Vicars Letter
Ascension Day
Thursday 29th May is Ascension Day. This is one of the ten principal feasts of the Church year. the theory is that is more important to participate in the Eucharist on Ascension Day than on any Sunday except for Easter and Pentecost. The reality is than in our parish few come to church on Ascension Day. This illustrates a particular set of challenges facing the Church in the culture of today.
The life of the church is organised on the principal that participation in the principal feasts of the churches year will assist in the development of Christian attitudes that will make for holy lives. There is not necessarily a straight forward link between a major event in Christ's life and our lives; between participating in the church's liturgy and living Christian lives. There is much about seeds growing secretly.
We live in a culture in which things tend to be immediate. We undertake activities that tend to have immediate visible rewards. We shy away from those things which appear to have no immediate practical outcome. The church has a particular challenge as to how best to practice and assist (teach) what will form Christian attitudes that issue in good Christian living.
This is not an issue unique to our parish and one of the sad things is how little help we receive in this matter from the wider church. I am sure that we do well to respond on two levels. we do need to discover what immediately rewarding things will help foster Christian living. This will take us some way. But if our lives are to do with someone as deep as God, something crucial to issues of life and death and salvation and love, then it seems fair to expect we will need to persevere at a deeper level. We again need ways of encouraging our perseverance as well as what deeper forms of spirituality will help us best in today's world.
While we await thought, experimentation on these issues do come on 29th May and celebrate the Ascension at All Saints ether at 12.30 am or 7.30 pm at All Saints. The Ascension represents sufficiently great and vast themes that will occupy a lifetime: Christ leaving responsibility for his church and mission to his disciples, questions of partings, the role of Christ our high priest at the right hand of the Father in glory, his help to us as intercessor, the call to pray for the gifts, the guidance of the Holy Spirit. For perhaps above all, Ascension day marks the beginning of the nine days when the church is called to pray for the gifts and guidance of the Holy Spirit to guide and animate our lives.
Christopher Morgan-Jones
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