The Anglican Church of All Saints

The services for this year have been planned taking into account the current Spanish government regulations, and the recommendations of the Diocese in Europe.

13th June – The Second Sunday after Trinity

11am Said Eucharist – Celebrant: Fr Ron Corne,  Preacher: Judith Rigby.

12 noon – Tenerife Virtual Church:  This week we are thinking about the kingdom of God. We will be live on YouTube https://youtu.be/0ynyROHP-5o Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/564485441080665 as well as on all of these websites http://tenerifevirtual.church/ and http://tenerifesouthchurches.com/

As always, the service sheet can be found at http://tenerifevirtual.church/servicesheet.pdf and please be ready with something similar to bread and wine if you’d like to join in with the agape meal part of the service.

9th June 2021

Dear Friends,

Whilst sitting quietly in prayer in Winchester Cathedral a glance to the sky reveals a ceiling of over a thousand carvings, in wood or stone, that cover the joins between the stone ribs of its vaulted ceilings. Marvellous 13th-century leaf designs, Renaissance images of angels, animals and beasts, heraldic badges and emblems of Christ’s Passion, and resting in mortuary chests above me were the mortal remains of pre-Conquest kings and bishops. A major development in 2015 revealed that the bones in these chests were from the late Anglo-Saxon and early Norman periods. These findings confirmed that the bones date from the same periods as the names on the chests, which include eight kings, two bishops and one queen. It is not yet certain, but these bodily remains could be those of Queen Emma, daughter of Richard I , Duke of Normandy, the wife of two successive Kings of England, Ethelred and Cnut, and the mother of King Edward the Confessor and King Hardacnut. She was a powerful political figure in late Saxon England, and her family ties provided William the Conqueror with a measure of justification for his claim to the English throne. Completely unexpected was the discovery of two boys who had died between the ages of 10 to 15 years in the mid-11th to late 12th-century. They were almost certainly of royal blood.

Much less important is my cabinet in my little house which contains many relics of my own, and memories of important moments, some handed on to me from my elderly aunts. My glass from Venice, my aunts pretty ornaments and the mug commemorating the Coronation on the 12th May 1937 of George VI, and of Queen Elizabeth. These things like those mortuary chests are important to us as transient human beings. Touching or seeing them remind us of a time and a moment of how it was as we move through life. They point to a moment in time which was important then and now for most, long forgotten.

The dynamic and incredible truth for the Christian is that although the eyes that originally captured these images may have long passed there is someone who is with us who was at each of these important events in history, from the Anglo Saxons to this very moment. This someone is of course Jesus Chris,t eternal in the heavens, the Wonderful Counsellor, the Mighty God. The one who passes to us something that is an eternal touchstone to grasp as we move through life that is his Word in the scriptures.

St Jerome, who lived between 342-419 AD, wrote: “You are reading? No. Your betrothed is talking to you. It is your betrothed, that is, Christ, who is united with you. He tears you away from the solitude of the desert and brings you into his home, saying to you, ‘Enter into the joy of your Master.’

O Lord my God, most merciful,
most secret, most present,
most constant, yet changing all things,
never new, and never old,
always in action, yet always quiet,
creating, upholding, and perfecting all,
who has anything but what you have given?
or what can any man say when he speaks about you?
Yet have mercy on us, O Lord,
that we may speak to you, and praise your Name.
Amen
Jeremy Taylor, 1613–67 (from St Augustine) in Daily Prayer.

Fr. Ron Corne.
Chaplain.