Trinity Sunday marks the moment when the Church moves into ordinary time as the great 50 days of Easter has come to an end. It is the day when all preachers try to explain the inexplicable. Justo Gonzalez, a prominent Hispanic theologian once said, "Trinity is a mystery, not a puzzle. You try to solve the puzzle, you stand in awe before a mystery." The world could do with more standing in awe than sniping from side-lines.
Read More“Ordinary Time resumes”
On the Monday after Pentecost, a note in the liturgical calendar and on our Music List here, says ‘Ordinary Time resumes’. We go back to the liturgical colour green for the long stretch of the summer through to November. Green is the colour of ‘Ordinary time’, the colour of growth as our faith grows and deepens after the great cycles of the Christmas and Easter mysteries.
Read MoreThis year’s D-Day 75 commemorations happen to be taking place in between the feasts of Ascension and Pentecost. In recent years this ten day period has become the focus of a global prayer movement called ‘Thy Kingdom Come’. Across the Diocese of Portsmouth there will be ecumenical prayer meetings every day, open to all, in a variety of locations. Concluding the ten days of prayer on Pentecost Sunday (9th June) will be The Big Prayer Picnic in the grounds of Portchester Castle, 1.00pm to 4.00pm (picnicking is at 2.30pm, when the main prayer and worship event begins).
Read MoreThis week has something of the ‘calm before the storm’ about it, at least in the liturgical, worshipping and diary of the cathedral and it’s community.
We thank our superb visiting choir, Cantus who regularly sing in Cathedral’s across the country. We are delighted they are here to sing our services this weekend as it is the start of our own choirs’ half term break.
Read MoreJesus’ command to ‘love one another’ is so familiar to us that we almost do not bother to think about the radical consequences of what it means. In contemporary society the word ‘love’ has come to be so associated with the pull of emotion that the we imagine 'loving one another' means 'loving people who like us', which ultimately implies a narcissistic self love of our own reflection in which we love those who are like us.
Read MoreChristian Aid Week starts today, so I thought I would highlight the work the charity has done over the last 70+ years. The charity was founded in 1945 by British and Irish churches, with the aim of helping refugees after WWII. Since then they have provided short and long-term aid relief, raised awareness of the injustice in our world, and championed people’s rights.
Read MoreOne of Portsmouth’s oldest buildings and one of its newest small businesses are teaming up for a Rum Festival in Portsmouth Cathedral on the evening of May 11th.
Celebrating the best of local, national and international Rum, and featuring live music, a Rum Shack and food to buy on site. This promises to be an amazing event in unique surroundings.
Read MoreThis week in the Cathedral we will be both looking forward and looking back. From tomorrow (Monday) until next Sunday, we will have a display in the Welcome Area put together by the Portsmouth and Winchester Diocesan Guild of Church Bell Ringers. The display outlines the way the Guild over the past four years rang bells across this diocese, and the diocese of Winchester, to commemorate those who served and fell in the first World War. It also highlights the way bells were rung between 1914 and 1919 as forces left for the front, and losses were mourned, and at last peace was announced and celebrated.
Read MoreI was installed as a Residentiary Canon here on Easter Sunday evening in 2014 so there is a lovely completeness that I am also leaving at Easter five years later, and what a five years it has been! I have loved my time here and have grown to see Portsmouth, both the City and Cathedral, as home. But part of the nature of being a Christian is responding to God’s call and so in doing that I am now heading to the Isle of Wight.
Read MoreHeard on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this week: ‘The French people could have seen the Notre Dame fire as a story of despair and destruction, but instead are seeing it as a story of resurrection and renewal.’ This was not a ‘Thought for the Day’ by our Holy Week and Easter preacher Canon Angela Tilby (to whom grateful thanks are due for her profound and eloquent series of addresses) but the comments of a secular reporter.
Read MoreIn the End, God…
The Christian faith is in decline in Britain with a majority claiming to have no religion. This year’s Holy Week talks and sermons by Canon Angela Tilby will address the reasons for this loss of faith and explore what the cross and resurrection might mean today for those who persist in believing - and for those who would like to believe.
Read MoreOne of the great untruths of the modern age is the idea that all time is uniform and equally empty of meaning. Secular time asserts that one day is much like any other: nothing but an expanse into which a certain amount of activity can take place. Without a sense of divine direction, purposeful events or progress, modern societies find it difficult to assess any meaning in time and its associated activity beyond a sense of productivity and time wasted.
Read MoreThere is understandable uncertainty, insecurity and fear among many people at the moment on all sides of the multi-faceted Brexit debate. In the midst of it all, we cannot pretend that everyone agrees with us, and that makes it challenging not least in church, where people come together from a variety of backgrounds and opinions, and yet we still want and need to pray together. What better moment than Mothering Sunday to be reminded that families do not always agree, do not always even get along, and yet are held together by the act of mothering and being mothered?
Read MoreTen years ago a small group of us met with Lord Adonis huddled in the Junior Library at Salisbury Cathedral Choir School. The meeting managed to release government funds for cathedrals to take choristers out into local primary schools, to share their love of singing to a lost generation of young singers. Out of this meeting came Sing Up! which ran for four years from 2007 with a government investment of £4,000,000.
Read MoreOn the final weekend of March we will be lighting the Cathedral lantern green and switching off for one hour from 8.30pm to 9.30pm on Saturday 30th in solidarity with global efforts to shine a light on climate change and biodiversity loss.
Read MoreHighlights
I looked at the calendar of events and it seems like we are journeying a lot at the moment, and because I am always thinking of songs to fit every occasion, a phrase from the hymn “Brother, sister, let me serve you” sprang to mind: “we are pilgrims on a journey, we are brothers on the road”. There’s a lot of journeying in Lent. We contemplate the temptation of Christ and journey with him to the cross. At the moment, people of all ages are preparing for baptism and confirmation, rituals that mark different stages in a Christian’s journey.
Read MoreThe new Dean who will take charge of Portsmouth’s Anglican Cathedral will be installed in a special service on Saturday 16th March.
Canon Dr Anthony Cane will become the new Dean of Portsmouth – the most senior clergy person at the cathedral – during the installation service. He will also be the second most senior clergy person in Portsmouth’s Anglican diocese after the bishop.
Read MoreHighlights
The next week marks an exciting new moment of adventure for the Cathedral, as we welcome Anthony as our new Dean. To use a metaphor from our Gospel reading today, the Cathedral has faced the wilderness period of vacancy, and we can now embark upon a new period of ministry.
Read MoreHighlights
‘Shriving’ – a word I can’t quite believe is real, and yet for some strange reason I’m glad it does for I take great pleasure in saying it. In shriving, a person confesses their sins and receives absolution for them. It’s a very old tradition indeed. Over 1000 years ago a monk wrote in the Anglo-Saxon Ecclesiastical Institutes: ‘In the week immediately before Lent everyone shall go to his confessor and confess his deeds and the confessor shall so shrive him.’ Try and say that last bit 5 times and very quickly!
Read MoreHighlights
As our national political life becomes ever more fraught, it is perhaps a good moment to be reminded of the need to remove the log from our own eyes before we see and judge the speck in our neighbours’ eyes. It is also a good time to be reminded of the importance and impact of trading fairly with others, in particular for the poor. Fairtrade Fortnight starts officially tomorrow.
Read More
