|
|
|
Contacting us Parish Priest -
Church Wardens -
Web Admin -
|
Fr. Yenda's Monthly Letters 2010 January 2010 I can remember when I worked in a supermarket that there was a new manager in the store; he had to spend some time on all the different departments as that was how it worked, and as I was usually on the tills, I was most concerned if he were sent to work there. All the staff on the shop floor were interested to know what this new manager would be like – would he be ok? Would he treat the shop floor staff with kindness and at least respect? We needed to find out a bit about him. A day or so later, the shop steward came into the staff canteen and sat down with her coffee, cigarette and newspaper (you will realise how long ago this was when you realise it has been some years since people could smoke in staff canteens!) “Well,” she began “ we’ve just found out he’s an educated idiot!” we all gathered round, pulled more chairs up to the little round table, and looked eagerly as we drank our coffees! “we’ve just found out that he has got a degree in Marine Biology… I wouldn’t mind, but here, we haven’t even got a fish department!!” There is something about being educated which at times can be of use – after all no one wants their children taught by a teacher who can’t do the subjects themselves! No one wants to be represented by a solicitor who hasn’t got the necessary training; but sometimes the insistence on qualifications goes just that little bit too far. Towards the end of last year I heard the most ridiculous stipulation come from the commons; that all nurses should be enforced to have a degree education. I had been under the misapprehension that there was a shortage of nurses, and hence we needed to encourage more, rather than deterring many good nurses. It has to be said that nursing is a job that very few of us could do – I know I couldn’t – and I have such admiration for the men and women who devote their lives to caring for people. And that is the crux of this, they are people who care and the essential thing for nurses is that they are able to relate to people, go out of their way for people, and be the kind of people that patients can have confidence in. Yes, of course they have to be educated to a certain level – after al they have to administer medicine. But if they have to be educated to a degree level, how is that going to instill the essential characteristics of caring and personability? I am not sure that it will. If it means that genuine caring people who would make good nurses are going to be prevented from joining the profession because they don’t have the academic ability to do a degree, then the country will very soon see a rapid shortage in the number of nurses we have – and actually in the quality of the ones we do have! The brightest people aren’t always the ones with the greatest personal talents. There are many people who do jobs which are so essential to us, and what is more, they do them with a heartfelt concern for those they interact with – and that is so important. As we enter a new year, I wanted to think about those men and women whose contributions to our lives and the lives around us are so vital. Those people who put other people’s lives and wellbeing before their own. People who work in hospitals, people who work in the armed forces. People who do jobs that most of us could never do. As we begin 2010, let’s keep these valuable people in our society at the heart of our prayers, as we give thanks to God for them, and all that they do. I wish you all a very happy New Year – and as always it remains my very great joy and immense privilege to serve as your parish priest
With all good wishes February 2010 My dear people of S Mary’s. Last month I had the great joy of a visit to Berlin. It is a city I have for a long time wanted to visit, with its chequered history, and its culture, and of course its architecture – I have never really understood why I have waited so long to go and see it. So, with the aid of the net, and cheap flights by Easyjet, and a very cheap hotel, off I went. I did not, however, expect to end up in one of the places that I did; I fell over on the snow and ended up in A and E in Berlin. Not quite what I had expected – but to cut a long story short (the first time ever a Vicar will do you that kindness!) nothing was broken, and after a day on crutches, I progressed to one crutch and decided to carry on touring round. The first tour I made was around the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. People so very often say to me ‘I could never go and look around somewhere like that – it must be horrid and depressing; how can you go to such a place?’ Well I have to say that it is the 3rd concentration camp I have been around, and this time the tour guide was the most informative I have encountered anywhere. It was freezing cold – thick snow – and to add to this I was hobbling around behind everyone else only just managing to keep up – and sometimes not quite managing it! But that gave me a very different perspective to what I might have had if I had gone on a lovely spring day, with sun in the sky and at full usual speed! Looking around Sachsenhausen I was aware that for those people who had been imprisoned there any cold would have made their lives dreadful given the thin clothing they were wearing, and any injury would in many cases be the beginning of the end. As we were shown the more unbelievable aspects of concentration camp suffering, I was aware also of how