Services This Week
Biagio d’Antonio. (1485). The Story of Joseph. [Tempera on wood]. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Dear All,
Please join us for services this week, which are taking place in person or via livestream through our YouTube Channel. You can find gathering times and service sheet links below.
Friday 14 August
10:30am — BCP Holy Communion (Revd Dr Jeremy Morris)
Sunday 16 August
11.00pm — Holy Communion
Sermon: ‘Joseph and His Brothers’ (Revd Dr Matthias Grebe)
Service Sheet: Here
Other notices:
Giving: We are grateful for all of your gifts! Offerings may be made via BACS (Sort: 20-17-19 / Acc. No.: 30851477 / Acc. Name: St Edwards Church), for standing orders, or the SumUp machine on the table by the door, for contactless giving. There is also a wall-mounted deposit box by the door for cash and/or cheques.
Exciting Holiness — Maximilian Kolbe
Maximilian Kolbe was born at Zduñska Wola near Lodz in Poland in 1894. His parents were Franciscan tertiaries and, beginning his training for ordination in 1907, Maximilian joined the Conventual Franciscan noviciate in 1910. He studied at Rome but, suffering from tuberculosis, he returned to Poland and became a lecturer in church history. After suffering a severe illness, he resolved to publish a magazine for Christian readers and this soon gained a huge circulation. Soon his community was producing daily and weekly journals. After the Nazi invasion of Poland, Maximilian was arrested as an ‘intellectual’ and taken to Auschwitz in May 1941. There he continued his priestly ministry, secretly celebrating the eucharist. After an escape, ten prisoners were chosen to forfeit their lives, and Maximilian stepped forward to take the place of one of them. They were starved for two weeks before Maximilian was injected with phenol and died on this day in 1941.
‘Do Not Be Ashamed’ by Wendell Berry
You will be walking some night
in the comfortable dark of your yard
and suddenly a great light will shine
round about you, and behind you
will be a wall you never saw before.
It will be clear to you suddenly
that you were about to escape,
and that you are guilty: you misread
the complex instructions, you are not
a member, you lost your card
or never had one. And you will know
that they have been there all along,
their eyes on your letters and books,
their hands in your pockets,
their ears wired to your bed.
Though you have done nothing shameful,
they will want you to be ashamed.
They will want you to kneel and weep
and say you should have been like them.
And once you say you are ashamed,
reading the page they hold out to you,
then such light as you have made
in your history will leave you.
They will no longer need to pursue you.
You will pursue them, begging forgiveness,
and they will not forgive you.
There is no power against them.
It is only candor that is aloof from them,
only an inward clarity, unashamed,
that they cannot reach. Be ready.
When their light has picked you out
and their questions are asked, say to them:
“I am not ashamed.” A sure horizon
come around you. The heron will rise
in his evening flight from the hilltop.
Let your merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the prayers of your humble servants; and that they may obtain their petitions make them to ask such things as shall please you; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
