Dear friends,
After an encouraging start to the season of Lent yesterday on Ash Wednesday, we now look ahead to the First Sunday of Lent this weekend. Our Gospel reading recounts Christ’s time in the wilderness at the outset of his public ministry: from his forty days in the desert we derive our devotional tradition of keeping the present time until Easter as a period of prayerful and penitential preparation.
In this Sunday’s responsorial psalm, we ask the Lord ‘[to w]ash me completely from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.‘ As a symbol of this petition for forgiveness, Mass will begin with the Asperges, the rite of Sprinkling with Holy Water: this ceremony reconnects us with our baptismal promises; cleanses us in preparation for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and encourages us to look forward to the conclusion of our Lenten journey in the Easter Vigil, when we gather at the font – with the paschal candle – to petition the Lord once more to unlock for us the gate and graces of life eternal.
The first session of our Lent Course (organised jointly with All Saints, Kenton) takes place tomorrow, Friday 20 February, at All Saints (531, Kenton Road HA3 0UL) at 7pm, beginning with Stations of the Cross: all are welcome. (Next week, on Friday, 27 February, we will host the second session here at St Mary’s.)
Available in church now are collection boxes for our Lent Appeal, in aid of the Additional Curates Society – about which we will hear more at Sunday Mass. There are also available a few complimentary copies of St Matthew’s Gospel, which you are welcome to take away as Lenten reading. Please would those who have kindly taken away Passiontide veils to iron return them to church ASAP.
I hope to visit our dear Director of Music, Peter Crawford, in hospital tomorrow – and then, as appropriate, to share with you more news of his recuperation: please continue to pray for him, as also for his wife Nina, and for their family. This Sunday, we will welcome as a cover organist Bel Comeau FRCO BA (Hons) (Cantab) LRSM, who is a former organ scholar at Girton College, Cambridge.
We also send our warm congratulations to Harley Lloyd-Fix and her family, on the recent birth of a baby boy: Harley is the Schools Worker with re:generation Harrow (a Christian schools’ charity in this Deanery), and has been a great support to us in our Christmas outreach to local primary schools over the past couple of years.
The Stations of the Cross will be prayed in church each Wednesday morning during Lent, beginning next week on 25 February, at 9.30am – and followed immediately by Mass.
On Thursday, 26 February Morning Prayer will again be said at the slightly earlier time of 9.30am.
Likewise included with this mailing is an invitation from Bishop Jonathan to a service of music and readings for Lent (ending with Pontifical Benediction), next week on Wednesday, 25 February at 7pm, at his Pro-Cathedral of St Andrew, Holborn.
May bountiful blessing, O Lord, we pray, come down upon your people: that hope may grow in tribulation; virtue be strengthened in temptation, and eternal redemption be assured,
Fr Richard