Children’s Liturgy is a structured time during Mass at which children (typically aged 4-7), are invited to gather separately from our main congregation to hear and reflect upon the weekly scripture readings at a language and comprehension level that is suitable for their age group. In order to consider restarting this in the Parish we are seeking to establish a team of at least 8 (preferably more) parishioners who would be interested in serving the children in our Parish, and who would be able to commit to leading/helping in a team of two/three, after training, during school term time, on a rota basis, during the first part of our 11.00 Sunday Mass.  All leaders/helpers will need to have/obtain an enhanced DBS certificate that we can arrange through the Diocese. Please contact the Parish Office if you could assist in joining this venture for our children.

We know nothing of St James except his name, and, of course, the fact that Jesus chose him to be one of the 12 pillars of the New Israel, his Church. He is not the James of Acts, son of Clopas, “brother” of Jesus and later bishop of Jerusalem and the traditional author of the Letter of James. This James, son of Alphaeus, is also known as James the Lesser to avoid confusing him with James the son of Zebedee, also an apostle and known as James the Greater. Philip came from the same town as Peter and Andrew, Bethsaida in Galilee. Jesus called him directly, whereupon he sought out Nathanael and told him of the “one about whom Moses wrote.” Like the other apostles, Philip took a long time in coming to realize who Jesus was. On one occasion, when Jesus saw the great multitude following him and wanted to give them food, he asked Philip where they should buy bread for the people to eat? St John comments, “[Jesus] said this to test him, because he himself knew what he was going to do.” John’s story is not a put-down of Philip. It was simply necessary for these men who were to be the foundation stones of the Church to see humanity’s total helplessness apart from God and the human ability to be a bearer of divine power by God’s gift.  On another occasion, Philip said, “Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.” Enough! Jesus answered, “Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”

The musings of one of God’s smallest creatures on events in and around the Parish over the past seven days . . . . A ‘full-on’ time around The Presbytery this week as Confirmation, First Eucharist, and Baptism programmes are all coming to a ‘high point.’ On Monday Sarah & Fr D were chasing the engineers for our LiveStream service on the Parish Website to get things back to working order. Sarah was sent chasing all around the system machinery to see if it would ‘re-boot’ in some fashion but all to no avail. The conclusion is that the engineers will have to visit (Fr D thinks that one of the machines has died!). Tuesday morning after Morning Prayer, Mass, and Exposition Fr D was following the activities of the engineers who were running an optical cable between the Presbytery and the Parish Office ready for ‘the great telephone switchover’ which will get rid of one of the present telephone accounts (which will be a saving of £1,200 a year!). An extra benefit is that we will now have wifi access points in each of our upstairs meeting rooms and the main hall (one step closer to being able to renew the audio visual set-up in the hall). The engineers will be back next Wednesday to complete the new wiring. We also discovered a fire detector in the loft of the Parish Centre which we didn’t know existed! In the evening Fr D met with the Parish Finance Committee for one of their quarterly meetings. On Wednesday evening Fr D met with our Confirmation Candidates for their last ‘input session’ before the Confirmation ceremony with the Bishop at St Joseph’s Church, Epsom next Saturday morning. Fr D was also able to give the group the final instructions concerning the celebration which he had just received from the co-ordinator. After Morning Prayer and Mass on Thursday Fr D went off in the car to the diocesan offices as usual, but this time (for the first time in ages) went there using the motorway. This meant that he was able to see exactly what the new car could do! When he got to his Tribunal office there were several Decrees for cases that required his signature. There was also a little celebration given by the Tribunal Secretary to mark her six months in the position (lots of Polish food)! In the evening Fr D was to have had the second session of the present Infant Baptism Course but one of the parents had gone down with food poisoning so the session was moved to the following week.  Once Morning Prayer and Mass had been celebrated on Friday morning Fr D completed his bits of this week’s newsletter . . . . . . . .