privileged our group were to see this dreadful place having not had to see it in full operation. The next day I went on a tour entitled ‘Red Berlin’ which took us around parts of the former East Berlin, showed us parts of the Berlin Wall which were still standing, and again an informative guide gave us some of the history and information about the Communist times in the city. Seeing the wall itself, and seeing where cars can now pass and people can now walk over where the wall once stood is incredibly moving, and some of the stories that people can recount is almost unbelievable. How a city was divided in that way, and people locked behind a wall never able to leave just sounds now like something out of a novel or a horror movie – yet it did happen. One of the most interesting things was that the U-Bahn – or the metro – passes from the West to the West but goes through the East – for the years when the wall was up, those stations in the East of the city were simply ghost stations, where the train would not be able to stop – with a security guard there to make sure that no one tried to board a train from the East to the West. The idea becomes even more unbelievable, because at the opening of the station thee would be 3 solid at either end, so no one could get there – and also the guard himself would be locked in his little booth, so that there was no chance of him escaping either! Yet what really brought home to me the actual suffering for the people was a taxi driver I was chatting to (who fortunately spoke English) who was telling me that he grew up in West Berlin, but his mother’s sister lived on the East. In all the years that he was growing up, he and his mother went only twice over to the East – just for a day each time – to see his aunt. His mother, in short, might just have well been living at the other side of the world, for all that she was able to see her sister, but her sister was simply a few streets away yet they couldn’t visit each other. I found this incredibly humbling to listen to. As we begin the season of Lent with Ash Wednesday, I am aware that Lent is the sombre preparation for Passiontide – the time of Our Lord’s greatest suffering, which we have to live through before we get to Easter. Thinking about the plight of the people who suffered in the concentration camps, and those who were divided from their families, and who were unable to enjoy the freedom which all mankind should be entitled to gives us the opportunity to see great suffering and to understand during Lent, how we can identify more closely with Our Lord’s suffering on the Cross. As always it remains my tremendous privilege and immense joy to serve as your parish priest,
All good wishes, March 2010 My dear people of S Mary’s. Well we are right in the heart of Lent now, and I was thinking about the idea of Lenten sacrifies, and giving things up and even taking extra things on. Funnily enough I remember at theological college one year, one student (not me, I hasten to add) decided to over-do it over Lent. It was a rare thing in the college to have vegetarian students…I remember about only one or two, and their food wasn’t exactly interesting! It was the case, however, that if you were a meat eater, you were not allowed to pick and choose that you might on some occasion prefer a vegetarian option. So on the days that liver was served (yuk!) I merely had to make do with onions, gravy and mash! Anyway, one student was adamant that during Lent that year he was going to go vegetarian…not so much as a rind of bacon would cross his lips. Fair enough, but at that time the college was adamant that it would not permit a student to change his diet or get any kind of preferential treatment (this, I hasten to add was not in the 1920s, this around 1998!!) After a few weeks, the lad was not as well has he might have been, and I remember one evening he knocked my door in college, and said he didn’t feel at all well – that I could see with the evidence of my own eyes, given the state of him. I asked the acting principal to look at him, and he telephoned the doctor. What happened next was perhaps a bit dramatic, but also went down in college history. Up the fire escape came a team of ambulance men, and duly carted the lad off to the local hospital; seated and carried on what looked very much like an NHS equivalent of a sedan chair. A short time later – an hour or two – he returned in much better condition than he had been when he left – he was perhaps a bit embarrassed about the drama of having had to be lifted down the fire escape, but probably not as embarrassed as he was at the amusement amidst the rest of us students! But there is an important thing here with Lent, and it pertains really to all of us regardless of what we give up. And that is to be sensible. Because the purpose of Lent is not to make ourselves ill, or to make ourselves so miserable that no one wants us near them – it is simply that we have an opportunity to grow closer to God through some kind of personal sacrifice, or some kind of effort. Doing a good turn for a neighbour, attempting to leave out the sugar in tea, may not sound like massive things, but if they are done with a good heart, and in the knowledge that we do them for God and neighbour, then that is every bit as good – if not better – than making ourselves ill by trying to do too much! As always it is my very great joy and privilege to serve as your parish priest. With all good wishes April 2010 My dear people of S Mary’s. Already it is Easter!
