Dear Friends
My message this week is a list of thanks, information and gentle reminders….
I would like to thank Anne McBride and her team for organising a delicious lunch again today (Tuesday) for the older members of our parish. Our guests are always so grateful to be able to come and share a meal and a chat, sitting at beautifully laid tables, and being looked after so graciously.
Tomorrow (Wednesday) at mid-day in church we have the funeral of Andrew Brown. He was a faithful and very active member of St Nick’s for many years and I do encourage you, if you can, to come and support Lu and her family and to give thanks for Andrew’s life.
If you are planning to take part in our sponsored walk on Saturday 24th June please let me or Hayley in the office know as soon as possible. If you would like a lift to Sunbury you must let us know please by this Thursday 15th. Otherwise we shall assume you will travel independently. Maps of the route are available in the office and will be in church again on Sunday. I hope walkers have now set up their JustGiving pages or collected their sponsorship papers from church. I am told that sponsors have already begun to give generously.
Father Simon and I will be taking a group of pilgrims from St Nicks and joining with pilgrims from St Michael and All Angels, Barnes, to travel to Walsingham next Monday 19th. We shall be praying for the life and work of our parishes and ask you in turn to pray for us. We return on Friday 23rd, ready to do the sponsored walk the following day! We will have access to emails while we are there but mobile coverage is very limited.
On Sunday 25th June at 3pm Father Alan will be made priest at St Luke’s, Chelsea and everyone is welcome to attend and support him. He will be celebrating Mass for the first time the following evening here at St Nick’s at 7.30. I hope our congregation will turn out in force to support Fr Alan that evening – there will be a party after the service! If you would like to contribute to an ordination gift for him from the parish please have a word with the wardens.
With every blessing
Dear Friends,
In my sermon on Trinity Sunday I offered a brownie point to anyone who could tell me over coffee what is happening in the picture below, which is on the back of the invitations (AKA “ember cards”) to my priesting service and first mass on 25 and 26 June. As it happened, I only had to award a point to one person, whose blushes I shall spare by not naming them.
The person on the right is our patron St Nicholas, who is said to have thrown money at night into the house of a poor man with three daughters who could not afford dowries for them, and so faced a life of destitution and a career that rhymes with that.
The story is a great example of charity and practical Christian concern for those in our community – and as I pointed out in my sermon, the great example of community we have in the Christian tradition is the shared life of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in the Trinity.
There are still some ember cards at the back of church and you are all very welcome to come and see me priested in St Luke’s, Chelsea on Sunday 25 June at 3pm and come to my first mass the following day, Monday 26, at 7.30pm in St Nicholas, with fizz to follow afterwards.
Fr Alan