Audio Sermon for the 2nd Sunday of Easter – 24th April 2022

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

Sermon preached on Easter Sunday 2022: Luke 24, 1-12

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

A favourite Easter hymn of mine is ‘Now the green blade riseth from the buried grain’. It doesn’t have some of the gravity of the grand and assertive, triumphalist Easter songs, but the image is good; the metaphor is descriptive, and it surely proclaims that Christ rose after three days in the sepulchre – and that makes it a good Easter hymn.

Verse 4 of the hymn runs like this:

When our hearts are wintry, grieving, or in pain,

Thy touch can call us back to life again,

Fields of our hearts, that dead and bare have been:

Love is come again,

Like wheat that springeth green.

READ MORE

Sermon for Palm Sunday – 10th April 2022: Principal Reading Luke 19, 28-40

Rvd. Canon Leonard Doolan –  St Paul’s Athens

This is a week of cries. Hosanna, Crucify, Alleluia!

There is a telling little phrase in St. Luke’s gospel (9,53) where the author says ‘Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem.’

It has a ring of determination to it – a planned or strategic decision. One wonders if there had been any conversations around this decision – had the disciples been given access to the details of the new direction? The little phrase has the resonance of what we would nowadays call ‘intentionality’.

Whether Our Lord had shared this intention with his closest comrades or not, Jerusalem based followers of Jesus seem to get wind of it, and are waiting. As he journeys from the area of Bethany down through the Kidron Valley, past Gethsemane, if he looks up Jesus will see the walled city and to his left the pinnacle of the temple.

READ MORE

Audio Sermon for Palm Sunday – 10th April 2022

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

Audio Sermon for Passion Sunday – 3rd April 2022

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

Sermon for Passion Sunday – 3rd April 2022: Isaiah 43, 16-21; Philippians 3, 4-14; John 12, 1-8.

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

In one of the many chapels in Cirencester Parish Church where I used to be the Vicar, there are four windows. The chapel is called the Catherine Chapel, though if my memory serves me correctly the chapel is dedicated to St. Catherine and St. Nicholas, but it was always referred to as the Catherine Chapel. Some of the altar hangings reflect this dedication, with embroidered so called ‘Catherine Wheels’ indicating one of the tools used in the martyrdom of St. Catherine. Although she was ultimately beheaded, she was initially placed on a wheel which broke. There is now a firework named after her – the Catherine Wheel.

The Catherine I am referring to is not of Genoa, or maybe the better known Catherine of Siena, but the much more historic Catherine of Alexandria. She is patron of, among other trades, wheelwrights, spinners, and millers.

Why is this chapel in Cirencester of relevance this morning? Well, because the four windows, which are also edged in the glass with wheels, show four scenes in the life of Lazarus, and his encounters with Christ. The gospels refer to Lazarus on several occasions and is a significant person in the gospel narratives. Perhaps we read these gospel encounters with too much familiarity, so it is valuable that our Sunday gospel today reminds us of Lazarus who was raised from the dead shortly before this gospel narrative is told by St. John.

READ MORE

Sermon preached on Mothering Sunday – 27th March 2022: John 19, 25-27

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

In the liturgical calendar of the Church of England the 4^th Sunday of Lent is always Mothering Sunday. This festival is unique to our church, and in parishes of our tradition flowers will be blessed and distributed, and in some congregations simnel cakes will be baked, shared and eaten. These are time-honoured traditions.

On this day the image of ‘mothers’ can be applied at several levels, so it is, in so many ways, inclusive of all sorts of human conditions and responses. We are directed towards thanksgiving for our mothers, or even, mothers, mothers; we can apply the image to our ‘holy Mother the church’ in her nurturing and caring of everyone; today can be reflective – for those for whom thinking of their mother is a bad memory, or those who never had a mother and therefore nothing to remember except that void in their lives; and it is a day when we can reflect on Blessed Mary, Mother of Our Lord.

The gospel reading for today is short and to the point.

‘Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.’ (John 19, 25-27)

READ MORE

Sermon for the 3rd Sunday of Lent – 20th March 2022: Isiah 55,, 1-9; Luke 13, 1-9; Corinthian 10, 1-13

Deacon Christine Saccali – St Paul’s Athens

May I speak in the name of the Living Triune God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit AMEN

To quote Mark Twain ‘Some people are troubled by the things in the bible they can’t understand. The things that trouble me are the things I can understand.’ I know what he means. It is when we think we have grasped the meaning of scripture and life but do not swerve from that interpretation that we are in trouble. The difficulties we face on a global, European and personal level are unprecedented in most of our lives and bring to mind other troubling times. Our cry is where is God in the midst of suffering?

The passages that are set for today’s lectionary readings on this the third Sunday of Lent are encountered once every three years.  It would be easy to pass up on the gospel passage and wring one’s hands of it as many commentaries and books I own do and concentrate only on Isaiah but we will endeavour to look at all the readings and see how they interconnect, why they were set for today and what they may mean for us then and now.

READ MORE

Audio Sermon for the 2nd Sunday in Lent – 13th March 2022

Fr  Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

Sermon for the 2nd Sunday in Lent – 13th March 2022 : Gen 15, 1-12, 17-18; Philemon 3, 17-4, 1; Luke 13, 31-end.

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

It is around the late 50s AD. We might be in the city of Rome, or maybe Caesarea or Ephesus, there is some doubt, but we are definitely in a prison. A slave is one of the prisoners. His name is Onesimus and by upbringing in the ancient world he was most likely a worshipper of the pagan gods. In his prison he has converted to the Christian Way. His prison companion is a man who was born in Tarsus and he is known to us as St. Paul. Onesimus has become a believer in Jesus.

Onesimus was as a slave in Colossae. His slave owner may have been someone called Archippus (Col 4, 12-16) or possibly someone called Philemon. Slave ownership was part of the normal order across the Roman Empire of the ancient world.

From prison Paul sends a letter to Philemon who has some sort of leadership of the church in the city of Laodicea in Asia Minor very near to the city of Colossae, to whom St. Paul also directed one of his letters – the Letter to the Colossians.

READ MORE