The Priory Church of St Mary and the Holy Cross is open daily between 10am and 4.00pm for individual prayer and contemplation.

The Priory Church of St Mary and the Holy Cross is open for worship  as listed under Services.

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ZOOM SERVICES

Zoom Services on Sundays will continue on a monthly basis  – the first Sunday of the month at 5pm.To participate please telephone Ian Newton on 01328 830947 or email iannewton46@ gmail.com. You will be warmly welcomed.

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Revd Ian Whittle’s  Message

Dear Friends and Parishioners,

Looking back on his life in his book, “Over Seventy”, P.G. Wodehouse recalled how once a letter was forwarded to him from a newspaper, signed “Indignant”:

“Sir – I was completely confounded to read in this morning’s paper the statement by your correspondent ‘Highland Lassie’ that P.G. Wodehouse is a better writer than Shakespeare.  As an authority on the latter I can definitely state that he was the greatest genius of his time, to be compared with Raleigh, Drake and Nelson.”

Wodehouse confessed that the names meant very little to him as writers; and he then delivered the conclusive and countervailing argument from another correspondence, in the Times:

“I do not wish to labour this point, but I must draw Indignant’s attention to a letter in The Times from Mr. Verrier Elwyn, who lives at Patangarth, Mandla District, India.  Mr. Elwyn speaks of a cow which came into his bungalow one day and ate a copy of ‘Carry on, Jeeves’, ‘selecting it from a shelf which contained, among other works, books by Galsworthy, Jane Austen and T.S. Eliot’.

Surely a rather striking tribute.”

Nevertheless, there is a spiritual equivalent to that literal digestion: it is to take any text from any part of Scripture and expect that it will immediately dictate what one should think or do; whereas in fact the words which now stand in Scripture came into being through particular lives, in particular circumstances, and at particular moments of history – none of which was ignored or obliterated by God when he took the initiatives that Scripture itself describes him as taking in winning a faithful people ‘to be a light to lighten the Gentiles’.

That light is now in our hands.  We are in a sense that light, for we are his people.  And now we want to know what to do; and that means engaging with the particular lives and particular circumstances and particular moments of history when the Lord made very plain what he would have us do.

Our God is the God of history.  “He buries his workmen, but he carries on his work”.  The torch of the gospel is handed down by each generation to the next.  It is in our hands.

“Blessed Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ.  Amen.”

Yours very truly,

Ian Whittle