Advent Message – The Revd. Canon Leonard Doolan, Athens. November 2020

“Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a shout, ‘Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise replied, ‘No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.’ And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet; and the door was shut. Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I do not know you.’ Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour. (Matthew 25, 1-13).

November 29^th is Advent Sunday. We begin a new church year. The liturgical cycle has come round full circle. A new season begins, a short punchy and powerful season. A new year begins also in the CofE three year cycle of liturgical readings. From this Advent we will be on Year 2 readings.

Advent is a season set aside in time, to mark time – to mark time before the birth of the timeless one. It has many seasonal riches. Advent calendars are among the favourite accompaniment for this season – and now available in a full range of chocolate products behind every door! There are advent candles that burn down for each day of Advent, so long as you remember to blow it out each time! In our churches we would normally have Advent candle stands, with our 4 purple candles and a central white candle. If you are very exotic the candle for the 3^rd Sunday in Advent will be pink – not for Our Lady, as some think, but for what is called ‘Gaudete Sunday’ or ‘Rejoice Sunday’ when the normal fasting and austerities of Advent were relaxed.

Another favourite feature for me are the days of Advent that lead directly into Christmas, the ‘Great O’ days. It begins with ‘O Sophia’, so not surprisingly it is called Holy Wisdom day. Each of these days addresses Christ by one of the many titles given him by scripture or the church. They are probably best preserved in the popular mind by the great Advent hymn,

O come, O come, Emmanuel!

Redeem thy captive Israel,

That into exile drear is gone

Far from the face of God’s dear Son.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

Shall come to thee, O Israel.

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Zoom login for Night Prayer in Advent

Fr Leonard is inviting everyone to join him in Night Prayer each evening in Advent – 1st – 23rd December, at 9.00pm – 21.0 hrs.  Please have available a candle to light during the service.  Please follow the link below for access to the Zoom service.  Please encourage friends and relations to join with us in this season of preparation and expectation.

Leonard Doolan is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85222931221?pwd=QmdkWW4xaytYcWlKM3VZdlp0aUxSZz09

 Meeting ID: 852 2293 1221

Passcode: 3jNShp

Topic: Night Prayer

Time: Dec 1, 2020 09:00 PM Athens

        Every day, until Dec 23, 2020, 23 occurrence(s)

        Dec 1, 2020 09:00 PM

        Dec 2, 2020 09:00 PM

        Dec 3, 2020 09:00 PM

        Dec 4, 2020 09:00 PM

        Dec 5, 2020 09:00 PM

        Dec 6, 2020 09:00 PM

        Dec 7, 2020 09:00 PM

        Dec 8, 2020 09:00 PM

        Dec 9, 2020 09:00 PM

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Audio Pastoral Letter from Fr Leonard – November 2020

Pastoral Letter 4 From Fr Leonard

Dear Friends,

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

In his letter to the church community in Rome St. Paul says, ‘For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ (Romans 8, 38-39).

I would add to this list Covid-19, the pandemic that has the world in its vice-like grip in increasing numbers yet again. This virus will not separate us from the love of God, nor in our life in the Holy Spirit will it separate us from each other. Our strength together is more than just our meeting together, though being together gathered around the holy table, side by side, is our royal calling as the baptized holy people of God. We pray for that day when this is possible again.

In response to the current developments of the virus the Government has issued new restrictions for places of worship. These restrictions are in place first and foremost to keep us safe. This is how it affects our own situation.

St. Paul’s will be closed for public worship during this period of lockdown. Sunday services will continue on Zoom either from my apartment or occasionally from St. Paul’s Church.

You can access Zoom by going to the St. Paul’s Anglican Church Athens website where you will find the link. It will be the same link each week. In addition Deacon Christine and I will offer additional worship and spiritual resources for you. Chris will offer something weekly on Facebook. Please contact her directly about this. I will make arrangements for a mid-week evening service on Zoom. It will be 4 Wednesdays in November beginning at 19.00 and I will build in time for a chat afterwards. The link for this will be on our website also. The order of service for this will also be on the website.

We will work on ways to keep the monthly raffle draw going.

