Category: Updates

Updates

BREXIT STOPS PANCAKES

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 […]

Leigh Hatts 
Updates

The Holy Family leaves Bethlehem

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 […]

Leigh Hatts 
Updates

Week of Prayer for Christian Unity 2019

“Ecumenism is not something optional,” said Pope Francis this week. Today Friday 18 January, the first day of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, Westminster Cathedral choir is singing vespers at St Paul’s Cathedral. On the following Tuesday 22 January St Paul’s choir will be at Westminster Cathedral to sing evensong. Both services begin […]

Leigh Hatts 
Updates

Boxing Day is St STephen’s Day

The Isle of Man has issued a £2 coin depicting the Boxing Day custom of hunting the wren. This is no longer a cruel tradition involving killing a bird but an opportunity for community dancing, dressing up and ‘penny for the wren’ charity collections. The revived custom is also observed in Dublin’s Sandymount Green where […]

Leigh Hatts 
Updates

CHristmas Eve

The service of Nine Lessons and Carols this afternoon at King’s College Cambridge has an extra resonance. It is the last time that the choir will be conducted by Stephen Cleobury who has been responsible for the music over the last 37 years. He was appointed Director of Music in 1982. It is also the […]

Leigh Hatts 
Updates

O SapientIa: setTing out

Today is a turning point in Advent as we look towards Christ’s first coming. By tradition it is said that today Mary and Joseph are setting out on their 90 mile journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem by foot and donkey. This is about the same distance as the Pilgrims’ Way from Southwark Cathedral to Canterbury […]

Leigh Hatts 
Updates

GAUtete SUNDAY

The focus as we light the third Advent candle is on John the Baptist who tells of the coming of Christ. This Sunday’s Gospel reading speaks of ‘a feeling of expectancy’. We are on the cusp of looking expectantly ahead to Christmas On Monday there is the start of the O Antiphon countdown to Christmas […]

Leigh Hatts 
Updates

St Lucy’s Day

“Buns are expressive of religious devotion quite as much as anything else,”  says Melanie McDonagh writing about St Lucy’s Day in The Tablet. Today is St Lucy’s Day, an Advent stepping stone, and in Sweden most people will be enjoying a least one saffron bread roll called a Lussikatter. Parents of young children will have […]

Leigh Hatts 
3d book display image of Keeping Advent & Christmas

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