Sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter – 1May 2022: Acts 9, 1-6; Rev 5, 11-14; John 21, 1-19.

Revd. Canon Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

[The next circulated sermon from me will be for Sunday 22^nd May]

Today is May 1^st – Χρονιά Πολλά και Καλή Προτομαγιά – many years and happy 1^st May. Traditionally of course May Day is the day when we welcome the Spring; in the Orthodox calendar it is the Feast of St. Thomas, and icons show Our Lord displaying to Thomas the wounds on his hands and side; in the Catholic Church since 1955 the 1^st May is associated with St. Joseph, earthly father of Jesus, but whose profession was to work as a carpenter in Nazareth. It is appropriate that the 1^st of May is marked internationally to celebrate workers. There is a lot going on today, and a lot going on in our gospel reading for today. The reading is one of the Resurrection Narratives, a phrase we introduced to you last week.

So what is all the activity that we hear about? First of all, seven of the disciples – all named, including Thomas who was invited to put his fingers into the crucifixion wounds – go fishing. It was the occupation of a number of the disciples. They can go fishing because they are no longer in Jerusalem, which is land-locked, so not much opportunity there for fishermen. Instead they have re-located to familiar territory, Galilee. The gospel writer tells us they are by the Sea of Tiberias. It is also called the Sea of Galilee.

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Sermon for the Second Sunday of Easter – 24th April 2022: John 20, 19-31

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

Our prayers of shared Easter joy are with the Orthodox Church today, for whom this is Easter Sunday. Καλό Πάσχα. Our prayers of shared compassion on this Day of Resurrection are with all Ukrainians for whom the joy of their faith is profoundly challenged by their plight. Our prayers of shared pleading that the words of the Risen Jesus, ‘Peace be with you, repeated so often in the Easter Narratives, will inhabit the souls and inform the behaviour of Russian state and church leadership.

‘Easter Narratives’ is the corporate name we give to that collection of scriptural material that informs us of the various appearances of Jesus after his crucifixion, death, and his three days in the tomb during which he is redeeming even the depths of hell with his graceful redemption.

This is what we refer to when we say in the Creed, ‘He descended into hell’. I’m sure the inclusion of this line must have generated much thought and speculation. It makes sense though. If God’s redeeming action in his Christ is a universal, and indeed cosmic action of God, then it is essential that those who had passed form this life before this action have to be redeemed also, for ‘that which is not touched by God in Christ is not redeemed’. So the new life of the risen Christ about to emerge into a cosmic action of salvation must be shared by those who ‘knew not Christ’.

So these Easter Narratives are placed in the last chapter or chapters of the four gospels. St, Mark is as succinct at the end of his gospel as he is at the beginning of his gospel – the only one of the four not to give any mention of the Birth Narratives. St. Mark records the appearance to Mary of Magdala and the other women, but this is where it stops, with the rather dramatic ending: ‘they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.’ (Mark 16, 8). Perhaps this reaction in the women is understandable.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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)

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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.

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