SUNDAY SERVICES

Hartlip:

8.00 a.m.Holy Communion: 2nd, 4th and 5th Sundays.
10.30 a.m.Parish Communion (except 2nd Sunday: Matins).
6.30 p.m.Evensong.

Sunday School every Sunday at 10.30 a.m. in the Church School.
(Children are welcome at the Parish Communion and on the last Sunday in the month, the address will be specially for the children in the congregation).

Stockbury:

9.15 a.m.Parish Communion.
3.30 p.m.Evensong: 3rd Sunday only.
(Evensong is at 6.30 p.m. in the summer).

Arrangements concerning Baptisms, Weddings or Confessions should be made with the Vicar. The Sick can be visited at any time and the Vicar is ready to make the Sacraments available to them in their homes.

THE VICAR WRITES ...

It hardly seems possible that the time has come round again to wish you all a Happy Christmas. Time seems to consume us all in a whirlwind of activity, and each year appears to go by quicker than the last one. Which prompts me to say that I meet an increasing number of people who don't seem to have a minute to spare. So many things demand time and effort that there is little opportunity to "be still", as the Psalmist says, or "to stand and stare", as the poet W. H. Davies wrote. And Christmas is an appropriate time to think about this, because the event which we celebrate is, as it were, the meeting of time and eternity. The Eternal God became man. We call it the Incarnation. It is a mystery to be pondered, as the eighteenth-century hymn writer John Byrom reminds us: "O may we keep and ponder in our mind God's wondrous love in saving lost mankind ..." If we are going to ponder anything we need time in which to do it.

And if we are to ponder this mystery our journey of thought will not start at Christmas but at Easter. The Christian Faith stands on the Resurrection of Jesus, and it was that event which the first Apostles preached and taught, long before the Gospels or any other New Testament writings came into existence. It was in the light of the Resurrection that the life and teaching and death of Jesus began to make sense; began to take on any lasting significance.

The birth of Jesus had taken place in obscurity, but his Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, had, the Bible tell us, " ...treasured up all these things in her heart ...", and no doubt it was she who was the source of the stories told us by St. Matthew and St. Luke concerning the birth. It is possible to let sentiment take over at Christmas and to let the story take on a fairy-tale quality which eclipses the real truth behind it. That truth, Christians believe, is that in that birth .... (cont.)