Bishop of London's Christmas Message

Listen to the Bishop's Message here

The Christmas story begins with an act of Big Government. Caesar Augustus sends out a decree that, "all the world should be taxed."

It is a reminder that the debate about the proper relationship between the state and society is nothing new.

Clearly things are different at the beginning of the 21st century and talk of the Big Society is an attempt to reassess the relationship between the state, the individual citizen and the "little platoons" whose importance in developing the possibility of a creative and democratic society is once more being appreciated.

As a result of Caesar's decree, Mary and Joseph were dislodged from their own homes in Nazareth and sent to their census point in Bethlehem. Despite challenges which could have destroyed their unity, they remained faithful to each other. Their child was, however, born in the most vulnerable circumstances and very soon the family became refugees, victims of Herod's persecution.

Christmas is a time for celebrating the 'small societies' which are created by generous self-giving. We should go out of our way to show our appreciation for all those who provide a strong and loving environment in which the young can flourish in their early years.

However, our gratitude should not stop there. We should celebrate the volunteers, the mainstay of the myriad of charities which are one of the glories of Britain. It is all those who sustain the small societies – the families, the charities – who provide the oxygen on which the health of the Big Society depends.

The Deputy CEO of the Paddington Development Trust was recently chairing a meeting of voluntary organisations in the area. She asked in the light of the forthcoming cuts, how many of the fifty organisations represented in the room were confident of delivering the same level of service to the local community in a year's time. Only three hands went up – all Church of England vicars.

It is an illustration of the vital role that churches and other faith communities play among others in building the Big Society.

The Diocese of London is indeed rich with examples of many people doing just this, with 600 community projects enabling local people to support the young and the vulnerable across 450 parishes. Examples span from a church in Holborn that has trained 12 "listeners" to offer professional support services to City workers feeling under pressure in their jobs, to a church in Tottenham that is providing an early intervention counselling service to 33 East Haringey schools. The Church in London has for some time embraced the challenge of providing the types of support networks that are proving to be the foundations of today's Big Society.

The best contribution of Government in these circumstances is to reduce the regulatory burden on volunteers and allow them the freedom to carry out their vital work.

No country is rich enough to supply the absence of the little societies which bring meaning and comfort in the lives of individuals and which oxygenate our civic life by making us apt for the compromises and cooperation of life together.

When therapeutic social structures decay, no ambulance service, however well-funded, will be sufficient to deal with the consequences.

Part of the experience of the past is that there is a cost to volunteering and that charities, churches, and other groups cannot simply expand their volunteering without also expanding the infrastructure to provide support, advice, training and crucially management of volunteers.

State support is crucial in building this infrastructure and capacity. As Mohammad Yunus (the great pioneer of micro credit) has argued in Building Social Enterprise the key is in uniting framework with goodwill and passion. Goodwill and passion by themselves are not enough but they are essential.

It was the childhood of the Saviour in the home of Mary and Joseph which laid the foundation for his latest work. Jesus Christ is the human face of a God who so loved the world that he was generous and gave of his own self. Living in the way he taught, we can see that it is in reaching beyond ourselves in generous service that we reveal our deepest and truest nature. The more ego is diminished, the richer we become in soul.

The State must from time to time intervene and use lawful coercion to hold things together. Society by contrast is founded on the mutual respect and willing cooperation of good neighbours. They will be the true engineers of the Big Society.

St Peter’s Bourne

St Peter’s Bourne
Christian Education and Spirituality Centre



The community of St Peter’s Bourne will be remembering St Jude's in their prayers this week and at the weekly house communion on Friday at 12.15 p.m.

Father, we thank you for the friendship and support we find in our fellowship in the universal Church. We ask your blessing on this parish that together we may be agents in the breaking in of your kingdom on earth as in heaven, through Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen.

Please pray for us also.

St Peter’s Bourne is set in a beautiful garden on the borders of north London and Hertfordshire, a short distance from central London. We are primarily a centre for Christian groups and individuals to use as a resource in their pilgrimage of faith: a place for study, to develop understanding, to deepen their belief and to enrich their spiritual life. The comfortable communal areas include a large Sitting Room with conservatory area and the Grahamstown Room can be used for meetings; both of which overlook the garden. Other facilities include the Chapel as well as The PetRoc Bookshop and the Edmonton Resource Library.

St Peter’s Bourne can cater for day groups of up to 25 people and accommodate 10 – 12 people for residential stays. We can offer both weekday and weekend bookings. A flip chart, overhead projector and multimedia projector are also available.

Our regular programme of events includes, After-dinner talks, Quiet Days and Guided Retreats.

Please visit our web site www.stpetersbourne.com

Bishop of London's Easter Message

The Bishop of London has published his Easter message for the Diocese of London.

