Welcome
Everyone welcome,
no exceptions
Everyone welcome,
no exceptions
Christian Aid Week this year is 12-18 May 2024.
To raise funds, there will be a Christian Aid Big Brekkie outside church before Mass (9:30-10:30) on 12 May featuring freshly-made bacon butties!
On Saturdays in April through to July, Lambeth Council are organising a series of Recycling Roadshows offering an opportunity to get rid of recyclable waste that can’t be collected as part of the weekly household recycling service.
We are all experts at loving: between us we have done an awful lot of it; tenderly cared for dying relatives; been alongside loved ones in distress; persistently put the needs of family and friends above our own. But is it enough? In John 15:9-17 Jesus does not just command us to love; he commands us to “do these things” “in order that we might love”. What things? Well, he has just finished washing his disciples’ feet. For Jesus, love is about acts of service, it is about responding to the needs of others. Moreover, it is offered to all indiscriminately, without exception, whether they deserve or not and whether we like it or not. Jesus doesn’t pick and choose, he washes the feet of Judas who will betray him and of Peter who will deny him. It takes the disciples some time to appreciate just how indiscriminate God’s love is. Last week in Acts Peter is astonished when the Ethiopian eunuch demands that he too be baptised. This week, Acts 10:44-48, the disciples are all astounded when it becomes clear that the gift that God has given them God has also given to Cornelius’ household, even though they are gentiles, even though they are Romans. Love that is in the service of the needs of others, love that is given without partiality stretches us beyond our usual acts of loving, takes us out of our comfort zones and out into a world that is crying out for love. The kind of love that can transform the giver, receiver and the world around us. We cannot love like this on our own but God is always going before us (sending Peter to the Ethiopian, pouring the spirit upon Cornelius’s household). God’s love will flow with or without us but God invites us to abide in this love, to share in its outpouring. God choose us so that our joy may be complete.