St James, Apostle . . .
Webmaster • July 19, 2025
James was the brother of John. Both were called by Jesus as they worked with their father in a fishing boat on Galilee. So they left their father Zebedee in the boat along with the hired men and followed him.”
James was one of the favoured three who had the privilege of witnessing the Transfiguration, the raising to life of the daughter of Jairus, and the agony in the garden.
Two incidents in the Gospels describe the temperament of this man and his brother. St Matthew tells that their mother came - Mark says it was the brothers themselves - to ask that they have the seats of honour in the kingdom. “Jesus said in reply, ‘You do not know what you are asking. Can you drink the cup that I am going to drink?’ They said to him, ‘We can.’” Jesus then told them they would share his baptism of pain and death, but that sitting at his right hand or left was not his to give - it “is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.” It remained to be seen how long it would take to realise their very confident “We can!”
On another occasion, James and John gave evidence that the nickname Jesus gave them - “sons of thunder” - was an apt one. The Samaritans would not welcome Jesus because he was on his way to hated Jerusalem. “When James and John saw this they asked, ‘Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to consume them?’ Jesus turned and rebuked them…”
James was apparently the first of the apostles to be martyred. “About that time King Herod laid hands upon some members of the church to harm them. He had James, the brother of John, killed by the sword.
In recent weeks, those who care deeply about protecting the vulnerable have been dealt some devastating blows - with MP’s voting in June to legalise assisted suicide and to decriminalise abortion, allowing abortion up to birth. These are threats that we should all care deeply about. Pope Leo has already issued a call to action, saying: “No one is exempted from striving to ensure respect for the dignity of every person, especially the most frail and vulnerable, from the unborn to the elderly.” We are living in very dark times - but SPUC invites us all to join in the fightback, to make our voices heard and to stand up for the most vulnerable. If enough people stand up for the pro-life cause, politicians will have to take heed of our concern for those lives lost to abortion and assisted suicide. SPUC urgently needs all of us to join in the work to bring about real and lasting protection for unborn children and those at the end of life. If we do not fight back, we can only expect the culture of death to encroach even further on our society. As a first step, please take and fill out one of the postcards in the narthex, and SPUC will send you information about what you can do for the cause. Take some away too, for family and friends. In times like these, we need to stand up in defence of life. PLEASE leave completed postcards in the basket on the table at the back of church so we can send them on.
The musings of one of God’s smallest creatures on events in and around the Parish over the past seven days . . . . Another week around The Presbytery when having thought that things might start slowing down a bit for the summer events proved Fr D wrong . . . . . After Morning Prayer, Mass, and Exposition on Tuesday Fr D was busy making phone calls and writing emails to further the repairs to the car park wall (after a member of the public went and knocked down the right hand pillar and part of the low wall surround) and also to ask a few more questions and commission the removal of the leylandii around the car park ready for the installation of the new fencing. He also needed to prepare the template for two double issues of the newsletter in August whilst Sarah has a well deserved holiday break (he didn’t realise how accustomed he had become to the weekly template that he first designed when he originally came to the Parish in 2019 - adjusting things took quite some work). In the evening Fr D set about some reading for a meeting about the Pastoral Plan for this area that was to take place on Wednesday evening in Banstead. Following Morning Prayer and Mass on Wednesday, Fr D began work on his parts of this week’s newsletter (knowing that he had to be in Crawley on Friday for a judgement session on one of his marriage cases). He was being taken out for lunch by one of the people with whom he goes on holiday each year (over thirty years now). At 18.15 he took off in the car for the meeting at Banstead which was starting at 19.00 and was meant to finish at 21.00 (in fact it went on to just after 21.30); when he arrived home all he wanted was to get to bed! On Thursday morning Fr D almost overslept for some reason. After Morning Prayer and Mass he was off down to Crawley where he finalised his case for judgement on Friday and started a new penal case that Bishop Richard had asked him to take part in - these cases are always really difficult because of their sensitive nature; hopefully this one will be available for the Bishop when he returns from Lourdes. When he got home in the late afternoon Fr D finished getting his parts of the newsletter together ready for Sarah to complete and print/post online on Friday. Once again, after Morning Prayer and Mass on Friday, Fr D went off down to the diocesan offices in Crawley where he was Presiding Judge in a team of three making the definitive decision about a marriage case . . . . .
