PARISH NEWSLETTER NOVEMBER 2019
St Matthew’s Holland Park

Mission: To dig wells of Christian Spirituality for disciples and seekers.

Vision: St Matt’s Anglican, Holland Park: a centre for Christian Spirituality.

Reflection
One of the most influential writers on matters of Christian spirituality in the 20th century was Thomas Merton, a Cistercian Monk of the Abbey of Gethsemene in Kentucky USA. I recently reread one of his books entitled “Contemplation in a World of Action”. In the book, Merton was grappling with the question of what was required in the area of monastic renewal in order to ensure that it remained an authentic form of Christian life in the closing decades of the 20th century and beyond. Although the book was published posthumously in 1971, and although Merton was principally concerned with monastic renewal, the book is remarkably relevant for our own place and time as we consider how parish church life can be an authentic form of Christianity today.

Please consider this anecdote from the book:

So prayer for faith is absolutely the most fundamental thing and we must not forget how great is the power of God to give us what we need and in the most surprising ways. For example, I just had a letter from a person who claimed that she had been an atheist for quite some time. She is a young married woman, evidently baptized a Catholic in childhood and brought up perhaps as a Catholic. She could see no logical reason for the existence of God. People had been trying to prove to her the existence of God and it made no impression on her whatever. All this had no meaning whatever to her and she simply could not believe in God. Until all of a sudden one day, instead of arguing with her, some priest said, “Look, God wants your heart, not your mind: God loves you!” All of a sudden this whole thing collapsed and there broke through into her heart the sense of who God really is and what He really meant to her. She saw how desperately she needed this God who loved her, who was calling her to accept His love and to love Him in return. The whole reality of the thing just simply burst through, whereas arguments about the existence of God and intellectual discussion of God and so forth had meant nothing. So it is with us. We get involved in all these abstract discussions that we forget the basic – this call of God’s love to us, urging us to love Him in return and to open our hearts to Him and to give Him our hearts so that He may fill them with love and faith. So let us then do this. Let us pray for faith, let us pray for an increase of faith and give ourselves, totally, completely, and with perfect confidence to the God who loves us and calls us to His love. (Thomas Merton, “Contemplation in a World of Action, Doubleday and Company, Inc., Garden City, New York, 1971, pp. 383/384)

In the light of this extract, we could say that a parish is an authentic vehicle for the living of the Christian life if it encourages and enables its members to pursue this path of total and complete surrender to the God who loves us, who has shown that love most manifestly in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The ball is in our court.

Fr Allan

Prayer Point
Dangerous it were for the feeble brain of man to wade far into the doings of the Most High, whom although to know be life and joy to make mention of His name, yet our soundest knowledge is to know that we know Him not as indeed He is, neither can know Him, and our safest eloquence concerning Him is our silence. He is above and we upon the earth, therefore it behoveth our words to be wary and few. (Richard Hooker, 1554-1600)

Spiritual Development

Sundays 9.00am Sung Holy Communion

Wednesdays 8.00am Morning Prayer
Wednesdays 8.30am Christian Meditation
Wednesdays 5.00pm Evening Prayer
Wednesdays 5.30pm Christian Meditation
Thursdays 10.30am Holy Communion

Messy Church
Sunday 1 December 11am to 1pm

Upcoming Events

See our website for details of planned events, both social and faith formation.
www.stmatthewshollandpark.com

As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience.
Colossians 3.12