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

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

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LETTER FROM YOUR LAY MINISTER

Dear Friends and Parishioners

I’m writing the letter this month to give Ian a well-earned rest. I became Ian’s Licensed Lay Minister three years ago, but have been leading services in these churches since 2019. I’ve lived just outside the benefice in Blakeney since I retired in 2017 and before that had a house in Cley since 1995. It’s been a huge privilege to come into your churches to take services each week and to meet many of you.

A subject that often comes up when I go into our lovely churches to take a service on Sundays is faith. What do we mean by faith? I would say that it means accepting that we cannot do everything ourselves: that there is someone greater than us who looks after us, even when we may not be aware of Him.

I learned a very important lesson about faith over 20 years ago. I had dropped out of regular churchgoing at that time: for me, I was one of those people who just went to church a few times a year, at Christmas and Easter. In 2002 I was working at the British Museum in London and a few years before I had set up a project, the Portable Antiquities Scheme, which had 11 people working for it around the country. But it was on the point of closing because the funding was about to run out. I was very worried for the future of the team. I had recruited them all and felt personally responsible. I too felt desperate. I went and prayed about it and within a month the project received first a 6 month extension from the Government and then a month after that it received a lottery grant of over £2 million which gave it 3 years’ funding and allowed it to be extended nationally. And 24 years later the project is still going strong with 50 staff.

I believe this was a direct answer to my prayer and I became a regular communicant and worshipper since that time. You could say that getting those grants was just a coincidence and had nothing to do with my prayers: that that funding was going to come anyway. That may be so, but the impact for me was very profound and it has taken me down a path which has led to be becoming a lay minister and speaking to you now. As Stephen Cottrell, the Archbishop of York, has said, `I don’t believe in coincidences: usually there is God’s hand at work’.

Since that time 19 years ago I have experienced many joys but also many difficulties, but I have found that all these experiences have tended to deepen my faith. As the prophet Isaiah said: “Do not fear, for I am with you. Do not be afraid, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand.” (Isaiah 41: 10).

Roger Bland

Batter My Heart, Three-person’d God

Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you/ As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;/ That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend/ Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new./ I, like an usurp’d town to another due,/ Labour to admit you, but oh, to no end;/ Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,/ But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue./ Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,/ But am betroth’d unto your enemy;/ Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,/ Take me to you, imprison me, for I,/ Except you enthral me, never shall be free,/ Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

John Donne (1572 – 1631)