Often this story of Martha and Mary is interpreted as Jesus’ teaching that the life of contemplation is more important than a life of action, or at least that we must balance action with contemplation. What if instead it is a story showing Jesus’ acceptance of a woman as an apostle? The gospels give us several stories of Martha and Mary and their brother Lazarus. Interestingly, Mary and Martha are always mentioned first, and their brother is mentioned in relationship to them, not the other way around. Martha and Mary are identified as “from Bethany” not identified by a husband or a father. The two women seem to be the homeowners in the story, not their brother or another male relative. All these things are noteworthy because they lived in a strictly patriarchal culture, yet they are distinguished for their individual identities, not for their relationship to men. They have agency on their own. In their culture, it was common for Jewish rabbis to gather disciples around them for training so that they could then go out to continue the rabbis’ work. Rabbis would sit with their disciples at their feet, teaching them their lessons. That is the case here. Luke paints a picture of Mary in the role of a fully included disciple - and Jesus has no problem with that! Martha does, however. She wants Mary to come back to the traditional role of a woman in that time - serving men. Jesus, in the other hand, doesn’t ask her to do that. He accepts her fully in the role of student and follower, just as one of the twelve male apostles. Questions of the week What do you make of the above interpretation - that Jesus is affirming the equal role of women and men in discipleship? Are there roles in the church that you would be uncomfortable seeing women in and might find yourself protesting like Martha to Jesus. Why?
Christianity has a long-standing tradition of teaching “natural law,” the belief that all people can understand and agree with objective, universal moral teachings, regardless of their religion or education because they flow from nature. Because we all have a conscience, we can discern what is objectively good and what is objectively evil. Accordingly, anyone who hears Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan should recognize that it is the Samaritan, not the priest or the Levite, who does the right thing when he comes upon the victim who was beaten and robbed. The lawyer who was testing Jesus in the finer points of the law knew it was the Samaritan who acted as a neighbour, but he had trouble swallowing this fact because the Jews despised Samaritans. The irony is that the Good Samaritan wasn’t Jewish and didn’t live according to the 613 Jewish laws. What is even more ironic is that the priest and the Levite who passed by the victim were following the letter of the law which said they shouldn’t touch a person who is bleeding, lest they become defiled themselves. If they were defiled they would not be allowed to minister in the Temple or function in the community without first going through a detailed process of purification. What this passage comes down to is the question: Where do we fall? Do we fall on the side of the lawyer, the priest, and the Levite who know and keep the letter of the law, or do we fall on the side of the Good Samaritan who responds spontaneously out of compassion because it is the right thing to do? Questions of the week When have you, like the priest and Levite, passed by someone who needed help, maybe with good reason? Share an example of a time when you or someone you know acted like the Good Samaritan, even though it was a sacrifice.
The musings of one of God’s smallest creatures on events in and around the Parish over the past seven days . . . . Just when Fr D thought that things were beginning to die down as the holiday period a whole lot of things suddenly arrived in his lap during this week . . . Fr D was delighted that last Sunday Fr Tony was able to celebrate our two morning Masses whilst he was in Ewell celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Fr Graham Bamford’s ordination as a priest in 1975 (Fr D would only have been fourteen years old at the time). The celebratory Mass was followed by a reception in the parish hall where lots of people who knew Fr D when he was an assistant priest in Epsom were re-introducing themselves. When he arrived home in the afternoon he thought that he would get some reading done for one of his marriage cases, but having climbed into his armchair he woke up at 19.50! On Monday the quotation came in for the fencing that will replace the conifer hedging that needs to be removed due to the increased risk of fire; it was considerably less than Fr D was expecting so he was delighted. In the afternoon he had to attend an eye clinic at Epsom hospital - one of two checks he has to undergo each year - everything was fine. Then in the evening Fr D joined a presentation (via Teams) on his computer about the proposed changes in our local councils (the government want to merge the county and borough councils so that there is only one local authority to be dealt with). On Tuesday Fr D was up early to get the reading done that he had tried on Sunday afternoon. Having celebrated Morning Prayer, Mass, and Exposition he was off in the car down to the diocesan offices in Crawley where he managed to get quite a bit of work done on the case he was working on. When he got home in the late afternoon he got ready for his meeting with the Parish Finance Committee in the evening. After Morning Prayer and Mass on Wednesday Fr D was able to get some correspondence that has built up on his desk out of the way and get most of his bits for the newsletter done (he knew that he’d have no time on Friday as he was celebrating Mass with Bishop Richard and opening a new section of one of the Bosco Catholic Education Trust schools). Once again, after Morning Prayer and Mass on Thursday Fr D was off down to the Tribunal at Crawley. Whilst there he got a text message from a parishioner to tell him that someone had managed to hit the boundary wall of the car park when they were trying to enter - it never rains when it can pour . . . . .
