Sermon for the first Sunday in Lent – 26th February 2023 -Genesis 2, 15-17; 3, 1-7. Romans 5, 12-19; Matthew 4, 1-11

Revd. Canon Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

This is the first Sunday in the holy season of Lent; a season of penitence, of inner examination of the soul, of reading the scriptures more assiduously, and of fasting. The holy season began 4 days ago with the day we call Ash Wednesday. The palm crosses that were blessed on Palm Sunday 2022 were returned to church, burned and turned into ash. Mixed with a little olive oil the priest then marks out a cross on the foreheads of the faithful. Then there is a slight dilemma.

What is the dilemma? With an ashen cross on the forehead should we then witness to the community that we are at the start of our keeping of Lent? There is much to commend this, especially in a country where the Western date for Lent passes almost un-noticed as the Greek people wait for Clean Monday, and their own Orthodox Lenten observances.

However, in the Ash Wednesday gospel, Christ condemns those who make a public show of their penitence and fasting with the words, “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them” and later in the same passage of St. Matthew, “when you fast put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but your Father who is in secret.’  (Matt. 6, 1; Matt. 6, 16-17).

So this is the dilemma at the start of this holy season. Is there some direction that I can give on this? Not really. There is no right or wrong. Or is there?

It is wrong to parade the cross on our foreheads if it is being shown with pride. It is wrong if it is a matter of outward tokenism. It is wrong if the cross on the forehead is not transferred to being a cross burned into our hearts.

It is right if showing this cross in such a public way is accompanied by acts of mercy and charity that are offered genuinely and authentically. It is right if the outward sign of the cross has made a change in our hearts and lives. It is right if the cross reminds us to be more like Christ. So there is a right and a wrong solution to the dilemma.

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Service for the First Sunday in Lent – 26th February 2023

Welcome to St. Paul’s Athens especially if you are here for the first time or visiting Athens.  Please stay and have coffee after the liturgy.  We have a POS facility now, so payments can be made to the church by bank cards. Follow the service sheet online – wifi password gu5uX8mmtgb8egak

The presiding priest and preacher is Fr. Leonard (Chaplain). The deacon is The Revd. Deacon Christine Saccali.

Entrance Hymn    333   All my hope on God is founded

Priest:     In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

The Lord be with you.

 All:         and also with you

The priest then welcomes the people of God and the deacon leads us into Confession.

Silence and stillness follows for a few moments

Deacon: We confess to you our selfishness and lack of love: fill us with your Spirit.

Kyrie eleison

All:          Kyrie eleison

Deacon:  We confess to you our fear and failure in sharing our faith: fill us with your Spirit.

Christe eleison

All:          Christe eleison

Deacon:  We confess to you our stubbornness and lack of trust: fill us with your Spirit.

Kyrie eleison

All:          Kyrie eleison

Priest:    May Almighty God, who sent his Son into the world to save sinners, bring you

his pardon and peace.

All:          Amen.

Collect:  Let us pray    (remain standing as the priest prays the Collect of the Day)   

Heavenly Father, your Son battled with the powers of darkness, and grew closer to you in the desert: help us to use these forty days of Lent to grow in wisdom and prayer that we may witness to your saving love in Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen

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Service for the Sunday next before Lent – 19th February 2023

Welcome to St. Paul’s Athens especially if you are here

for the first time or visiting Athens.  After the Liturgy we all gather in the church garden for coffee and refreshments.  The presiding priest is The Venerable Leslie Nathaniel, Archdeacon of the Eastern Archdeaconry and the preacher is Fr. Leonard. The deacon is the Revd. Christine Saccali. We have a POS so you can make your donation by card. Follow the service sheet online – wifi password gu5uX8mmtgb8egak

Entrance Hymn:  363 Glory in the highest (tune Evelyns 338)

Priest:    Blessed be the kingdom of God

     All:         Now and for ever

Priest:    The Lord be with you

     All:         And also with you

The priest then informally welcomes the people of God and the deacon leads us into Confession.

(A short period of stillness and silence)

All:  Father eternal, giver of light and grace, we have sinned against you and against our neighbour, in what we have thought, in what we have said and done, through ignorance, through weakness, through our own deliberate fault. We have wounded your love, and marred your image in us. We are sorry and ashamed, and repent of all our sins. For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, who died for us, forgive us all that is past; and lead us out from darkness to walk as children of light. Amen.

Absolution: Almighty God, who forgives all who truly repent, have mercy upon you, pardon and deliver you from all your sins, confirm and strengthen you in all goodness, and keep you in life eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Gloria: Glory to God in the highest, peace to his people on earth.  Lord God,

heavenly King, almighty God and Father, we worship you, we give you thanks,

we praise you for your glory. Lord Jesus Christ, only Son of the Father, Lord God,

Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world: have mercy on us. You are seated at the right hand of the Father: receive our prayer. For you alone are the Holy One, you alone are the Lord, you alone are the Most High, Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit, in the glory of God the Father. Amen

Collect:  Let us pray    (remain standing as the priest prays the Collect of the Day) 

Almighty Father, whose Son was revealed in majesty before he suffered death upon the cross: give us grace to perceive his glory, that we may be strengthened to suffer with him and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory; who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.   Amen.

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Sermon for the Sunday Next Before Lent – 19th February 2023: Exodus 24, 12-end; 2 Peter 1, 16-end; Matthew 17, 1-9.