It has come upon us far quicker this year than I
can ever remember – and yet it is not as early as it was a year or so back. Over the Triduum the Church marks the
most poignant days in the Church Calendar:
The Last Supper on Maundy Thursday, the suffering
and death of Our Lord on Good Friday, and the glorious Resurrection of Our Lord
on Easter Sunday – which we celebrate of course with the Easter Vigil on Holy
Saturday.
It might seem a little early to celebrate Easter on the
Saturday rather than the Sunday, but actually the Easter Vigil traditionally is
celebrated in the early morning, and ends as the sun is rising…but in the
instance of practicalities, most churches, such as ours, celebrate the Easter
Vigil earlier on Saturday evening. Easter is perhaps the greatest feast
of the church, and even those people who are not regular church worshippers
often will attend church at Easter, and also people in the much wider community
will be enjoying their Easter eggs!
And there is of course nothing wrong with that; it
is an important religious festival, and we celebrate by enjoying ourselves – and
chocolate is one of the ways we like to do that! If we think about the life of Our
Lord and His work, we don’t have to look far to see how important freedom and
fairness were to Him.
If we look at the great commandment, ‘thou shalt
love the Lord thy God…and thy neighbour as thyself’, we can see that this
actually gives us a very strong responsibility.
It doesn’t just mean that we can love certain
neighbours as ourselves, and then others perhaps a little less!
Nor does it mean that our neighbours are those who
live next door to us; our neighbours are in fact all those we come into contact
with. With this in mind, I am aware that
there is a General Election coming up soon.
It is all too easy to look at politics and put our
cross in the little box which suits us best…those people who are well off may
want to vote for those who will make them even more well off, at the expense of
those whose need is much greater.
I always resist the temptation to
tell people who I think they should vote for – that is not my remit, and it
would be quite wrong for me to encourage people to vote in a certain way.
Given that, I do have strongly held political views
myself, and know that many of us also do. At a recent Diocesan Synod, it was
made plain by the new Bishop of S Albans that we have a responsibility to vote.
It is an important responsibility because for every
person who doesn’t bother to vote, someone’s vote for one of the less salubrious
parties becomes stronger. I have written before about the
dangers of people voting for parties such as the BNP, and I make no bones about
the fact that it is quite unconscionable for a practicing Christian of any
tradition to vote for such a party.
If people sit at home on polling day,
and think that their vote will make little or no difference, then they cannot
moan when a party is elected which makes life more difficult for them!
But more than that; if people don’t bother to vote,
and an extremist party gains ground and people become persecuted by them, it
might not be immediate, but sooner or later those people who thought they were
safe from them will quickly find that they are not as safe as they once thought. The election is not that far away,
and I will probably have another magazine to write for before it happens.
Yet,just like Easter, it is one of the great events
of the year – and when we go to the ballot box, we have that responsibility of
knowing that not only is it a privilege to vote (and a privilege which many
people in many countries would love to have) but also that when we vote, we vote
not only for our own benefit, but also for the benefit of
our neighbours – those whom we ‘love as ourselves’. As always it remains my very great joy and privilege to serve
as your parish priest With all good wishes
Fr Yenda
July 2010
My dear people of S Mary’s.
This month I have reached
something of a milestone!
On the 3rd of this month I will have been a priest
for 10 year – and I shall be celebrating the occasion at 12 noon on Saturday 3rd
July at S Mary’s Sundon
- and Fr Miller who was my Vicar when I was a
Curate in South Shields is coming along to preach for the occasion (this, of
course, is your invitation to come along!)
But I thought I would use this
month’s letter to look back over those 10 wonderful years and reflect on the
places I have been.
As I said I started as a
Curate in South Shields – 4 ½ wonderful years, where, as they say, I cut my
teeth!
Being a Curate is an interesting experience, and it all
depends on the Vicar you are working with and training under, as to how much you
enjoy your time as a Curate.
I have always been very grateful to Fr Miller that
I had such a great time as a Curate.
This is in fact important because if a priest
enjoys his time as a Curate, the likelihood is that he will enjoy the rest of
his ministry over the coming years.
Being a priest is an
interesting occupation – if you want to call it that – because you can really
work in a way which is very independent and in a way which suits you.
We are all different, and some of us are better at
some things rather than others.
I have friends who love sitting at their desks
doing administrative work – and they are fantastic at it!
