This weekend we welcome Fr Tony Chantry MHM, who will take the opportunity to thank the Parish for their support of prayers and donations to the 1069 World Missions.
 
Please note that there will be NO cash collection , the thank you and appeal is to inform you of the work carried out by APF-Mill Hill and to ask for continuing prayers and financial support, which can be given through their “ Red Boxes”
 “Truly nothing is more beautiful than to know Christ and to make him known to others.” Pope Benedict XVI

​This Sunday’s Gospel reading contains a rich variety of responses to the Resurrection of the Lord: alarm and fright, agitation, joy,  disbelief and amazement. Can we put ourselves into the situation and imagine what those days must have been like for the apostles and their companions? They thought the end had come – the end of their hopes and expectations. Instead, Jesus, risen from the dead – flesh and bone - stands before them and eats a piece of grilled fish. This is an exhilarating scene which St Luke records in such wonderful detail. We can be sure that his sources were  primary – those who saw the Lord and touched him and heard him speak and saw him eat did as they were told – they acted as     witnesses. We thank God for their fidelity.
Is this the end of the story – a happy ending? Not at all. The point of the Resurrection is that it, far from being the happy ending, it is instead a new beginning.  Clothed with the glorious, loving power of the Risen One we, like the apostles, are charged to go out and proclaim the forgiveness of sins, the promise of eternal life.
 
 
Rise heart; thy Lord is risen. 
Sing his praise without delays,
Who takes thee by the hand,
that thou likewise with him mayst rise.
     
                                           (From ‘Easter’ by George Herbert)
 
 
                                                                            Father Daniel