We are a parish in Raynes Park South London under the Diocese of Southwark. We are grateful for your interest and invite you to learn more about our parish family.

Our main service is at 9.30am on Sundays and evening prayer at 4pm also on Sundays. Please have a look at Services Page for more details.

The Parish is now part of a United Benefice with All Saints' Church, South Wimbledon, (about two miles distance), with whom it shares its Parish Priest.  All Saints' Church is another Forward in Faith Parish under the pastoral care of the Bishop of Fulham.

 

22nd January 2012

3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Following Christ

We can only follow where Christ has gone before. It is only Jesus who can see the next step ; to be a follower means to walk step by step after Jesus. This simplifies life. It means that we do not have to see 'the distant scene' in which so much is unknown and beyond our power to change or influence. Jesus teaches us that each day 'has sufficient trrouble of its own.' When we pray the Lord's Prayer, as he taught us, 'each day our daily bread'. If we are seeking to respond to the call of Christ, to work out how he is calling us, then we have to begin with the present moment.

We have to ask the Lord in a straightforward way 'what do you want me to do now?' For the fisherman it meant 'immediately leaving their nets,' for Matthew it meant going home straightaway with Jesus and returning his unlawful tax claims. For St. Francis it meant giving away all he owned. In our seeking the Lord's call in the present moment we must trust that he gives us in our understanding and our conscience all we need to know the next step; remember he is only one step away.

Remember that you have only one soul; that you have only one death to die; that you have only one life, which is short and has to be lived by you alone; and there is only one Glory, which is eternal. If you do this, there will be many things about which you care nothing.

Teresa of Avila

Saint Angela Merici 27th January

St. Angela Merici would have been a radical and an innovator in any age, in her own she was a woman of extraordinary vision. She created a radical new form of religious life that combined contemplative prayer with social service. Her community of Ursuline sisters lived the dispersed life; they did not share a convent. Each woman remained in her parental home, or that of another relative, there she recited the Little Office of Our Lady and attended Mass in her parish Church. The sisters gathered around them young girls for tuition and effectiviely created a series of small and local girl schools. Such schools were popular and provided a good basic education. The women who joined the order were, in the main, prevented by family obligation or parental reserve from joining a conventional religious community. More senior members of the commnunity carried out the spiritual welfare of these 'Sisters at Home'. Such elders had a small group of sisters under their care; they would visit them, act as spiritual directors, pass on information about the rest of the community and report back to the Superior. There were occasional gatherings of the whole community, not least for retreats. A simple habit was worn and the sisters made vows of chastity and obedience, their poverty was relative to the home in which they lived. The idea proved to be too radical for the Church of the time: like the Beguine sisters of the Low Countries the Ursulines were gathered into traditional communities and the brave experiment of St Angela was ended.

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