I have other friends who love going to meetings –
and in many ways they make a wider contribution to the life of the Church in
that.
From the time I was Ordained,
I have always enjoyed the work with people – and that has always been to me a
very great privilege.
How many other people are welcomed into people’s
houses simply at the ring of the bell?
How many people are given tea and cakes on a
regular basis?!
It has perhaps become an unfashionable way of
working now, one vicar said to me years ago, “I have to work for my living, I
don’t spend my time having cups of tea with little old ladies!”
Fair enough, he might not have seen any mileage in
it; but in my experience it pays dividends, because it is actually the Church
caring for its people – and what could be more important than that?
Of course, ultimately a priest
is there to further the Kingdom of God, and to celebrate the Sacraments, and to
care for his people – he has ‘the Cure of Souls’ of the parish.
Again this is something which
really depends on the individual priest as to how he approaches the furthering
of the Kingdom of God, and as with all aspects of a priest’s work, you learn
over a period of time.
I have never been one to spend
my time ‘bible-bashing’ as I have never seen that this does any good.
Furthering the Kingdom of God in the parish is not
just something that a priest does for the time he is there and which ceases when
he retires!
It is an on-going process and each of the clergy who are
privileged to work in any parish play a part in it.
Because it is over the years that a community know
their priests that they come to understand God and His Kingdom in a way which is
real and relevant to them, in their time and their place.
In many ways, the most
important ‘skill’ a priest can build up is that of being able to visit people –
and yes I know, I do far less parish visiting than I really should, and would
like to!
But being with people, chatting with them about pretty
much anything except religion is one of the most important things a priest does.
Why would a priest visit someone and not
necessarily discuss religion?
Well, that is simple.
If people think that the vicar coming to the door
means that they are going to have a 45 minute sermon, with their eyes glazing
over and their coffee going cold, they will prefer to leave him on the doorstep!
If the vicar just enjoys a chat leaving people to
raise the matter of religion if they want to, I think that works better.
And into the equation goes the fact that when the
vicar visits, that is the Church visiting anyway, so in fact, he doesn’t have to
spend his time talking about it – he is there and is being it!
In a sense, nothing more needs to be said.
I have now been here at Sundon
for longer than I have been anywhere else – 4½ years at South Shields, half a
year in Sunderland, and now 5½ years here.
I am still learning!
It is a fact of life that a priest is always
learning – each day brings new blessings, new challenges, and new experiences –
because each day you meet someone new, or someone who has a new aspect of life
that they may want to talk about – be it good or not so good.
A priest shares so much of people’s lives in a very
big way – he marries them, baptises their children, buries them – there are few
other times in our lives which are as important or as emotional as those times;
and the priest is privileged to share in those times.
The last ten years have simply
flown by!
And they have been wonderful years.
Yes I have had my ups and downs like anyone else –
but looking back the ups far and away outway the downs.
Yes, there have been missed opportunities; yes
there have been people that I haven’t helped perhaps as much as perhaps I
should.
But in all this, I know that God makes up for all our
inefficiencies, and all our failing; and even in the lesser moments, God can
still do His work.
I am very fortunate.
I have been placed here as the priest, and this is
a wonderful parish to be in.
I have all I could ask for – a beautiful church, an
estate (which is the style of ministry I have always particularly loved) and a
village.
I have had good people wherever I have served – South
Shields, Sunderland (despite my being there only a short time) and now here in
Sundon.
As I begin to embark on the
2nd decade of my work as a priest, I take along with me what I have learned,
what I have experienced, and what I am still learning.
If the next 10 years are as wonderful as the last,
then I will be quite content.
On Saturday 3rd, I hope you
will join me in giving thanks for the last 10 years, because although it may be
my anniversary, it is actually an anniversary which is made possible by the
people I have been privileged to serve.
Because if I didn’t have the people in the parish
to serve, I would, in effect, be neither use nor ornament!
As always, it does remain my fervent joy and tremendous privilege to serve as
your parish priest.
With all good wishes
Fr Yenda
August 2010
My dear people of S Mary’s,
Usually, I try and find
something light hearted to say, although this month I was looking at the prices
of holidays, and saw how they had tripled and in some cases quadrupled in the
school holidays, and decided that this matter is so serious now, that it is
hardly a cause for levity.
People need holidays.
