Advent to Easter

Corpus Christi meaning Body of Christ is a feast of celebration and thanksgiving for the institution of the Holy Communion. It is kept today 11 June, a Thursday, to recall Maundy Thursday and we celebrate again because normally we can be more joyful now than in Holy Week. The Mass has been hard to find […]

Trinity Sunday was first celebrated by Bishop Stephen of Liège in the early 10th century and by the twelfth century the custom had spread to France where it was observed at Cluny Abbey. Archbishop Thomas Becket introduced it to England having been consecrated and as Archbishop at Canterbury Cathedral on the Sunday after Pentecost (or […]

There are no Whit Walks, no Goosnargh cakes, no petal showers and no rushes strewn in the aisles. But Sunday is Pentecost. “The churches are still locked,” writes Christopher Howse in Saturday’s Telegraph. “But that has never been an obstacle to the Holy Spirit.”

Ascension Day on Thursday 21 May is the spiritual climax of the year. This Thursday marks Christ’s last resurrection appearance to the disciples who report seeing him ascend. St Paul said that Christ had been seen by over 500 men and women between resurrection (Easter) and ascension. For some years Ascension Day has been largely […]

The sixth Sunday of Easter is also known as Rogation Sunday since many of this week’s Rogation walks now normally happen on the Sunday. Without the virus there would have been a tour of parish boundaries, known as beating the bounds, in Cambridge (Little St Mary’s), a procession through the town at Leighton Buzzard (The […]

Tower top singing at Magdalen College Oxford has been taking place early on May morning since 1509. Will it happen tomorrow? Yes, although not from the Great Tower. The 28 members of the choir will be singing the Hymnus Eucharisticus and a traditional madrigal remotely from their homes around the country. To follow at 6am […]

An unusual book has been quietly published during the current lock-down. A launch event would have highlighted the result of the special project which has been supported by a number of individuals, livery companies and churches in The City. Faith in the City of London by Niki Gorick is a photographic book depicting activities in […]

Easter continues today Low Sunday 19 April with Alleluia!, unheard during Lent, coming at the gospel acclamation and the dismissal . We are still living the events in Jerusalem in real time and today’s gospel reading (St John 20: 19-31) is the account of what happened on the first Low Sunday. There are many names […]

Letter in The Daily Telegraph on Easter Monday: Here’s to the hare pie and the bottle kicking SIR – I was interested to read in Helena Horton’s report (April 10) that Iron Age Britons idolised hares. Every Easter Monday, we host one of Britain’s oldest continuing sporting events: the Hallaton Bottle-Kicking and Hare-Pie Scramble. A […]

No egg rolling at Preston or hare pie scrambling at Hallaton but it’s still Easter Monday. And it is still the second day of Easter. It will be Easter every day for forty days to Ascension Day on Thursday 21 May when we hope and pray that life will be a little better.