Sermon preached for All Saints Sunday – 31st October 2021

Deacon Chris Saccali – St Paul’s Athens

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

In one of his daily reflections Pope Francis said recently: ‘ Allow me to say we are all saints then we become sinners but fundamentally we are all saints.’ Now how hard is that to take on board not only for ourselves but for others. Let me repeat it:

Recently, there was a meeting of nowadays saints at Archdeaconry Synod in Corfu. We had failed to gather last year and some clergy and lay representatives were or felt unable to attend earlier in the month, but about 35 of us met face to face, albeit keeping health and safety precautions. And what a joy it was to be together again. That joyous feeling was palpable. It was our Archdeacon Leslie’s first Synod of the East but he had come almost directly from the Nordic and Baltic Synod. Bishop Robert and his wife Helen had come from the Northern countries’ Synod previously held in Belgium. A cluster of synods and saints whose members lay and clergy keep the Diocese in Europe churches going especially in these strange times we are living in.

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Sermon for the 19th Sunday after Trinity – 10th October 2021: Amos 5, 6-7, 10-15; Hebrews 4, 12-end; Mark 10, 17-31.

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

Please note: there is no sermon from me on 17^th October because I am at the Archdeaconry Synod in Corfu. On Oct 24^th the Harvest service is at Kokotos Vineyard so there is NO service in St. Paul’s!

I am often asked by Greek Orthodox faithful if we have saints in the Church of England. I could embark on the long answer about who and what saints are, and how St. Paul uses the word ‘saint’ for all the believers in the Christian communities to which he writes letters.

However, I know that this is not the question I am being asked. I’m being asked if we have saints in a canonical understanding of the word, women and men designated with the title ‘saint.

Gladly I can answer confidently with a ‘yes’ because the Church of England, the worldwide Anglican Church, has a calendar of saints, or a Sanctorale to give it its Latin title. These would be days classified as festa rather than feria – feast days rather than ordinary days.

In the Church of England Calendar of Saints there is a core of names of holy women and men, whose days are celebrated by the whole church, but each diocese is encouraged to have its own additional days to celebrate more local or regional saints, who are not in the national calendar.  Many of these saints, both local and national, ascribe their names to parish churches. This week is a good example.

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Audio Sermon for the 19th Sunday after Trinity – 10th October 2021

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

Audio Sermon for the 18th Sunday after Trinity – 3rd October 2021

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

Sermon for the 18th Sunday after Trinity – 3rd October: The feast of St Francis

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

(Later on this day there is a ‘Pet Blessing’ service)

Francis was born in Assisi in central Italy either in 1181 or the following year. He was baptised Giovanni but given the name Francesco by his father, a cloth merchant who traded in France and had married a French wife. There was an expectation that he would eventually take over his father’s business but Francis had a rebellious youth and a difficult relationship with his father. After suffering the ignominy of imprisonment following capture whilst at war with the local city of Perugia, he returned a changed man. He took to caring for disused churches and for the poor, particularly those suffering from leprosy. Whilst praying in the semi-derelict church of St Damian, he distinctly heard the words: “Go and repair my church, which you see is falling down.” Others joined him and he prepared a simple, gospel-based Rule for them all to live by. As the Order grew, it witnessed to Christ through preaching the gospel of repentance, emphasising the poverty of Christ as an example for his followers. Two years before his death, his life being so closely linked with that of his crucified Saviour, he received the Stigmata, the marks of the wounds of Christ, on his body. At his death, on the evening of 3 October 1226, his Order had spread throughout western Christendom.

The life of St. Francis was the subject of a very dramatic film directed by Franco Zefferelli.

One scene is particularly effective. An aristocratic friend of Francis has gained permission for Francis to be received at the papal court at the Lateran Palace. His purpose is to ask the pope’s permission to start a small community of men to live a simple life, close to nature, and committed to sharing in the poverty of the poorest in Italian rural society.

Francis enters the audience chamber with a well written Latin petition – prepared for Francis by his learned friend.

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Sermon for the 15th Sunday after Trinity – 12th September 2021: Is 50, 4-9; James 3, 1-12; Mark 8, 27-end.

Fr Leonard Doolan, St Paul’s Athens

Just around the coastline from the town of Capernaum there is a little beach – a bit stony rather than sandy, but lovely. I remember my first visit to that beach back in the 1990s for three reasons.

