Cremations at Breakspear Crematoriums

Feb. 22^nd   Edith Florence Williams (Rene) aged 89

Mar.   1^st     Allan Pepper, aged 80
         1^st     Margaret Anne Leslie, aged 83 (following service in St Giles’ Church)
         7^th     Freda Smith, aged 85       
         9^th     Bruce Caulkett, aged 63

Important as it is to celebrate Easter, its significance is in what comes next.  Jesus rose from the dead: he is alive!

Jesus is alive in helping us to have good relationships:

• making friends of former strangers or even enemies (as I said in February’s united evening service at the United Reformed Church),
• building and restoring bridges (as I said in last month’s Ickenham Church News),
• setting all free (as many continue to campaign, pray and strive for, while commemorating the 200^th anniversary of the Act to Abolish the Slave Trade in the British Colonies on 27^th March 1807).

Jesus is alive in relationships between churches in Ickenham.  On 22^nd April a united service at the United Reformed Church will celebrate 22 years of covenant partnership between the URC and St Giles.  Ickenham Church News is an example of what we do together and the pages show a lot more joint activity in community care and service as well as worship and study together.  Currently we’re talking about new ways of worship and sharing faith experience, and asking Jesus to lead us in this.

Is Jesus alive in your experience?  Prompting you in what to do, in decisions to make?  Motivating your compassion?  Comforting and giving courage when you are struggling?  Assuring you of forgiveness when you look back with anguish?  Inspiring new initiatives to take?  Attracting your aspirations when making lifestyle choices?  Raising your concern for global responsibility?  Do you see Jesus alive amongst those around you?

We hope you enjoy the Palm Sunday and Easter celebrations, and find the Last Supper and Good Friday commemorations moving.  If you sense the tumult of spiritual emotion during Holy Week, when recalling what Jesus went through, we hope it will lead on to a renewed confidence that our life is given purpose in his.  As the front-page images say: “Jesus is 4 Life, not just 4 Easter”.

This year, Easter Day falls on 8^th April. The week leading up to it, which begins with Palm Sunday on 1^st April, is very special in the church year and is known as Holy Week.

Holy Week begins with Palm Sunday, the day when the Church remembers the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. He had gone up to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover, and when He entered the City, the crowds gave him a rapturous welcome, throwing palms into his path. Today churches distribute crosses of palm fronds.

The next highlight of Holy Week falls on Maundy Thursday, which recalls the washing of the disciples’ feet by Jesus. The ceremony of the ‘washing of the feet’ was an important part of the liturgy of the Medieval church. ‘Maundy’ relates to the opening words of a typical service on this day from John 13: ‘A new command I give you: Love one another…..’ In Latin, this begins ‘mandatum novum do vobis’ The word ‘mundy’ is a corruption of the Latin ‘mandatum’. In England, in by-gone years, the monarch would wash the feet of a small number of his or her subjects. Nowadays the Queen distributes specially minted coins to the elderly at various cathedral services.

Good Friday is the day on which Jesus died on the Cross. It is the most solemn day in the Christian year. Decorations are removed from churches. In Lutheran churches, the passion narrative from a gospel was read out, a practice, which lies behind the ‘passions’, composed by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 – 1750).

The custom of observing a period of three hours’ devotion from midday to 3 p.m. on Good Friday goes back to the 18th century.

Lent ends with Holy Saturday. The Eastern Orthodox churches hold the ‘Paschal Vigil’, which leads directly into Easter Day.

Those eagle-eyed readers amongst you will have seen that the notice about the Ickenham Good Neighbour Scheme is no longer included at the foot on the front page or elsewhere in the magazine.   This excellent scheme instituted over 20 years ago has been so rarely required in the last 3 years that we have taken the decision to close it.  In taking this decision, we recognise the good neighbourliness that exists in Ickenham, and the improved provision for obtaining prescriptions and also the dial-a-ride scheme for lifts to hospital.   Many thanks to all who have helped with the scheme over the years. 

Adrian Guthrie and Bernie Collins

 

From St Giles’ Churchyard