Thought for the Week beginning 12^th June 2022

A couple of years ago, I had the unnerving experience of being interviewed on zoom by both Archbishops. Sentamu, Archbishop of York, was an eminent lawyer before becoming a priest, so I was expecting some difficult legal questions – and there were some, but his final question was direct and simple and took me right back to Sunday School : How do you start your day?

Well, the answer is that, most mornings, Tony and I start the day with a very simple Early Morning Prayer from a book called ‘A Celtic Liturgy’ by Cornish priest Pat Robson. 

It is very simple. It starts:

‘As the morning sun brings light to the world once more, I come in prayer to you, my Lord. You created me and you know me. I am your child.’

Then we read a psalm, dedicate the day, its problems and its joys, to God and ask that all that we do and say might be pleasing in His sight.

We seek God’s blessing, making the sign of the cross and praying:

‘The love of the Father who made me,

 The love of the Son who died for me,

 The love of the Spirit who dwells within me

 Bless me and keep me.

 Amen.’

As Wendy told us yesterday in her sermon, a distinctive insight of Celtic Christianity is its meditation on the mystery of God the Holy Trinity. Celtic people, living and working in the harshest environments, prayed often and in all circumstances for the protection of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Many such prayers have come down through the ages. But their love of God also led them to rejoice in His creation, relishing the stunning beauty of Britain’s coasts. Our reading from Proverbs in yesterday’s Eucharists is another such expression of wonder:

‘Does not wisdom call?.......The Lord created me long ago…..Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth, when he had not yet made earth and fields or the world’s first bits of soil. When he established the heavens……when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, when he set the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him…’

Christians understand those words from the Old Testament to point us to the creative interplay within the one God: the Father creating, the Son loving, the Spirit empowering and releasing the love of God into the created world. The Church’s season of Trinity coincides with high summer in Britain, as we revel in the beauty of new flowers bursting into bloom every day and the wonderful greenness of trees in full leaf, a time to meditate with gratitude on the many ways in which God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, pours His blessings on us.