It is not just a nice luxury, it is becoming more
and more an essential part of life.
As people are having to work increasingly harder to
make ends meet, and have the ever present danger of redundancy in the wake of
the new coalition government, stress levels are at an all time high.
Those two weeks away in the
sun, away from everything can make a tremendous difference to people’s lives,
and that of their families.
The frankly scandalous increase in holiday costs
over the school holidays often means that those people who most need a holiday
are the people who can least afford it, and hence their stressful lives continue
without a well earned – and indeed well deserved – holiday.
That said, there are other
matters closer to the Church which have made the headlines recently too – not
least of all the matter of Women Bishops.
Back in the 1990s there was something of a hiatus
over the ordination of women, and there were a large number of clergy and also
laity who said that this was not a thing they could live with, and hence would
‘go to Rome’ (the technical term for those who decide to leave the Church of
England and become Roman catholics).
In the event, of course, far fewer than threatened
to go actually did, although this was largely due to the Act of Synod, (which
meant that parishes, such as ours, could choose for theological reasons to
request that they have a male vicar, and that the sacraments are duly celebrated
by a male priest).
This actually meant that those parishes which were
not in favour of the ordination of women had something of a means of security to
carry on as they always had.
For those parishes that wanted it, there were
supplied ‘Provincial Episcopal Visitors’, who were bishops of the same mind as
those parishes, yet who worked directly under the bishops of the dioceses.
Some parishes would choose to request sacramental
care from these bishops rather than their diocesans.
The present situation is now
that there will be a ‘code of practice’ for parishes where a male bishop is
requested if there is a woman bishop in a particular diocese.
There are, as there were in the 1990s, innumerable
people who are threatening to ‘go to Rome’ again, although as was the case then,
I very much doubt that all the people who say they are going will in the end go!
Now, I mention this not only because there have been reports of this in the
press, but also because any kind of change in church politics can leave everyone
wondering what is happening, both nationally and locally.
So it is important, I think,
to consider how I see my role in the parish here.
I have made it plain on many occasions that I will
not be going to Rome – that is not for me!
If I had wanted to be a Roman catholic, then I
would have been one already – and the Church of England is, in my view, the
Catholic Church in our own land.
I have always believed in the parish system of the
Church of England, whereby every parish has its priest who cares for them – not
just those who attend church, but actually the entire people of that parish.
The Church of England is the National Church – and
one of its greatest riches is that different churches can have widely different
services to their neighbouring parishes.
This enables far more people to be a part of a
church than would otherwise be the case, because in a sense there is something
for everyone.
I am pretty certain that no other Church allows for this,
and that no other church really sees the mileage in it.
Yet here at Sundon we have a traditional
Anglo-catholic tradition, where as the parish church in the centre of Luton has
a very evangelical tradition.
Totally
different, and yet we all live in the same Church of England, and we work
towards its goal of caring for the people of our Country, and bringing the
Christian faith to its people.
If God has put me here – which
I am sure he has, and which I am certainly also very grateful for – that doesn’t
change just because church politics change.
Those of us who are of a more traditionalist mind
in some areas of church politics don’t necessarily have to go to other Churches
just because things may happen that we don’t like!
For instance, where any priest goes to Rome of
wherever, his people still need to be cared for.
With fewer clergy coming forward, and increasing
demands on clergy, the more people who stay, the richer the Church will be.
The more Anglo catholic clergy who stay and
contribute to the wider Church, the richer the Church of England will be.
So, amidst all the panic of
clergy off to Rome – or at least those who are threatening to go – there are
still many of us – the majority in fact – who will be remaining in our parishes,
to love, care for, and serve our people.
I always say that being the parish priest here is
both a tremendous privilege and an immense joy.
That joy is made greater in a parish such as this
because of its people.
People I see both inside church and out, people who
I see both at times of joy and at times of sorrow – and actually whatever
happens in the Church of England, I simply don’t see myself going anywhere else!
So, I can’t speak for other clergy, but for me I am here for the long haul, and
I am looking forward very much to the years ahead, which I am sure will be as
rich as the years have been so far that I have been working as a priest.
As always, it remains my tremendous joy and immense privilege go serve as your
parish priest
With all good wishes,
Fr Yenda
September 2010
My dear people of S Mary’s.
