The Parish of Walworth, St Peter

Holy Week and Easter Services

It’s Palm Sunday already!

It really is hard to believe that we are already in Passion-tide and this Sunday is Palm Sunday! This means we’re coming to the end of our pilgrimage through Lent. But it also means a new beginning is coming…

We’ve been particularly busy at St Peter’s this Lent. There have been the usual liturgies and opportunities for prayer, but we’ve also been hosting the Robes Project, a winter night shelter for homeless people.
 
This Palm Sunday is going to be amazing! We have Bishop Christopher coming to preside for us and as well as beginning with the procession of Palms (we begin in the School Hall at 10.30am), Bishop Christopher and the Worshipful Mayor of Southwark, Cllr Althea Smith, will lead a great procession up the Walworth Road, which will be partly closed to traffic! Lots of people are also already excited about another special guest: Dennis the Donkey!

Read More

Knitting for the Evelina Children’s Hospital!

Margaret Goodson’s Pattern for Cot Blankets (Incubator Size)

Southwark News recently launched a campaign to raise £100,000 for the Evelina Children’s Hospital. It’s such a good cause, and so many of us are thankful for treatment we or our children have received there, from the dedicate expert staff. So we thought we’d get knitting, and here’s the pattern!

This pattern, designed by congregation member and serious-knitter, Margaret Goodson, will make a beautiful blanket with a border and a patterned main section, just right for a premature baby in an incubator or cot at the Evelina Children’s Hospital. You need very little experience to knit one! If you get stuck, come to the 10am Mass on a Thursday morning for our knitting clinic!

Why not ask people to sponsor you to knit for the Evelina (per row or blanket depending on your speed!!!), otherwise later in the year we’re going to have a blanket auction to raise money for the Evelina! Right, off to add a few rows to my first blanket…

Materials:

1 x pair of 3.75mm knitting needles

1 x 100 gram ball of wool (suitable colour for a baby!)

Read More

1 Second Every Day… Or 1 minute?

I was intrigued to see a feature on the BBC News website about an app called 1 Second Everyday which is coming out soon. The creator,Cesar Kuriyama, decided to take a year off work - lucky him! - to travel and spend time with family, and to document this by recording a second of video every day.  “After just six weeks, I realised I was going to be doing that for the rest of my life,” he says.  This was clearly a life-changing moment for him and I was moved and inspired to read that little sentence.

It looks like fun, and I’m going to try it. I’ve been struck by how many photos I take of our children. We have thousands, literally, from their first few years of life! I’m guessing there’s at least one photo a month even from the busiest times… It’s lovely to have photos capturing so many different moments, expressions, people. The danger, of course, is that in trying to capture the moment, that we ourselves miss the moment.

I’m going to have a go at 1 Second Everyday and see how it works for me - I suspect I’ll often either forget, or spend too long agonising over which second to record: should it be family, work, can I fit all three of my children into the one second and do them all justice, etc, etc!

But what this really reminds me of, is the call to stand and stare. The call to be present to every moment, because right here, right now is the only place I can meet God. Not yesterday, or tomorrow, but right now. Stopping, even for one minute, to pause and try to fully be aware of God’s presence, can help us to carry God’s presence into the busyness of the rest of the time when we’re not able to stop and reflect.

Perhaps we could try to stop for 1 minute every day, or 1 minute morning and evening, and just be fully present, just stop for a minute and be aware of the gift of life, be thankful for the blessings and offer to God the difficulties we face. Perhaps there’s an app in it..! Certainly, the Irish Jesuit website www.sacredspace.ie is well worth a look - right now! Maybe we’ll realise this is something to do for the rest of our lives!

Ok, now, I’m going to set my egg timer for just 1 minute and sit still… … …

The Word became human like you and me: Happy Christmas!

Father Andrew’s sermon at Midnight Mass 2012

‘The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.’

It’s so good to gather together here this evening for this first Mass of Christmas, Madam Mayor, dear friends and neighbours. The shops are all closed, what we’ve bought we’ve bought, what we’ve forgotten, we’ve forgotten. There’s nothing left now, but Christmas! And I did manage to get a bargain on a yule log in Marks’s before they closed! ‘The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.’ We are here in this beautifully decorated church, all the candles burning, because the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us: this holy night.

Saint Matthew and Saint Luke tell us all about the birth of Jesus, about the stable, the shepherds. St John tells us what it all means. We need all of this for a full and beautiful picture of Christmas.

‘The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.’

This is St John’s way of describing the birth of Jesus, the Babe of Bethlehem, Mary’s boy-child Jesus Christ. It’s not how you’d normally describe the birth of a baby, is it? And of course, in some ways this was not a normal baby, yet in other ways it really was. ‘The little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes’ – yeah, right!! Silent night, holy night – yeah right!! 

Read More