The skirmishing is well under way in advance of the General Election campaign. Attention is focussed on what the government can and should do in our present circumstances. Clearly the decision we have to make is important and it is important to be involved at least by turning out to vote. It will be an opportunity to send a number of messages. One is that we demand certain standards of behaviour in our elected politicians but another is that those who are offering themselves for election out of a genuine desire to serve deserve to be honoured. We all suffer if public service is denigrated or if cynicism takes hold.

But this is Holy Week. Once again we are accompanying Jesus through the events of this week. Once again after the experiences of the past year, the story is fresh.

After his tumultuous welcome from the crowds, they turn against him. He is sacrificed to political expediency with its dismal but rational account of human motivation.

Pilate is trapped in this rational world view. He does ask “what is truth?” but he is merely toying with the question; jesting and does not stay for an answer. Most important he does not see the answer in the suffering body standing in front of him. Pilate stands for those who have separated the search for truth from what they see. He has turned his back on the Word made flesh.

If Jesus had only come preaching manners and morality then he would have been honoured. But God so loved the world that he gave himself to strangers, to the unclean, the unworthy and even to enemies. For God, love is not an emotion or a reward for the righteous, it is self giving.

It is hard to tolerate the generosity of God. As one of the prophets of London William Blake expressed it –

“And we are put on earth a little space
That we may learn to bear the beams of love.”
The cross is the shape imposed on God’s love.

What Governments do and do not do is significant but there will be no profound transformation without an earthquake of the spirit in which we are involved. For one thing the spirit of generous volunteering will be crucial in the difficult years to come when the inevitable cuts will have an impact on the vulnerable. The Church in the Diocese is already hard at work in a large number of projects right across the spectrum of need. As local authorities have had to trim their youth work programmes, the church has been employing more youth workers. At the same time we have a responsibility to reach out to the old and infirm and to raise the question of why some societies value elders whilst others simply have the elderly.

I am also grateful for the fact that our commitment to going beyond ourselves does not stop at the shores of our own country. ALMA, our link with the church in Angola and Mozambique has been exploring new territory. I was very moved by a visit to Old Ford school, a community school where a whole corridor is devoted to art works and poems by the children inspired by the figure of the “music man” fashioned in Mozambique out of the debris of the civil war. At the same time in the City of London a new venture has been launched in collaboration with a number of experienced NGO’s. “Arcubus” is intended to raise an initial sum of £1 million to finance small loans and to create banking services in one of the poorest parts of Mozambique where there are only four banks for an area the size of the UK.

Whoever we are, the question at the foot of the cross this Holy Week is what and to whom can we be a generous neighbour.

One of the most heart breaking moments in the Good Friday story in St John’s version is when Jesus sees his mother and the beloved disciple, John himself, standing by the cross. He entrusts them to one another. “Woman behold thy son” – then to the disciple “Behold thy mother”. “And from that hour that disciple took her into his own home.”

If we see the truth in the cross then the generosity of God impels us to become givers in our turn, helping others so that they are enabled to be generous. It is the deep and simple mystery of the faith that the more we give, beyond ourselves, the more we become our true selves; the more we lose ourselves the more we find our true identity.

This Holy Week I have been deeply moved by the work of Barry and Margaret Mizen. Their son Jimmy was murdered two years ago just after his sixteenth birthday. Instead of giving way to bitterness and hatred they have launched a Foundation to “promote the good in young people”. With the parents of other murdered young people, Damilola Taylor, Robert Knox and Daniel Idowu they have formed Families United to help the victims of violent crime. Barry Mizen said “Change has got to come from all of us. Look out for each other and take care of each other and look to the sort of values we need to live with.” His message resonates in a London where two more young men have been murdered in recent days.

All the laws and regulations; the grants and the courses, important as they are will be inadequate unless there is a resurrection of the generous spirit of the volunteer. People tempted to violence can be helped in various ways but they can only be transformed by honest and generous relationships.

The great economist John Maynard Keynes who was not a believer observed to Virginia Woolf wistfully and perhaps a little prematurely – “We destroyed Christianity and yet had its benefits.”

It has yet to be proved that profound transformation in our world is possible without seeing the truth of the God who so loved the world that he was generous and gave his only son to die upon the cross to love the loveless into loving.

May God bless you this Holy Week and may the sacrifice of his son upon the cross further open up your life to health and generosity.

Monsignor Graham Leonard

Bishop Graham ordains the Vicar (second from the left) to the diaconate in 1984

The death is announced today (6 January) of Monsignor Graham Leonard, formerly Bishop of London. He was the most senior Anglican churchman to convert to the Roman Catholic Church since the Reformation.

Bishop Richard writes: "As Bishop of Willesden and then after a spell in Cornwall, as Bishop of London for ten years, Graham Leonard served the Diocese with faithfulness and a particular care for its large number of Church Schools. He will be mourned by his many friends and colleagues and our hearts go out in sympathy to Priscilla who played such a significant part in Bishop Graham's London ministry".

May he rest in peace.