop, Southwark Cathedral shop or here.

It’s Shrove Tuesday this Tuesday 5 March but there will be no Parliamentary pancake race. Fear of Brexit demonstrations  outside the Palace of Westminster is being given as the reason. However Winchester Cathedral is inaugurating an annual pancake race at noon. There are 20 teams with clergy and city councillors taking part. The relays in […]

Today is Candlemas and forty days since the birth of Jesus. We now remember Holy Family leaving Bethlehem and taking Jesus into the Temple in Jerusalem to give thanks for his birth. He would return on the first Palm Sunday 33 years later and today’s readings link us to Holy Week. This is Candlemas because […]