...and a team of us wove our way from St Patrick's, Soho Square, via St Giles-in-the-Fields and Bloomsbury Baptist Church to SS Anselm and Cecilia in Kingsway (links with Bishop Richard Challoner and the Gordon Riots) to St Etheldreda's Ely Place and thence to St Sepulchre-without-Newgate. I had been asked to lead a History Walk for members of SPES, the St Patrick's Evangelisation School, and we were joined by a number of other enthusiasts...we explored the history that tells the story of the Christian faith in this land from Roman times onwards, we prayed in each church we visited, we experienced kind hospitality and we pondered the passing of the centuries...
The SPES team is a terrific group, lively and enthusiastic and prayerful. St Patrick's is a joy - the church, so gloriously restored, is a place of great beauty and a midday Mass there is peace and refreshment in hectic London.
Exploring history involves the big sweep of things - Saxons and Normans, St Giles founded by Queen Matilda as part of a hospice for lepers, the events of the Reformation,. the Free Church traditions and the Baptists, Victorian England and the Catholic Revival...but it's also the everyday and the ordinary, the local men who died in the Great War of 1914-18 and are commemorated on a heartbreaking Memorial which begs that they never be forgotten, the parish notices in KIngsway which show Church life still bustling on, the people dropping into St Etheldreda's quietly to pray as we gazed at its stained glass and statues...
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3 comments:
What rubbish. No blasphemy at Assisi and Auntie doesn't brush things under carpets. When you are brave enough to write under your own name, send me an email marked NOT FOR PUBLICATION with an address to which I can reply to you, and I'll put you in touch with some good reading material to help you think things through...
Auntie J.
Dear Auntie Joanna:
I never tire of reading about your history walks in London. You make HISTORY COME ALIVE for your walkers and readers.
Here, in Westchester Co. NY, the Battle of White Plains (10/28/1776)was remembered. It was a British victory, but we Yanks are grateful that General Howe showed no desire to chase Gen. Washington to finish him off!
We also had 125th Birthday celebrations for the Statue of Liberty in NYC Friday.
Halloween festivities are being moved indoors this weekend as the east coast is expecting SNOW! In October!
Sheila A. Waters
Bronxville, NY, USA
Will you put these walks into video form so that us envious Catholics who love history and live on the other side other the Atlantic can have our own faith and sense of church history enriched?
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