People the light shines through
Dear friends
On 1st November, many churches celebrate All Saints Day. Perhaps we don’t do this very often in the URC, but I think it’s a really important one to mark. Why? Because saints are all around us, in our lives and our world.
So, what is a saint? In the past I used to think that saints were individuals who were perfect in every way and rather distant from our everyday lives. Now, my favourite description of a saint comes from a story about a little girl. She was on a school trip to a nearby church. When she was looking at the stained-glass windows depicting different saints, she exclaimed: “Now I know what a saint is! A saint is a person the light shines through!
I wonder, can we recognise – and gave thanks for – all those people in our lives who have been saints to us. All those individuals who have let the light of God’s love shine through – and transformed our lives as a result?
As 1 John 4:12 beautifully expresses: “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us, and God’s love is perfected in us.”
When a loved one dies, we deeply grieve their loss. And yet, their light, their legacy of love through words and actions doesn’t disappear, it continues to be with us and continues to shape us.
I also believe that we can all be living saints: letting the light shine through us by supporting each other, embracing diversity and creating a world where all are safe and loved.
All Saints for yesterday, today and tomorrow.
In peace,
Nicola
| CALENDAR | |||
| NOVEMBER | |||
| 2nd | SUNDAY | 10.45am | Morning Worship led by Rev Phil Chilvers |
| 7th | Friday | 10.30am | Funeral Service of Rev Robert Way Parish Church of St John the Baptist, Adel |
| 12 noon | Refreshments at Headingley St Columba | ||
| 9th | SUNDAY | 10.45am | REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY. Morning Worship led by our Minister, Rev Dr Nicola Robinson |
| 11th | Tuesday | 12.30pm | Guild Lunch |
| 12th | Wednesday | 9.30am | Elders’ Meeting |
| 16th | SUNDAY | 10.45am | Morning Worship led by Rev Phil Chilvers We shall be joined by our friends from Headingley Methodist Church |
| 23rd | SUNDAY | 10.45am | Morning Worship, including the Sacrament of Holy Communion, led by Rev Dr Rosalind Selby |
| 30th | SUNDAY | 10.45am | First Sunday of Advent and Christmas Gift Service. Morning Worship led by Rev Angela Hughes, Leeds Partnership Ministry team |
| 12 noon | Advent Lunch | ||
CHRISTMAS GIFT SERVICE
Our Gift Service will be held on Sunday 30th November. As in previous years we shall be supporting Leeds Women’s Aid and the Salvation Army. Monetary donations, toiletries or toys would be welcome. Teenagers are the age group usually missed out so anything suitable for that age group would be most welcome.
Cheques should be made out to either Leeds Women’s Aid or the Salvation Army and handed to Susan Bollon by 7th December please.
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A reminder that Churches Together share lunch together at the Skyrack Pub on the first Sunday of each month. All are welcome – several of our members go regularly and would love you to join them on Sunday, 2nd November.
OUR GUILD NOVEMBER LUNCH will be held on Tuesday, 11th November, meeting as usual from 12.30pm for lunch at 1 o’clock. All are welcome – just let us know if you would like to come. The cost is £4.
PARTNERSHIP ADVENT COURSE
GOD IS IN THE MANGER: Reflections on Advent and Christmas.
The course will start the week beginning 1st December and will run for 3 weeks:
Mondays at URC in South Leeds at 11am.
Wednesdays on Zoom at 7:30pm.
Thursdays at Stainbeck Church at 1:30pm.
See the flier below for further details.
ADVENT LUNCH
We shall be holding the Advent Lunch immediately after the service on Sunday, 30th November. The meal consists of soup and a roll, apple pie and cream. A list will be going up shortly, please add your name if you are able to join us, this will enable the catering team to have an idea of numbers.
A Prayer for Advent
God of hope
be with us in our Advent journey
to the stable and beyond,
be with us in our meeting
and in our travelling together,
be with us in our worship
and our praying together,
be with us in our Advent journey
to the stable and beyond,
our God of hope.
ST ANDREW
On the 30th November we shall be celebrating Advent Sunday and the beginning of the Church Year. But for many the Celebration of St. Andrew’s Day will hold more sway and happily for us we can celebrate both – even if this ‘manly’ saint is not our own particular Patron Saint.
Andrew was born between AD 5 and AD 10 in Bethsaida, a fishing port and his parents were Jonah, a fisherman, and Joanna; his brother was Simon.
In the Gospel of St. John we learn that Andrew first encountered John the Baptist and then, on meeting Jesus and spending the day talking with him found his brother, Simon, and told him, ‘We have found the Messiah’. They were called as Jesus’s first disciples; his ‘Fishers of Men’. He was not one of Christ’s close companions but it was he who brought the boy with the loaves and fishes to Jesus before the feeding of the five thousand. Perhaps there was something about him that made him sympathetic and approachable.
His missionary journeys are not recorded as are those of Paul or Peter but legend has it that Andrew travelled to Asia Minor and the Black Sea, returning twice more to Asia Minor and Greece, even travelling as far as Hungary, Russia and to the river Oder in Poland.
The proconsul, Aegeus, ordered his crucifixion in Patras, when he refused to stop preaching; by his own request the cross was diagonal for he, like his brother Peter, felt himself unworthy to be crucified on the upright cross of Christ. The date was said to be 30th November.
This is where the next part of the story begins. Regulus was a monk or bishop of the city of Patras, Greece, still part of the Roman Empire. In AD 345 Regulus had a vision that the Emperor Constantine had decided to remove Saint Andrew’s relics from Patras to Constantinople and that for safekeeping Regulus was to move as many bones as far away as he could to the western ends of the earth.
Regulus landed on the coast of Fife where he built a chapel that would act as their final resting place, now, of course, known as St. Andrews; although the shrine was moved to St. Mary’s Cathedral in Edinburgh.
The Declaration of Arbroath signed at the Abbey in 1320 was instrumental in St Andrew taking on his patron saint status. This declaration called for Scottish independence from Pope John XXII and naming Andrew as the Patron Saint.
St Andrew is also the patron saint of Greece and Russia, as well as for a range of groups such as fishermen, singers and even some health conditions, such as gout! I apologise to many of you who know the story of St Andrew and the associated legend (or a different version) but I must confess my own ignorance of some aspects – despite several close relatives named Andrew and it being a ‘family’ name.
The stained glass window of St Columba is to be found in the Abbey on Iona. The memorial to the fallen of World War I is from the church of St Mary Magdelene, Enfield, and the statue of St Andrew from St Peter’s Basilica Rome.