The first is that in between all the beautifully coloured stones on the wet beach there were little seedlings growing. Seedlings of palm trees; for a Scottish born boy this was a rather exotic thing to find growing wild, as it were. Along with a fellow pilgrim and good friend we carefully uprooted a couple of the seedlings and bagged them in sealed bags. Our friend had a conservatory so she agreed to bring the seedlings on, one would be for her, the other for me.

It didn’t work out because the seedlings grew to such a size that it became impossible to transfer them and they now make a very handsome decoration to their conservatory in the East of England.

I know what you are thinking. It is illegal to smuggle seedlings of plants from one country to another. I can remember how anxious we felt as we successfully got the seedlings through airport controls – especially as another friend had packed some boxes of dates in his suitcase, and the security people thought the stones in the dates were showing up on the X-ray machine as bullets!

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Audio Sermon for the 15th Sunday after Trinity – 12 September 2021

Fr Leonard Doolan

Sermon for the 14th Sunday after Trinity – 5th September 2021

Nelly Paraskevopoulou  – St Paul’s Athens

May I speak in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen

Isaiah was a theologian, reformer, poet and orator. He has been called the prince of Old Testament prophets, the Saint Paul of the Old Testament, the greatest prophet of the Old Testament, the 5^th Evangelist. The name Isaiah means ‘God is salvation’. His long ministry, covering fifty years or more, were spent in Jerusalem, where he was the personal prophet of four different kings of Israel. An interesting personality, Isaiah wrote during the stormy period marking the expansion of the Assyrian empire and the decline of Israel.

The book of Isaiah is the only Old Testament book to predict both the virgin birth of Christ (7:14), and His dual nature both human and divine (9:6). 7 and is  the Old Testament book most often quoted in the New Testament.

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Sermon for the 13th Sunday after Trinity 29th August 2021: JAMES 1:17-27, MARK 7

Deacon Chris Saccali – St Paul’s Athens

May God be on my lips and in all our hearts AMEN

Usually at this point in the year, I ask all of you whether you have had a good summer. First of all, we are not all present and.secondly, you may not have been able to get a break at all. It has been a very, hot, hard summer following on from a difficult winter. God does not promise us an easy way and we need to be wise and listen to His word for our world and ourselves.

One of my summer jobs was to get my car through KTEO, its biennial MOT. Now, if you don’t know my car is the battered blue one, usually parked in the side street next to St Paul’s. My husband flatly refuses to take it for its inspection and indeed why should he? My son has a few choice words to say too as it used to belong to him but he has a spanking new one now. I have no such qualms as it gets me from A to B and I really to get to go to some unusual and outlying places as Deacon. At the moment in charred and burnt surroundings after the fires.

Outward appearances, however, can be deceptive, as we know. My vehicle passed again with flying colours, as I try and keep it well maintained and reliable, legal and ready for service.

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Sermon for the 12th Sunday after Trinity – 22nd August 2021:Joshua 24, 1-2, 14-18; Eph 6, 10-20; John 6, 56-69.

Fr Leonard Wallace, St Paul’s Athens

[For the following two Sundays I am present but not the preacher. Next sermon from me is Sept. 12^th]

If you ever have the privilege of visiting Capernaum by the Sea of Galilee, home village of the fishermen disciples of Jesus, there is a superb synagogue to be seen there. Though much of the little town of Capernaum from the time of Jesus can be seen in excavation, this synagogue is of a Roman date, later than the time of Jesus, perhaps built in the 4^th century AD. Nonetheless the presence of this ancient building, probably on the very site of the synagogue mentioned in today’s gospel, exudes atmosphere and mystique, the fragrance of antiquity.

Capernaum originally means the ‘village of comfort’, but when Jesus teaches there his message is not such easy listening. His listeners had become complacent in their dependence on the facts of history. Way back in the time of the exile, Jesus reminds them, God had provided them with all they needed for their strenuous 40 year sojourn in the wilderness – specifically referencing the Manna. However those who had been sustained by the Manna all, at some time afterwards, died of all the usual causes. When Jesus speaks of the bread from heaven he is not talking about the same thing. Those who eat the true Bread from heaven will live for ever. This is a shock, and they tell him so.

If the Greek translation is anything like reflective of the Aramaic of Jesus, then even the language Jesus is using can be challenging, for he is really say those who ‘munch’ or those who ‘chomp’ on me will live. He is not even using polite table language.

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