I had better start with an
apology this month!
It is already the first day of September, and I
haven’t even got the letter for this month’s magazine to the Church warden!
So I fear your magazine this month will be a few
days late!
September is a lively month!
The schools go back, and things start to return to normal after the long summer
holidays.
Parents are less stressed, and of course, teachers are
probably more stressed!
But we have to wait a good month yet for the
holiday prices to start coming down, some things never change do they?!
There is of course another
exciting event in September, and that is Back To Church Sunday which is on
September
26th; and it is about this that I should like to write
this month.
I often say that the church here at Sundon has been here for 800 years because
people have actually taken the trouble to go to it! If in the first few years
people only attended when they got married, had their children baptised, and
when they were buried, the church would have struggled to survive for 8 years,
let alone 800!
One of the things which is
important for any church is to continue to welcome new members, and over the
course of the 6 years I have been here that has been happening and is
encouraging.
However, I do know that for many people who haven’t been
to church either for a long time, or even ever, making that first step and going
to church afresh can be something of a daunting experience.
That is not because we are not pleasant! Far from it; indeed Sundon Church has a
reputation for being a very friendly church; but entering any building where you
don’t know what to expect can often be a little challenging.
So, ‘Back To Church Sunday’ is
the Sunday in the year when we particularly invite people who haven’t been to
church for some time, to come and join us for our Sunday worship.
It is far easier to be one of several people who
are coming back to church that day, rather than just on your own!
I always see the Church in a
parish as having 2 main functions.
One of course is to spread the good news of the
Gospel to the people of the parish – and indeed the parish priest has the ‘Cure
of Souls’ of the parish, and part of his remit is to bring people closer to God.
It is something that you can never know if you are
doing it well or not, because ultimately only God knows if people have been
brought to Him, not the priest.
But there is also the
importance of the Church caring for the people of the parish.
And people need caring for in a variety of
different ways.
This is something which also is important to think
about in relation to Back to Church Sunday, because it is important that the
Church is kept aware of the people in the parish who actually do need the us.
How many elderly people are there, for example, who
are no longer able to get to church – or indeed get anywhere -
that I don’t know about, but would like me to call
on them?
It is only by my contact with people who come to church
and people I see from time to time in the street that I am made aware of such
people.
I am reminded of a little
incident which happened, probably in the 1950s.
My gran was living in Cornwall, and my grandfather
was, as most people were in those days, on terribly low pay.
My mother and uncle were growing up and their house
was totally inadequate.
One morning in desperation she went to see the
vicar, Fr Gendall, who was a very popular and very caring priest, whose elderly
daughter I am still in contact with.
He wasn’t in, but his wife said that he would call
on my Gran later.
Later that day, he came to the door, and my Gran
showed him around the tiny house.
He agreed that the house was inadequate, and
informed her that new council houses were being built, and that he would see
that her name was quickly moved from the urgent list to the very urgent list.
It wasn’t long before the family were moved to a
new council house, where at long last, the family had some time to breathe!
This is all part and parcel of
the life and worship of the Church.
In any parish there are going to be people who need
the local vicar to call on them…or even those people who would like him to call
on them.
One thing we always rely on is people letting us know when
people need the Church and its administrations.
One of the greatest joys and
privileges of being a parish priest is having the time to call round and see
different people – they don’t have to have a particular crisis, or a particular
need very often, often its just the opportunity to talk about this and that, and
the little things that go on, and just to know that actually the local Church
does care for them.
Sadly, the days of the local vicar being able to
find better accommodation for people in need is not longer possible…there are
few too council houses now and people’s difficulties are all too often that
people have to buy their homes at a rate they can ill afford; that is the stress
of the current time in which we live.
Yet the Church Of Englad is here to care for
everyone in its parish, and often a few friendly words from someone when the
chips appear to be down can make all the difference.
So, I very much hope that you,
the reader, will be with us on September 26th – and of course, on subsequent
Sundays as well!
As always it remains my tremendous joy and privilege to serve as your parish
priest,
All good wishes
Fr Yenda October 2010 My dear people of S Mary’s. At the moment I am all too aware of
the sharp and aggressive government cuts.
On a daily basis, I hear of people both locally and
further a field, who have been so badly affected by the new government cuts,
that they do not know which way to turn. Schools are having essential grants
cut – not gradually, but in one fail swoop.
