Here and There

Mercifully quiet day today; the sun is shining, and I'm taking Jane, my wife, out for lunch. She is very pleased with the Mothering Sunday cards from our two offspring. This is the lull before the storm. Somehow in the coming week there are four more sermons to prepare for Holy Week and Easter in Florence (the first is already in the bag) , and one for a Chrism Mass in Scotland. I have put this morning's 8 am mini-bijou-sermonette on 'The Anglo-Catholic' blog - thought the Americans ought to know that some of us, sometimes, use the Prayer Book - or something approximating to it. Today that meant trying to expound St Paul's take on Galatians 4 - from which, of course, we derived Mothering Sunday (aka "Mother's Day" and all that).

Cynthia, who read that first lesson this morning, was called on at a moment's notice - and she had the wrong glasses. Yet she read it most beautifully - but you would expect no less from a gal who was educated by the Wantage Sisters.



There is something we have lost in the present system of three-year readings. The Prayer Book's unchanging Sunday cycle means that you really have to dig into the readings when you preach, and you have to resort to the Epistles as well as the Gospels. That can mean too little Old Testament; but since today Paul is expounding one of the great stories from Genesis, I tried to go with him. Refreshment Sunday is another of today's titles; and for me it was refreshing to try to get to grips with Paul's thought. I hope it was for the congregation, too.

St Thomas the Apostle, Parish Church of Lymington