We hear often from John’s Gospel during the Easter season, and Jesus’ message to us includes many invitations to abide, rest, and remain in him. The other Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke have Jesus giving us many directions for the actions we should be taking as his followers: feed the hungry, clothe the naked, love your enemies, forgive others repeatedly, turn the other cheek, etc. They are Gospels for “human doings.” John’s Gospel, on the other hand, is a Gospel for “human beings.” In John, Jesus repeatedly invites his followers to express their discipleship by how they carry themselves-how they are in the world, not what they do in the world. How are we to be in the world? Like a branch on a grape vine, Jesus says. The branch doesn’t do anything to make the grapes; it simply remains connected to the vine and allows itself to be pruned. If the branch stays connected, all it has to do in order to bear fruit is to be open while God works the miracle of creating the grapes.  Jesus is calling us to trust that if we do our primary “work” of remaining in him and allowing him to remain in us, then God’s works will automatically flow through us. If we can be human beings first, then our “doings” will be natural outcomes of that. The invitation for us is to relax into that sense of being and abiding with Jesus. Questions of the week • Which do you more naturally gravitate toward in your sense of discipleship: “doing” things or “being” a particular way? Put another way, are you naturally more active or contemplative? • When you consider abiding with/ remaining with/resting in Jesus, what comes to mind for you? How might you build more time for that into your life?

DIY ABORTION UP TO BIRTH - Dame Diana Johnson MP has put forward an extreme abortion amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill. This amendment would decriminalise abortion in England and Wales and means that there would be no criminal sanctions for a woman using deadly abortion pills sent to her by post to carry out an abortion at home, right up to the time of the baby’s birth! The Government has confirmed that the Bill will not be debated until after the Easter recess. So this will be a date after 15th April. The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) will be alerting people to the actual date as soon as it is known. There is now more time for concerned citizens to lobby their MP’s to vote against Dian Johnson’s amendment. Please go to  https://www.spuc.uk/abortion amendments for:- • More information about abortion decriminalisation • To find who your MP is • To use SPUC’s online tool to contact your MP ASSISTED SUICIDE DEBATE - There will be an important debate on assisted suicide in the House of Commons on Monday 29th April at 16.30. This debate is taking place as a result of the campaign by media personality Dame Esther Rantzen who wants a change in the law to legalise assisted suicide. It is vital that as many MP’s as possible speak up in the House to oppose any move to make assisted suicide legal in England and Wales. Please go to  https://www.spuc.org.uk/livesworthliving for:- • A briefing on the case against assisted suicide • Three video stories opposing any change in the law • An online tool to contact your MP

Countless stories are told about St. George, including the famous episode of the dragon and the girl saved by the saint. According to the standard version of the legend, we hear that in the city of Selem in Libya, there was a large pond where a terrible dragon lived. To appease it, the inhabitants offered him two sheep a day and later a sheep and a child drawn by lot. One day the king's daughter was chosen, and while she was heading toward the pond, George passed by and pierced the dragon with his spear; a gesture that became a symbol of faith triumphing over evil. Who was St. George? George, whose name in Greek means “farmer,” was born to a Christian family in Cappadocia around the year 280. After moving to Palestine, he joined the army of Diocletian. When the emperor issued the edict of persecution against Christians in 303, George gave all his belongings to the poor and, in front of Diocletian himself, tore the document apart and professed his faith in Christ. For this he suffered terrible torture and was eventually beheaded. Shortly after his death, a basilica was erected over the place of his burial in Lydda (modern-day Lod, in Israel). His relics are still visible today. Among the most ancient documents attesting to the existence of St. George, a Greek epigraph from 368 found in Heraclea of Bethany speaks of the “house or church of the saints and triumphant martyrs George and companions.” A Passio Georgii was classified among the hagiographic works by the Gelasianum Decree of 496 and deemed apocryphal. There were many later redactions of the Passio, which informed subsequent legends. From martyr to holy warrior The crusaders contributed a great deal to transforming the figure of St. George the martyr into a holy warrior, seeing in the killing of the dragon a symbol for the defeat of Islam; Richard I of England (“the Lionheart”) invoked him as the protector of all soldiers. With the Normans the cult of St. George became firmly rooted in England where, in 1348, King Edward III established the Order of the Knights of St. George. Throughout the Middle Ages his figure inspired a great deal of epic literature. Devotion to St George St George is considered the patron of knights, soldiers, scouts, fencers and archers, among others; he is also invoked against the plague and leprosy, and against venomous snakes. In the absence of certain information about his life, in 1969 the Church changed the liturgical feast of St George to an optional memorial on the universal calendar. However, this change did not affect devotion to the saint. The relics of the saint are found in different places of the world; in Rome the church of San Giorgio al Velabro has housed his skull from the time of Pope Zachariah.  As in the case of other saints wrapped in legend, the story of St George serves to remind the world of a fundamental idea, that good ultimately triumphs over evil. The fight against evil is a constant in human history. It is a battle cannot we cannot win on our own. Saint George was able to kill the dragon because God was acting in and through him. With Christ, evil will never have the last word.