People on educational courses are being told that
their funding will cease far sooner than they expect…get half a year’s work done
in a month or so, or the funding is gone!
Families are losing tax credits all
over the place – some people are losing £300 per month – these aren’t people who
are on high incomes, and who would not miss that amount of money.
No!
These are people on low incomes, for whom losing so
much as £50 a month would mean the difference between feeding their families,
and their children going hungry. There is an old phrase which rings
true today as it did in years gone by; ‘love flies out of the window when
poverty walks through the door’.
Family life is not easy.
People struggle very often in their relationships,
that is only natural.
But when people’s finances are stretched way beyond
breaking point, then those relationships will be likely falter all the sooner. If these cuts continue as they have
begun, and people’s finances are cut more and more, then the country will be in
very serious trouble very quickly.
Because if people who are working – and working
hard – are still unable to feed their children, let alone buy the occasional
luxury, those people will become desperate.
As a priest was I have always had a
great concern for people – and I always feel that part of the role of the local
vicar is, in fact, to be concerned for the welfare of the people of the parish
whom he serves.
Most of the people in my parish I won’t know by
name; naturally, no one can know 6 ½ thousand people by name!
Yet in times of crisis, when the chips are down, it
is, very often, the Church that people turn to.
This is actually a very good thing – it means that
the Church is still seen as a caring organisation within a particular community.
What of course saddens us is that we cannot open
our own empty wallets and magic up a solution for people whose own situations
have become more and more worrying. I have mentioned before that my
Gran’s vicar back in the 1950s was a town councillor, and was able to see that
she got a new council house on a nearby estate in the town in We may no longer be able to do things
like that, sadly.
But the Church is always here to help care for its
people.
That is the joy of the Church of England; and in recent
years the Church of England has moved further and further towards inclusion
rather than exclusion; of making people welcome, and perhaps most of all of
valuing people.
If people are suffering increased
financial hardship, if people’s jobs are under threat, and if people’s
relationships break down as a result, people will in large numbers begin to feel
very undervalued.
If this happens, then the morale of everyone
nationally will plummet. During these ever increasingly
difficult times, more and more people are beginning to feel the pinch.
The church is here for everyone, and during these
days of hardship, we will probably become more and more somewhere that people
look to as a place where people can look for spiritual support and very often
just a listening ear.
Perhaps equally important, the Church in any
parish, should always remain a part of the community where people are actually
valued. As always, it remains my fervent joy and tremendous privilege
to serve as your Parish Priest. With all good wishes Fr Yenda December 2010 My dear people of S Mary’s, As I write this month I am aware that
we are in Advent – I always say that Advent is actually my favourite time in the
Church Calendar.
We have those lovely Advent hymns in church, and
there is a brightness about the purple which is placed around church at this
time too. Advent does, of course, lead us on
towards Christmass – and that what we will all be thinking about at this time of
year.
We will be busy trying to get all the bits and pieces we
need for another year, we will be stressed at the shops, panicking at the petrol
pumps (if we are planning to travel some distance) and hopefully not crying over
the cooker on Christmass day if we forgot to take the turkey out of the freezer
the night before! I often think that at this time of
year the Church provides something of a solace of us.
When the high street is more busy than at any other
time of year, and in a recession we are finding it more and more difficult to
have the kind of Christmass that we might have been used to, the Church at
Advent allows us the opportunity to reflect and prepare ourselves for Christmass
in a much more calm and relaxed way. Over the years, I have found that
this has paid dividends for innumerable people – yes people who like to enjoy
the shopping, like to enjoy the big dinner on Christmass Day, who like the
buying and wrapping of presents and so forth.
Yet that time in Church away from the stresses of
the high street actually do help many of us to ‘recharge our batteries’. Christmass this year at S Mary’s is as always one of the
important times of the year, and services this year are: The Service of Lessons and Carols, at The Children’s Carols and Blessing of
the Stable is at The Midnight Mass is at On Christmass Day the Solemn
Eucharist will be at I do wish everyone a very happy and blessed Christmass this
year, and look forward to welcoming you to some or all of the services which we
are offering again this year. As always it remains my immense joy and very great privilege
to serve as your Parish Priest. With
all good wishes Fr Yenda
|
|