As we approach the time when the legendary Christmas Bazaar, a great social occasion as well as fund-raiser, would normally be taking place we are all once again reminded of the need to address the loss of income to St. Paul’s. Please use internet banking for your donation, if you possibly can. The details are on our website. Contact me if you have any questions about financial giving to St. Paul’s. If you cannot use the bank, please put aside your normal weekly offering and bring it with you when you next come to St. Paul’s, whenever that might be.

Stay safe and well, and remain thankful to God for his blessing of love, from which nothing can separate us.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all. Amen.

Father Leonard

PASTORAL LETTER 3 – 6TH OCTOBER 2020

Dear Friends at St. Paul’s

This is the third Pastoral Letter I have issued since the lockdowns began back in March 2020. This time some of you will receive it as a voice recording – and my apologies if you receive it in a printed version also.

With Greek Government Covid-19 restrictions in place, we have been blessed compared to most other countries in that we have been permitted to hold public worship since May 17^th. After a cautious start we have slowly built up our worship experience again – I am stressing familiarity rather than normality, as we are far from what we knew and loved up until the beginning of March this year.

As I reported before, Zoom has become a familiar feature in the worshipping, praying, and studying life of many in our congregation and with our wider and much cherished group of friends and supporters. Even after we could begin to worship publicly again, we continued to have Zoom Sunday services until the end of June, as well as weekly Evening Prayer, and a weekly bible study. These possibilities have been warmly welcomed and appreciated. I am delighted to say that since the 4^th October (St. Francis Day) we can now ‘live Zoom’ our Liturgy from St. Paul’s. The sound is not perfect – we have to negotiate a complex mix of microphones, organ playing and congregational responses and gentle singing. However it is a wonderful way of keeping in touch with the Sunday worship.

These weeks and months of 2020 have been challenging. We are all in one way or another feeling spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and physically ‘abused’ by this potent virus. It is stretching us and billions of others to their limits, and we are nowhere near resolving its capricious impact on human life. Many are in isolation – either by choice or by imposition. Over a million are sick with the virus, and hundreds of thousands have died.  Many are fearful. Although we have every right to have human responses to this pandemic, as Christians we have to reflect also on the words of Christ, spoken when his fishermen disciples were terrified in the eye of a storm, ‘Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.’ (Matthew 14, 27). Sunday 18h October is the Feast of St. Luke – we will include the ‘anointing with oil’ for healing of body, mind and soul, within our Sunday Liturgy.

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Zoom Service on Sundays

Leonard Doolan is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting. Please sign in by 10.00 or you may not be admitted!

Time: Oct 4, 2020 10:00 AM Athens

Every week on Sun, until Dec 27, 2020, 13 occurrence(s)

Fr Leonards Sermons, virtual and viral, for Lent, Holy Week & Easter 2020

The Anglican Church in Greece (Church of England)

The Revd. Canon Leonard Doolan

Karneadou 6, Athens 10675 Greece

Tel (0030) 210 721 4906                                                    August 2020

During the worst weeks of the COVID-19 lockdown thousands of faithful priests and pastors were preparing to preach Sunday by Sunday, or day by day, seeking to keep Christ’s people engaged with the mysteries of the holy season of Lent, Holy Week, and the ‘Great Weeks’ of Easter.

These were challenging days – not yet behind us by any means – for preachers to address the scriptures set for this season, but at the same time to acknowledge the realities of the global pandemic that prevented most, if not all social and human public activity, including worship. Suddenly we had to be creative and make use of different media platforms in our attempts to ‘keep together in isolation’.

In Athens I did my best to wrestle with new technology that took me way beyond my normal comfort zone ‘blending’ the ancient art of preaching with the contemporary possibilities of Zoom. I have to admit that it was not like oil and water, as my initial skepticism might have concluded. The blend of printed copies of sermons sent by email, texts placed on the website, pre-recorded versions emailed out, ‘virtually’ live preaching on Zoom, and then sermons delivered on Zoom and in St. Paul’s church respecting local restrictions, all of these somehow seem to have worked, with considerable appreciation from our congregation and ‘para’ congregation.

