1. For some strange reason which I do not begin to understand, neither the Church of England nor the Church of Rome any longer call today Passion Sunday. Instead our official calendars rather laconically (and in small print) read Passiontide begins today. Is this what is called ‘dumbing-down’? Patior, pati, passus: to bear, to undergo, to suffer, to allow reads my Latin dictionary: on Passion Sunday Lent changes gear. Today we begin to prepare ourselves in heart and mind to enter into the suffering of our Lord. You can only reach the joy of Easter by way of the Cross.  

So I hope you will all want to enter into the experience of Passiontide through the keeping of Holy Week next week. Full details will be in the, April Bulletin , to be published next week. We are still distributing leaflets to every home in the Benefice (and thanks to all those who have helped with that). These again give details of the principal Holy Week and Easter services. There are spares available at the back of the Abbey. These services are there to help you mark each stage of Christ’s final journey to Calvary. If you keep faith with Him at the Cross, then the wonder and glory of the Empty Tomb become all the more real.

To those of you who are going away at Easter, might I add two requests? First, please do not take a holiday from your faith . Throughout Christendom (including the lands of Eastern Orthodoxy, where Easter is on the same date as in the West this year) there will be near you a church which would love to have you join in the Holy Week and Easter observances. If you are going to a destination where you are sure that will not be possible, then take your Bible with you and enter imaginatively and prayerfully into the sad and glad events. There are also some very helpful devotional books in the Abbey Shop in the Close which might usefully accompany you on your travels. Second, if you do share the worship of a different congregation and something strikes you as particularly helpful or inspiring, do tell me about it when you arrive home. If there is an Order of Service you are allowed to take away, I am always delighted to see what others are doing. It is good to learn about what has ‘worked’ in other churches. Many thanks – and have a super holiday. 

2. Last Sunday’s powerful Mothering Sunday sermon in the Abbey, by The Reverend Stephen Gray of Sherborne School, has now been printed and is also on our website: www.sherborneabbey.com . I mentioned last Sunday that Stephen leaves us at the end of term to become Chaplain of Seaford College, Petworth, but failed to add that he is also to be Priest in Charge of St. Giles, Graffham with All Saints, Woolavington. He expects to be a parish priest for about two-thirds of his time, and a school chaplain for the remaining third. His licensing and installation will take place on Monday 19 April at 7.30  pm at Graffham Parish Church.  

3. The first four addresses in our Lent Compline series Fully Alive have also now been printed and are available on our website. Tomorrow the Canon Pastor gives the final address which will bring the series to a close. The service begins at 8.00 pm. But next Monday, 29 March, at the earlier time of 7.30 pm, we will be holding in the Abbey an Holy Week Devotion. Our Director of Music Paul Ellis is also the Musical Director of the Sherborne Chamber Choir, and he has chosen a programme of choral music for Passiontide for the SCC to sing. My job has been to choose suitable readings in between. We have done something similar for the last two years, and each time it has been very powerful indeed – and extremely well received. Do come.

4. Our Palm Sunday Procession this year will once again boast a donkey, leaving from Greenhill at 9.15 am. If you are fit and able, do assemble at Greenhill to join the Choir and Clergy in our procession down Cheap Street. There will also be a donkey at St James the Great, Longburton, at their 10.00 am service.

5. I will be the preacher at the Maundy Thursday Eucharist at 7.00 pm. The service is also known as ‘The Eucharist of the Last Supper’, commemorating as it does the Lord’s last supper in the Upper Room. In the course of the service we re-enact the Lord’s washing of the feet of his disciples – which means that we need 12 volunteers to have their feet washed by the Celebrant. Please let the Parish Office know if you are willing to take part in this moving ceremony.

After the Eucharist, the Watch of the Passion is kept in the Lady Chapel until midnight. People come and go by the south-east door. We need to be sure of at least two people at any one time, and so there is a list at the Parish Office divided into half-hour ‘slots’. If you would like to help observe the Watch – entering into the feelings and agonies of Jesus in the garden, before his arrest and ‘trial’ – please let the Parish Office know your preferred time.

6. The next day, the Three Hours’ Devotion for Good Friday, from 12 noon to 3.00 pm, will be conducted by our good friend The Reverend Dr. Christina Le Moignan. We were at Cambridge together, after which Christina rose to the highest position in the Methodist Church, that of President of Conference. Now ‘retired’ and living with her sister in Sherborne, she currently chairs Sherborne Churches Together. 

The first two hours of the Devotion are divided into four sections, with an address in each. People are welcome to come and go on the half-hour, during the hymns. Then at 2.00 pm we are joined by an adult choir assembled from our own Choirmen and members of the Sherborne Chamber Choir for the Liturgy of the Cross. Christina will preach a final, short homily. There will be an opportunity for those who wish to do so to venerate the Cross, and also to receive Holy Communion from the Reserved Sacrament. It is an indescribably moving occasion.

7. The Easter Eve ceremonies on Holy Saturday (3 April), I find amongst the most inspiring – perhaps the most inspiring – of the entire year. Starting in darkness with the passages from the Old Testament which prefigure the Resurrection, we move to the kindling of the new fire, the lighting of the Paschal Candle, the proclamation of the Resurrection and the renewal of our Baptismal vows. If you have never been, you have been missing out on a wonderful experience. The service begins at 8.00 pm.  

8. If you were at any of our churches last Sunday you would have heard my announcement of impending staff changes. The Reverend Jonathan Triffitt has been appointed Vicar of Southbroom St James, Devizes, and The Reverend Graeme Hartley has been appointed Rector of Milborne Port with Goathill and Charlton Horethorne with Stowell. We congratulate them both on these exciting new appointments, whilst inevitably being sad that we are to lose them. They will both move from Sherborne at the end of the summer term, and after Easter I will have more details of their institutions, and will launch presentation funds for them both. Meanwhile, please pray for Jonathan, Joanne, William and Molly Triffitt and for Graeme, Kim and Annabella Hartley as they prepare for their moves and the next chapters in their ministry.

I also announced that on Easter Day the Bishop of Sherborne will be licensing the eminent scholar The Reverend Dr. Alistair Stewart to a new, two-year, post of Priest Theologian of Sherborne Abbey. Alistair will be continuing his research in Patristics (the study of the Early Church) whilst giving some assistance in the Benefice here. He and his wife Eudora are now living at Thornford Rectory, and will be out and about in Sherborne prior to Alistair’s licensing. Please give them a very warm welcome.

9. It will probably be of interest to many of you that Sherborne’s General Election Hustings have been provisionally arranged. Hustings throughout the county are being held under the auspices of Dorset Churches Together, and so our Sherborne event will be under the umbrella of Sherborne Churches Together. Provided there is no major change to the expected Election timetable, the meeting will take place in the Digby Memorial Church Hall at 8.00 pm on Monday 26 April . I have been asked to chair the evening. But you will understand that this can  only be a provisional arrangement for the moment. Watch this space!

10. There are two ‘colour supplements’ to the Pewsheet today. One is the final appearance of a note from the Social Committee: do please read it carefully and respond if you can. The other is from me, and is basically a piece of market research to see if there would be interest in my arranging a ‘Holocaust Tour’ to Poland in 2011. Again, do please read the leaflet and use the response form if you are indeed interested.