There are themes in Lent of course. Quieter music, a lack of flowers, greater options for prayer and reflection, and I hope, a great amount of admittedly restrained joy at the Easter season fast approaching. Each year the second Sunday of Lent story of the Transfiguration of Jesus comes as the Gospel, taken in turn from each of the Gospels. But we may, because there is only so much that we can take in, and we can be less then attentive at times, not have noticed that the firs

I wonder what we should believe. I don’t mean in terms of the faith – that has been handed down to us, and we have the Bible and the church fathers to go back to if we encounter a new situation in which to apply it. People like to moan about the church ‘changing’ but it has remained astonishingly the same for two thousand years, just applied to a whole variety of contexts, all of which it makes sense of and informs. I mean in terms of people and what they tell us and even wha

OK, yes I know that Christmas is ‘sooo last year’, but when do you normally take your Christmas decorations down? Is it as soon as possible on St Stephen’s/Boxing Day? Do you stick with them until just after New Year? Maybe they sparkle until Epiphany, or………do they remain, pristine and glitzy until Candlemas? If so, you are being way more traditional than most, and in keeping with the Medieval calendar. For those traditionalists, Candlemas was the final deadline to take down

After the testing in the wilderness, which annoying we have not got to yet but the readings jump around in this strange time between Christmas and Lent, Jesus is ready to begin his preaching, but everything seems to go wrong. John the Baptist is arrested and so Judea, the heart of the Holy Land, becomes too hot for Jesus. He even leaves his home territory of Nazareth for Capernaum, “the Galilee of the Gentiles”, as it was called. But as so often, this apparent setback is a ne

How do we come to understand God and our faith? Many people don’t really understand it at all of course and have a kind of totemic thought that just turning up in church saves them, which is in complete contradiction to the teachings of the Bible. We should claim no complete understanding of Jesus, and there is no Gnostic knowledge of Him that has been hidden from public view for centuries- and the original deceit of the devil was of course to offer that to Adam. What there i

Do you remember the day of your Baptism? Probably not, I suppose, for a number of good reasons, one of which may have been that you were a baby, and it may even be that your Godparents have even forgotten the promises they made on your behalf – that’s one of the reasons I have no objection to there sometimes being so many Godparents – maybe at least one will remember! Our baptisms may well have been done in a quiet church, by a priest softly saying the words and pouring a sma

There are all kinds of dreams, are there not. Dreams which we forget the second we wake up, no matter how immersive and occasionally preferable to reality they may be. Dreams which turn into nightmares which we are happy to forget, personal dreams and dreams for others. What are your dreams? We are supposed to be able to achieve our dreams, be they of wealth, avarice, charity or for good or ill – we say ‘you can achieve anything’ to children, which always seems rather unlikel

Gaudete, Gaudete Christus est natus. Ex Maria Virgine, Gaudete. Rejoice, rejoice! Christ is born of the Virgin Mary. Rejoice. Gaudete. Rejoice. The Messiah, the Christ is coming. He will come to be the light to lighten the gentiles and to be the glory of His people Israel. And as the Gaudete carol continues: Deus homo factus est natura Murante, mundus renovates est a Christo regnante. God has become man, with nature marvelling. The world has become renewed by the reigning Chr

If we are to live fully as human beings, we have to acknowledge our mortality, our joys, our faults and our internal pain. All these things together make us who and what we are, and they combine into the song of never-ending love that we can sing with certainty and joy – when that song is sad and when it is full of life, it is still our song and speaks of who we are. So we need to sing, and to remember the songs of those who we come here to mourn today, because they also live

Some years ago, I spent Advent in the Manchester Royal Infirmary as a patient. I’d been in hospital since October, by Advent I was recovering from surgery and waiting for test results. Miles from home, barrier-nursed in a side room, uncertain and anxious of what might lie ahead, it was a strange Advent... not the kind with candlelight services and carols, but one of ward life, the smell of disinfectant, and long nights broken only by the soft sounds of nurses’ footsteps. Duri