I was delightfully encouraged when a couple of people suggested that my sermons prepared over this period should be brought together and published in a small booklet. That initial suggestion, much to my surprise, has come about.

There is no delusion in publishing these sermons, by the way. They are not the best sermons you will ever read, and so much could have been better said, and has been, in the hands of other fine preachers. However, I think the interest lies in the nature of the background of the sermons. Never before have we preached in Lent, Holy Week and Easter with a pandemic raging away, devastating so many lives and disrupting global and local economies; shutting down work patterns and adding to our already existing anxieties in the relationship between humanity and the Creation.

This little booklet of sermons may have some lasting interest simply because in the future someone might be interested to observe how one preacher went about his business during the COVID-19 experience.

To order a copy email: anglican@otenet.gr  Cost €5,00 (all proceeds to St. Paul’s Church)  p&p  €2.50 within Greece; €5,00 outside Greece.

Second Sunday after Trinity – 21st June 2020

Welcome to our Sunday worship brought to our homes by Zoom.  After the worship we can have a short chat together.  There will be a Zoom service until the last Sunday of June.  There is a new zoom log in address on the website for the Sundays of June 14th-28^th.

Until the end of June there is a Zoom weekly Bible Study and a mid-week evening quiet reflection service. Both of these will resume at the start of September. The login address for the quiet evening service is on the website. To join the bible study please contact Fr. Leonard first on his own email. The Sunday worship login address remains the same throughout June. St. Paul’s is open again for its regular visiting  times.

From July 5^th the principal worship will be back in St. Paul’s Church. We are exploring the possibility of providing Zoom participation in the Sunday service from September onwards. Watch this space!

The preacher this morning is Fr. Leonard.

Priest:  Grace, mercy and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

All:       and also with you.

1 Morning has broken
Like the first morning,
Blackbird has spoken
Like the first bird.
Praise for the singing!
Praise for the morning!
Praise for them, springing
Fresh from the Word!

2 Sweet the rain’s new fall
Sunlit from Heaven,
Like the first dewfall
On the first grass.
Praise for the sweetness
Of the wet garden,
Sprung in completeness
Where his feet pass

Mine is the sunlight

Mine is the morning

born of the one light

Eden saw play

Praise with elation

Praise every morning

God’s re-creation

Of the new day!

Deacon: Our Lord Jesus Christ said; the first commandment is this:  Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is the

only Lord. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all

your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ There

is no other commandment greater than these. On these two commandments hang all the law and

the prophets.

      All:         Amen. Lord have mercy.

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First Sunday after Trinity – 14th June 2020

Welcome to our Sunday worship brought to our homes by Zoom.  After the worship we can have a short chat together.  There will be a Zoom service until the last Sunday of June. There is a new login address on the website for the Sundays of June 14^th-28^th. 

Until the end of June there is a Zoom weekly Bible Study and a mid-week evening quiet reflection service. Both of these will resume at the start of September. The login address for the quiet evening worship is on the website. To join the bible study please contact Fr. Leonard first on his own email. The Sunday worship login address remains the same throughout June. St. Paul’s is open again for its regular visiting  times.

From July 5^th the principal worship will be back in St. Paul’s Church. We are exploring the possibility of providing Zoom participation in the Sunday service from September onwards. Watch this space!

The preacher this morning is Fr. Leonard.

Priest:  Grace, mercy and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

All:       and also with you.

 1 Awake, my soul, and with the sun
thy daily stage of duty run;
shake off dull sloth, and early rise
to pay thy morning sacrifice.

2 Lord, I my vows to Thee renew.
Disperse my sins as morning dew;
guard my first springs of thought and will,
and with Thyself my spirit fill.

3 Direct, control, suggest, this day,
all I design or do or say,
that all my pow’rs, with all their might,
in Thy sole glory may unite.

4 Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;
praise Him all creatures here below;
praise Him above, ye heav’nly host;
praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Deacon: Our Lord Jesus Christ said; the first commandment is this:  Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is the only Lord. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

All:          Amen. Lord have mercy.

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