Most of what we know about Mark comes directly from the New Testament. He is usually identified with the Mark of Acts 12:12. When St Peter escaped from prison, he went to the home of Mark’s mother. Paul and Barnabas took him along on the first missionary journey, but for some reason Mark returned alone. The oldest and the shortest of the four Gospels, the Gospel of Mark emphasizes Jesus’s rejection by humanity while being God’s triumphant envoy. Probably written for gentile converts in Rome - after the death of Peter and Paul sometime between A.D. 60 and 70 - Mark’s Gospel is the gradual manifestation of a “scandal”: a crucified Messiah. Evidently a friend of Mark - calling him “my son” - Peter is only one of this Gospel’s sources, others being the Church in Jerusalem, and the Church at Antioch. Like another Gospel writer Luke, Mark was not one of the 12 apostles. We cannot be certain whether he knew Jesus personally. Some scholars feel that the evangelist is speaking of himself when describing the arrest of Jesus: “Now a young man followed him wearing nothing but a linen cloth about his body. They seized him, but he left the cloth behind and ran off naked” (Mark 14:51-52).  Others hold Mark to be the first bishop of Alexandria, Egypt.

Just like last week, we get another reminder that the risen Jesus offers peace to his friends and disciples. In this reading, they are still struggling with fear, doubt, and confusion about what they have experienced over the last three days. Rather than criticizing them for their doubts or misunderstandings, Jesus begins this encounter with them with his famous words “Peace be with you.” Before he does anything else, he wants them to have that gift. Once the peace is given, then he can answer their questions. It is only after they receive his peace that they can come to believe that this person in front of them-whom they thought was a ghost-is really their risen friend. Jesus takes care to show the disciples that he is still in a physical body. They can feel him with their own fingers. They can see the nail wounds in his hands and feet. They watch him eating fish. Jesus wants to be clear with them that he is not just a bright spirit floating around the earth.  In the Apostles’ Creed, we proclaim, “I believe in the resurrection of the body.” The gospel today gives us that hope. Our belief is that somehow - we do not know how - God will give us new life in the physical bodies we had on earth. They will be recognizable, as Jesus was recognizable after his resurrection, and they will still show the marks of our wounds, but those wounds will be healed. We will never be able to explain this hope and this belief with our minds, but then again, neither could the disciples have explained it rationally to others. Questions of the Week  Jesus responds to his friends’ doubts and confusions by offering peace rather than criticism. In what area(s) of your life might God be inviting you to accept peace rather than remain troubled?  What difference does it make for you to believe in the resurrection of the body, not just a resurrection of the soul or spirit?

The musings of one of God’s smallest creatures on events in and around the Parish over the past seven days . . . . Things slightly ‘hotting-up’ around The Presbytery this week as people and organisations come back online after the Easter festivities . . . . . . Monday Fr D set about reading up on the ‘charging instructions’ for the new car. The first time he attempted charging (in the dark one evening) he couldn’t work out why the socket in the wall box wouldn’t let him plug in? When all else fails of course we tend to read the instructions which stated that the wall socket need to be ‘plugged’ first and then the car! So he spent some time ‘reading up’ in detail on the charging instructions. He is still chasing the electricity supplier to switch to the tariff that gives electric car charging lower prices between 23.30 and 05.30, which will make the whole change over even more economic. After Morning Prayer, Mass, and Exposition on Tuesday Fr D had a telephone call consultation from the Dr’s Surgery which told him that diabetes, cholesterol, and blood pressure readings had all been reduced by the medication they have put him on! (He wanted to know when he could stop all the tablets, of course!) at 12.30 Fr D was celebrating a funeral in the Crematorium chapel before a burial in the attached cemetery. In the late afternoon he began the bones of the newsletter for this weekend. Wednesday, after Morning Prayer and Mass, Fr D (with Sarah) was chasing up our previous electricity company once more - trying to get the full and final bill (from last December). Fr D is convinced that the company don’t actually know how to do this and has now threatened (having already raised the matter to a complaint) to refer the situation to the energy Ombudsman! When he went down to the diocesan offices, after Morning Prayer & Mass on Thursday, Fr D continued working several of his cases and started looking at how cases ready for judgement could be sent to judges electronically in a secure and coded manner as the normal postal service is breaking down in some areas (and has become extremely expensive). When he got back home in the evening he put his new ‘charging skills’ to good use before meeting with a family who are preparing to have their child baptised in May.  Friday, after Morning Prayer and Mass Fr D completed the newsletter for the weekend as well as the Prayers of Intercession and Notices so that he had everything he needed for the weekend . . . . . . .