From: The Bishops acting as PEVs in the Province of Canterbury.
To: Those Parishes who look to us for Oversight.
Holy Week 2011
Dear brothers and sisters,
By the time you read this we will have seen and prayed with very many of you at the various chrism masses throughout the Province. It was a real privilege to be with you as your priests renewed what is the reliable and certain gift of priesthood in these very uncertain times. Be assured of our prayers for you as you all prepare to renew your own baptismal promises at the Paschal celebration. Thank you for your willingness to persevere each in your own ministry. May God who has most surely put the desire to renew these promises into your heart, give you the grace and courage to keep them.
Though the uncertainties and difficulties that beset us can weigh us down, this is the season in which we allow the Risen One to lift us up. So often in the healing miracles of Jesus, he says to the one bowed down by some infirmity or another, ‘Rise up’ reminding us that all the miracles during his ministry were a sort of foretaste or earnest of the resurrection, which is His by right, and ours by grace.
The Church exists to raise people up, and becomes Christ’s helping hand to lift the fallen and point them toward the ultimate gift of eternity. We all know how difficult it is to look in to the future, and we cannot know what is to happen to us, even each day, however much we think our time is planned. We don’t know how things are going to develop for us as catholic Anglicans, and some of that future is not in our own hands, but we are people who know the reality of the resurrection and where we are heading. We must allow the ultimate future to inform our attitude of heart to the steps we must take now.
We are committed, along with other bishops of our tradition to the formation of a Society to continue the fight for what we believe to be the true and proper way. A legal Constitution for the Society is in process, and it is great that in various places up and down the country local groups are beginning to form, in the hope that we shall be able to convince the Church of the goodness of the idea. Alongside this it has been good for the three of us to have had the opportunity to engage with some of the bishops who do not agree with us, but who are your diocesans. While the voting on legislation before the Synod draws ever closer, there is we believe among at least some of those bishops, a desire for a new conversation in a new spirit of listening. That’s important, because a Society, however set up, must be taken seriously by the wider Church if it is to have a future.
It will be a wonderful thing for us to lay down this temporary responsibility when the new bishops of Richborough and Ebbsfleet are in post. It will be a joy to have them among the College of Bishops, and they will have our total support and encouragement as they get to know what it means to be a bishop in the Church of God, and have their particular care for our constituency. Pray for them and welcome them!
With our very best wishes and prayers for you all in this Holy Season,
+Mark Horsham +John Plymouth +Lindsay Urwin OGS
2 comments:
Will the Bishops of Ebbsfleet and Richborough be appointed before the end of the year? and Will they be people who will not be joining the Ordinariate?
I do wish people would be more open about who they are when commenting.
Anyhow,the answer to the first part of your question is: I certainly hope so! Any answer to the second part would be assume that a) I knew who the new bishops were and b) that I was so close to them that I knew their intentions. Sorry, but that's all there is to say.
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