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Organ Appeal At St Giles we hear sounds from the organ that our predecessors, including Byron, Shelley and John Soane, have heard for more than three hundred years. This historic organ urgently needed sympathetic restoration more>

February brings into focus Lent, which begins on Ash Wednesday, which falls on 17 February.

Lent is traditionally a time when Christian focus on deepening their relationship with God and deepening their understanding of their faith. The two are the same really, for in deepening a relationship with someone, one expects to get to know the person better, and our faith is about getting to know God, as well as we can, or rather responding to God’s attempts to get to know us, for it is always God who takes the initiative.

This year we want to suggest two ways to help people with connections to St Giles to deepen their relationship with God, and to deepen their understanding of their faith. Neither of them is new, and we are not suggesting any works of extreme piety, just a bit of deepening, taking even more seriously the practice of daily prayer, and receiving God’s grace through the sacrament of Holy Communion. This should help the mind of Christ to be more secured in our minds, to enable us to live out in faith in our daily lives, and in our relationships with others.

First, being a Christian is being part of ‘the Body of Christ’ as St Paul puts it. It is a corporate experience; something we do together, most chiefly in worship. Prayer for Christians is a corporate activity. Jesus taught is to pray ‘Our Father ...’. We however, are a widely dispersed community, meeting to pray together more than on Sunday is not possible for most of us. But, as I have emphasised before, if we can’t get to St Giles, we can virtually pray together – using the same words, in psalms and canticles, reading the same passages from the Bible, using the same prayers, using the same intercessions. It may even be possible to pray at the same time that we pray in church, but it doesn’t matter if we can’t, we are still part of the great wave of prayer around the world. For some time we have made available a leaflet setting out Morning and Evening Prayer as we say them in church, and a list of the readings of each day. In the autumn we began to circulate an intercession leaflet, and now, to make saying daily prayers more accessible to everyone, we have produced a pack that provides, we hope, all the information necessary to help everyone associated with St Giles to join in the daily prayers of the Church, wherever you may be. This provides the Morning and Evening Prayer leaflets, a list of the daily Bible readings for Lent, a list of the psalms for each day, and a copy of the intercession leaflet, which includes the collects, the special prayers for each week, and the prayer for Lent. After Easter we will update the list of daily Bible readings and the intercession leaflet monthly. You don’t have to be specially devout or holy to do this. It is just part of being a Christian, and helps us to get to know God better, by reading the Bible systematically, and using the psalms, which Jesus used, and prayers which the Church has used for sixteen hundred years and more. It will help to form the mind of Christ in us, and to build us into God’s people.

Second, we are most especially the body of Christ when we gather to worship God in the Holy Communion, the Eucharist, and in the Holy Communion we most especially receive God’s grace, God’s help. Listening to the readings, even the sermon, and the creed take us through the crises and challenges of the faith. In the offertory and the great Thanksgiving Prayer over the gifts of bread and wine, we are caught up in the hope that was Christ’s, faced with Good Friday. In receiving communion and the final prayers we are sent on our way, formed as people who are capable of love. In the Eucharist we, ordinary mortals are transformed so that we share God’s love. During Lent, as usual, we will have a discussion group instead of a sermon at Evensong, and we will be discussing the Holy Communion, the Eucharist, in order to deepen our understanding of our participation in this sacrament at the heart of the life of the Church, and our relationship with God. Do come and treat it as a refresher course following on from your confirmation course, whether some time ago, or very recently.

FRIENDS LECTURE 2010

The 2010 Friends of St Giles Lecture will be on Thursday 18 February 2010 at 7pm. It will be given by Professor Donald Lewis, on Mission to the Rookeries of St Giles. Professor Lewis teaches at Regent’s College Vancouver, and is currently editing for publication the manuscript working diary of a London City Missioner who worked, under the direction of the then Rector, Anthony Thorold in St Giles Rookeries, on the site of the new Central St Giles building.

Bill Jacob.

LENT AT ST GILES

On Ash Wednesday there will be Holy Communion and the administration of ashes at 1 pm and 6.pm On Sunday evenings, as usual there will be a discussion after Evensong, instead of a sermon, and this year the theme will be the Holy Communion.

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