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

It is an apophthegmatic saying, that is, a classic saying, of one of the great Archbishops of Canterbury in the last century, Michael Ramsey, when asked to sum up the 4^th Gospel, the Gospel of St. John, that he used only one word. Glory.

Any reading – both surface and in depth – will understand why Michael Ramsay used this one word. In NT Greek it is δόξα. In English we get the word ‘doxology’ from this. The word, either with a large or small ‘o’ also gives us the word ortho-doxy.

In so many places in scripture we read of God’s glory being revealed. There is a God whose glory is not kept to himself, but has to be revealed, shown, to us in his wonderful acts – the outpouring of his very being into what he has created, ‘irradiating’ it with divine essence. It is almost as if he feels no option but to share his glory with others, with us.

As I was trying to say in last week’s sermon, based on the Creation Narrative of the Book of Genesis, God’s creation is not merely an ‘object’ but the very living and active creation of God. It is God’s glory revealed.

Dare I say it, the very existence of God, as we receive it as Christians, is that everything is shown, revealed. He has revealed his hand; nothing is hidden. He creates, and he constantly restores, not because we have a God whose existence depends on his ‘functionality’ ie. what is done in a mechanical way, but rather because he has created so that his glory can literally be revealed constantly. It is almost as if he cannot be God unless he is eternally outpouring of himself. This is a very extraordinary thing – something that can only evoke from us, his creatures, amazement, wonder.

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Audio Sermon for the Sunday next before Lent – 19th February 2023

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

Audio Sermon for the 2nd Sunday before Lent – 12th February 2023

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

Sermon for the 2nd Sunday before Lent – 12th February 2023: (Genesis 1, 1-2, 3; Roman 8, 18-25; Matthew 6, 25-end)

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

In the Old Testament reading we have rehearsed the divine narrative of the creation, as presented to us in the Book of Genesis.

For millennia this narrative was received literally as the sole description of how all things, including humans, came into being. The narrative describes a creator God, a God who outpours all of his creative love into things seen and unseen as we say in the Creed.

For the last few hundred years of human existence the literal acceptance of the narrative in Genesis has been replaced by the findings of the scientific enlightenment, in particular since the theory of evolution was proposed by Charles Darwin.

The Church, feeling under enormous threat from a credible alternative to the Holy Scriptures, of course reacted badly, rather than having a rational debate about this new theory of evolution. In one debate, the Bishop of Oxford, who at the time was Samuel Wilberforce, of the same family as William Wilberforce the great social reformer who took on the evils of slavery. It was a rather undignified event in which the bishop enquired of Darwin whether he (Darwin) was descended from an ape through his father’s side of the family, or his mother’s. Hardly an adult way of approaching things!

Darwin’s Theorem of Evolution has now been widely accepted – even though there may be a clue for us in the word ‘theorem’ or theory. It has become the new orthodoxy for explaining the way things are and the ‘how’ it has all developed, and yet it was proposed as a theory.

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Service for the 2nd Sunday before Lent – 12th February 2023

Welcome to St. Paul’s Athens especially if you are here

for the first time or visiting Athens.  After the Liturgy we all gather in the church garden for coffee and refreshments.  The presiding priest and preacher is Fr. Leonard. We have a POS so you can make your donation by card. Follow the service sheet online – wifi password gu5uX8mmtgb8egak

Entrance Hymn:  263  All creatures of our God and King (omit * 5,6)

Priest:    Blessed be the kingdom of God

     All:         Now and for ever

Priest:    The Lord be with you

     All:         And also with you

The priest then informally welcomes the people of God and leads us into Confession.

(A short period of stillness and silence)

All:  Father eternal, giver of light and grace, we have sinned against you and against our neighbour, in what we have thought, in what we have said and done, through ignorance, through weakness, through our own deliberate fault. We have wounded your love, and marred your image in us. We are sorry and ashamed, and repent of all our sins. For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, who died for us, forgive us all that is past; and lead us out from darkness to walk as children of light. Amen.

Absolution: Almighty God, who forgives all who truly repent, have mercy upon you, pardon and deliver you from all your sins, confirm and strengthen you in all goodness, and keep you in life eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

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Audio Sermon for the 3rd Sunday before Lent – 5th February 2023

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

Sermon for the 3rd Sunday before lent – 5th February 2023: Isaiah 58, 1-9; 1 Cor 2, 1-12; Matt 5, 13-15).

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

Over the years I have had the privilege of leading six or seven pilgrimage groups to the Holy Land. In the modern times and over many decades this land has faced troubles – troubles that have their root basically in religion. Religion so often gets mistaken for, and gets in the way of, faith.

Most pilgrimages are divided between two geographical bases – the Holy city of Jerusalem, which is in East Jerusalem, and the area of the Sea of Galilee. If you speak to most pilgrims they divide neatly into two groups – those who love the Jerusalem based sites, such as the Old City, the Western or Wailing Wall, the Temple Mount, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the wells of Bethsaida, the crusader church of St. Anne with its extraordinary echo, the route of the Via Crucis, the House of Caiaphas, the church of the Nations, The Garden of Gethsemane, Golgotha, the Byzantine site of the Ascension of our Lord, or the Cenacle – where Pentecost took place.

Others prefer the more open air sites around the Sea of Galilee – Capernaum where we see the archaeological remains of the small fishing village where Peter, Andrew, James, John lived and worked, with its nearby synagogue – ironically it is a modern synagogue; by modern I mean Roman! Around the shores of the sea there are holy sites where Christ delivered the Beatitudes; where Peter declared him to be the Messiah, and many more.

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