A Grace in honour of two trailblazing City women

Miss Sylvia Tutt, Master of the Worshipful Company of Secretaries and Administrators (1983/4)

A grace written for a lunch held by the Lady Masters Association at Trinity House, London on Thursday 12th October 2023 marking the fortieth anniversary of the first Lady Master of a Livery Company (Miss Sylvia Tutt) and the fortieth anniversary of the first female Lord Mayor of London (Dame Mary Donaldson). It was a great honour and privilege to be invited and to meet so many other trailblazing City women - and to hear from the second female Lord Mayor of London, Dame Fiona Woolf.

Further Prayers for Choral Evensong on Sunday 1st October 2023

The Four and Twenty Elders Casting their Crowns before the Divine Throne by William Blake

Further Prayers written for Choral Evensong at St Giles-in-the-Fields on Sunday 1st October 2023 (The Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity) kept as Harvest Sunday based on text from Isaiah 6.1-7 and Revelation 4.1-11 and the anthem ‘Thou Visitest the Earth’ by Maurice Greene, based on verses from Psalm 65.

Sermon - The uncomfortable truth about God's love

James Janknegt (b1953), The Day Laborers

A sermon given during the Sung Eucharist at St George’s Bloomsbury on Sunday 24th September 2023 (The Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity), Year A, Proper 20, based on readings from Jonah 3.10-end of 4, Psalm 145.1-8, Philippians 1.21-end and Matthew 20.1-16

Homily - Freedom and Judgement

The Three Judges, Georges Rouault (Tate Gallery)

A Homily given during Choral Evensong at St Giles-in-the-Fields on Sunday 17th September 2023 (Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity) based on readings from Job 1 and Matthew 7.1-14. In this homily I sought to explore personal disclosure, as part of my curacy training. 

Sermon - An unattainable ideal or a living reality?

Instant City, Archigram/Peter Cook, 1969 

A sermon given during Holy Communion at St Giles-in-the-Fields on Sunday 17th September 2023 (The Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity) based on readings from Galatians 6.11-18 and Matthew 6.24-end. In this sermon I explored the notion of challenge in preaching, as part of my curacy training.

Further Prayers for Choral Evensong on Sunday 10th September 2023

Zandile Tshabalala, Untitled, 2021

Further Prayers written for a service of Choral Evensong at St Giles-in-the-Fields based on text from the hymn ‘O Perfect Love’ by Dorothy F. Gurney (1883), Psalm 119.46-64, Proverbs 31.10-31 (‘The Valiant Woman’) and Matthew 6.19-34.

Lessons from a "well seasoned" Saint

Autumn Landscape with Four Trees (1885) by Vincent van Gogh

Message for the Parish Magazine of St Giles-in-the-Fields, September 2023:

On the day the church remembers St Giles, the patron saint of leprosy sufferers, summer turns to autumn in the UK meteorological calendar. Seasonal change was a pet topic of the pioneering ecologist, ornithologist and priest Gilbert White. While many of his conclusions have since been disproved by modern science - such as his belief that swallows hibernate underground (rather than migrate) in winter - his observations about leprosy appear to be borne out, in part. 

The Life of St Giles in Scripture

Detail - Saint Giles from The Hermit Saints Triptych by Hieronymus Bosch

If we wanted to meditate on the Life of St Giles using scripture, which passages might we choose?

The different accounts of the Life of St Giles (summarised in a post at this link) offer a number of possibilities:

The Life of St Giles - a Living Text

The Mass of Saint Giles, by The Master of St Giles c1500 (The National Gallery)

My parish church is dedicated to St Giles whose feast day is September 1st. Surveying recent scholarship on surviving manuscripts shows how the ‘Life of St Giles’ is a living text - how his story has evolved as he inspired each new generation. How do we respond to the text today?

A Bouquet for Saint Giles

Saint Giles and the Deer by The Master of Saint Gilles, c1500 (National Gallery)

‘Saint Giles and the Deer’ by the mysterious ‘Master of Saint Giles’ originally formed one section of a multi-panelled altarpiece dating from the early 1500’s. 

The painting and its companion piece ‘The Mass of St Giles” depict two of the three most popular stories about the saint mentioned in the accounts of his life, the most recent of which being The Golden Legend, a famous medieval hagiography.

 

Both paintings can be seen in The National Gallery and their website allows us to zoom in to see minute detail. The commentary for St Giles and the Deer states: “The different types of plants and flowers in the wilderness are perhaps a reference to the legend that the desert flowered around Giles’s hermitage.” Tantalisingly no description of the flora or what it might symbolise is offered - nor in The Golden Legend or other versions of the Life of St Giles - so I have attempted to make an educated guess!

Sermon - Forgiving the Unjust Steward

Fraternal Forgiveness, Andrey Yanev

A sermon given during Holy Communion at St Giles-in-the-Fields on Sunday 6th August 2023 (The Ninth Sunday after Trinity) based on readings from 1 Corinthians 10.1-13 and Luke 16.1-9