Church letter
April 2024
Click for the church letter from March 2024
The Lord is Risen! He is risen indeed Alleluia!
April, and spring has well and truly sprung. What a beautiful time of year. What a beautiful part of God’s creation we live in; I hope we do not ever take it for granted.
You should be receiving this edition of the magazine just before Easter Sunday, which this year falls on 31 March. Easter Sunday is the day of joy and celebration and real hope within the Christian faith. We have journeyed together from Ash Wednesday all the way through the weeks of Lent. (If you’ve been coming to the Lent Course on the revelations of Julian of Norwich, you will have grappled with the graphic accounts of her revelations, which do not make for easy listening.) We have travelled through Holy Week: through Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Eve; and finally, we arrive at the joy of Easter Sunday. Celebrating Christ’s resurrection. And we do so with the wonder and joy of a Sunrise Service. (I’m really grateful I’m a lark not an owl, though, because this year the clocks also go forward on Easter Sunday).
So, at this time in the church year, I am continuing with the theme of last month’s letter; with joy and hope rather than gloom, as we remember and celebrate the resurrection of Christ. This joy and hope and love is beautifully expressed by the poet and priest, Malcolm Guite. This is a sonnet, the 15th, from his book ‘Sounding the Seasons’, published by Canterbury Press. In it he captures the intimacy of the moment of encounter with the risen Christ.
A Sonnet for Easter Dawn
He blesses every love which weeps and grieves
And now he blesses hers who stood and wept
And would not be consoled, or leave her love’s
Last touching place, but watched as low light crept
Up from the east. A sound behind her stirs
A scatter of bright birdsong through the air.
She turns, but cannot focus through her tears,
Or recognise the Gardener standing there.
She hardly hears his gentle question “Why,
Why are you weeping?”, or sees the play of light
That brightens as she chokes out her reply
“They took my love away, my day is night”
And then she hears her name, she hears Love say
The Word that turns her night, and ours, to Day.
May you hear Love speaking to you. May Love turn your Night to Day. May you be able to respond with joy this Easter Sunday to the words: The Lord is Risen! He is risen indeed Alleluia!
Happy Easter.
Revd David Commander, Rector and Area Dean
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