This weekend our Retiring Collection is our monthly contribution to our Parish Buildings Fund. We are awaiting (good weather permitting) the repairs and ongoing maintenance to the tower of the church to be undertaken. We will then begin works on the re-roofing of The Presbytery which we know will be part of the next buildings survey. Next weekend (13th) the Retiring Collection will be for Stella Maris (formerly the Apostleship of the Sea). Seafarers and fishers play a vital role in all our lives, but they often work in difficult, hazardous conditions. Sea Sunday is when the Church prays for all those who live and work at sea. Our support make a big difference to seafarers and fishers in need. Thank you.
There will not be a celebration of Morning Prayer or Mass this Friday ( 11th July )
On Saturday afternoon this weekend Bishop Richard ordained two new priests for service in the diocese, Scott Coleman and Gary Carter. They will begin their priestly ministry in September having received their appointments from the bishop. We pray that they will be happy in their respective ministries and that God will inspire other men to think about offering themselves for service in the Church.
Unfortunately no contemporary biography was written of the man who had the greatest influence on monasticism in the West. Benedict was born of a very important family in central Italy, studied at Rome, and in his early in life was drawn to monasticism. First he became a hermit, leaving a depressing world - pagan armies on the march, the Church torn by schism, people suffering from war, morality at a very low ebb. He soon realised that he could not live a hidden life in a small town any better than in a large city, so he withdrew to a cave high in the mountains for three years. Some monks chose Benedict as their leader for a while, but found his strictness too much. Still the shift from hermit to community life had begun for him. He had an idea of bringing various families of monks into one ‘Grand Monastery’ to give them the benefit of unity, fraternity, and worship in one house. Finally he began to build what was to become one of the most famous monasteries in the world - Monte Cassino, in the mountains north of Naples. The Rule he developed prescribed a life of liturgical prayer, study, manual labour, and common living under an abbot. Benedictine asceticism is known for its moderation, and Benedictine charity has always shown concern for the people in the surrounding countryside. In the course of the Middle Ages, all monasticism in the West was gradually brought under the Benedict’s Rule.
The musings of one of God’s smallest creatures on events in and around the Parish over the past seven days . . . . A slight slowing down this week around The Presbytery, as sacramental programmes for the year come to an end and schools get ready for the long summer holidays . . . . . Saturday morning Fr D met with the First Eucharist families for their final ‘input session’ and at our 09.00 Mass on Sunday, together with our newly confirmed, those who have just received the Eucharist for the first time received their Certificates. This brought to an end the 2024/5 programmes and Fr D announced that the applications for next year’s programmes are now available (see newsletter announcement). After celebrating Morning Prayer, Mass, and Exposition on Tuesday morning Fr D picked up Fr Tony and they went off to the annual Clergy In-Service in Horsley. These take place every year and cover areas of ministry of current importance. They are an overnight occasion but Fr D, living so close, prefers his own food and bed! On Wednesday Fr D was back at the hotel for the In-Service to continue. The clergy were led in reflections about the changing environment in which they exercise their ministry, especially with regard to the Diocesan Pastoral Plan and the changes that this will involve in a relatively short space of time. (The Council of Priests was meeting at some point this week to advise the bishop on the first three Deaneries to be transformed into a Parish with a Team Ministry providing for their needs.) On Thursday Fr D was able to spend some time on this week’s newsletter - somewhat delayed by the In-Service. Having celebrated Mass and Morning Prayer he also had a contractor coming to look at the recent fire damage (second time in two years) to the hedging around the Parish car park. Fr D is thinking about having the hedging removed because it is an ongoing fire hazard, requires trimming twice a year, and replacing it with a maintenance free, fireproof fence which has a twenty-five year guarantee. He’ll be discussing this with members of the Finance Committee on Tuesday evening this week. After Morning Prayer and Mass on Friday Fr D had to go down to the Tribunal Office in Crawley (not having been down during the rest of the week) where he held a judgement session for a marriage case that he has spent some considerable time on . . . .