1. Our preacher at the Abbey’s Mothering Sunday Eucharist this morning is The Reverend Stephen Gray.  Stephen is Chaplain of Sherborne School, but leaves us at the end of term to become Chaplain of Seaford College, near Petworth in Sussex. It will be good to have this opportunity to hear him for the last time in his present role. He will be much missed.

At the Abbey there will once again be a gift of a primula in a pot for all the ladies at the Parish Eucharist. Warmest thanks to members of the Mothers’ Union for collecting them and preparing them for distribution. Meanwhile there is a Mothering Sunday Family Service at St James the Great, Longburton, at 3.00 pm.

2. At the beginning of the service I will be presenting the Dean of Salisbury’s Award to six members of the Abbey Choir. They are Adam Soul, Alexander Hutton, Joe Hewetson, Joshua Smith and Byron Davis-Hughes and, from the back row, William Ellis. We entered six for the Dean’s Award and all six won it: congratulations to each and every one of them.

3. I have been flagging-up over the last two or three weeks our return today to our customary method of administering the Holy Communion. This was modified in the light of advice from the Archbishops at the time of the swine flu outbreak. We never withdrew the chalice, as many churches did, but simply put the onus on each individual whether or not to go to the chalice administrant. It worked well. But there is a general feeling that the time has come to revert to the traditional practice in the Abbey of the chalice administrant following the priest with the wafers along the communion rail. Where our other churches have made similar modifications, these too will cease from today.

Those who choose not to receive the chalice are still welcome to do so: simply bow your head and keep your hands out of the way as the chalice administrant passes by. But please remember that the Bishop’s regulations still prohibit two ways of receiving communion formerly practised by a very small minority. One is ‘intinction’ – dipping the wafer into the wine – and the other is receiving the wafer directly onto the tongue.

4. The Reverend Brenda Phillips preached an inspiring address last Monday  – the third in our traditional Monday evening series of Lent Devotional Addresses, followed by Compline. The fourth address – continuing the theme Fully Alive! from the Salisbury Diocesan Lent Course – will be given tomorrow, 15 March, at 8.00 pm. Copies of the first three addresses are available from the table by the Abbey bookstall, or can be found on the website – www.sherborneabbey.com

There will be a fifth and final address on Monday 22 March at 8.00 pm. But on the Monday of Holy Week – 29 March – there will be a special devotional service at the slightly earlier time of 7.30 pm, consisting of a programme of choral music for Passiontide sung by members of the Sherborne Chamber Choir, interspersed by readings which I have chosen for the occasion. This has been an enormously popular event for the last two years, and I am sure that it will be inspiring and helpful again this year

5. There has already been a promising response to the ‘colour supplement’ in last week’s Pewsheet from the Social Committee – the Resources Committee as was. In case you didn’t see it, it is inside today’s Pewsheet also. I would ask you all, please, to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest all that it says – and to respond as fully and helpfully as you can. That’s what being a church family is all about – isn’t it?

6. It was a great pleasure to rededicate the newly-refurbished Abbey Shop in the Close last Tuesday – and very good it looks, too. There is still some restocking to be done – especially in the book department – but the new-look shop is a pleasure to visit, as I hope you will soon find for yourself. It has some of the best cards in town! Meanwhile those taking part in our two Parish Holidays to Austria and the Oberammergau Passion Play are encouraged to come and inspect the two guidebooks to the village and the play. These are Every Pilgrim’s Guide to Oberammergau and its Passion Play , by Michael Counsell (£9.99) and the similarly-titled A Pilgrim’s Guide to Oberammergau and its Passion Play, by Raymond Goodburn. Philip Prout has obtained a few copies of each for the Abbey Shop, so that those going to Oberammergau this year (not necessarily on the Parish trips) can look at each and choose between them. Once all but the inspection copies have been sold, you can order the volume of your choice – Philip will be very glad to obtain it for you. My personal recommendation is to invest in Michael Counsell’s volume, which is full of good things.

7. Finally, our Holy Week and Easter leaflets , all bundled by street/avenue/road/close/etc are available today for distribution throughout the Benefice. Once again St Paul’s will be delivering everywhere north of the A30. Leaflets for Sherborne south of the A30 will be in the Abbey , but Castleton folk are encouraged to come along and take a few bundles too. Longburton and Lillington churches will be receiving their own bundles of leaflets to deliver.

Please do what you can to get these leaflets out this week . Where there is a cluster of very small streets, please take for as many as you can. This is a major work of witness and outreach, and all it requires is a walk in the fresh air! This year our leaflets include an insert with details of services at the Baptist, Cheap Street and Roman Catholic Churches – our Easter gift to our brothers and sisters in Christ. Thank you in anticipation of your generous help.