One of the matters I wrote about last month was the forthcoming
Parish Month of Prayer, scheduled for November and part of our
preparation for the 150th Anniversary of Holy Trinity Church next year.
The full programme for the month will be announced in due course but in
this letter I want to explain what the purpose of the month is and what
I hope it will achieve.
Why a month of prayer? Important anniversaries provide an opportunity
to look back and celebrate the past, to rejoice in the present and to
look to the future in hope. And what's more they are fun! But as a
Christian community, an anniversary is also a moment to explore what it
means to be a Christian community at this particular moment in our
history. To my mind, the best way to do this is to deepen our life of
prayer - to understand what it means to be a praying community.
This could be seen as a withdrawal from the world around us -and our
commitment to go out in mission and service to that world when we
really need to be engaged with it. It could be seen as no more than a
time of 'navel gazing'. But to be effective in mission and service, and
indeed to grow in our own individual Christian lives we sometimes need
to stand back a little from the fray and to spend time with God.
During this month I will be going on retreat - my first for a few
years. I will be joining a monastic community for a few days of silence
and prayer to regain my own spiritual equilibrium, hopefully to
encounter God afresh.
In the same way we need to 'retreat' as a parish community to renew our
common life of prayer.We won't be going anywhere to do this of course,
but rather hopefully giving somewhat more of our time to restoring the
spiritual equilibrium of our parish.
There will be a number of events throughout the month to help us to do
this, and there will also be things we can do at home as part of the
month. I would ask that every member of our parish makes time and space
to participate as fully as possible in this Month of Prayer - if that
happens it could transform our parish!
