St. Clement’s Christmas Message
Dear People & Friends of St. Clement’s,
On Sunday 12th December following our Sung Eucharist in the morning & particularly following our service of Lessons & Carols in the evening, I bid a temporary farewell & ‘Happy Christmas’, to many of our congregation before they headed off to spend Christmas with family & friends in various corners of the world. And I said a smaller number of similar temporary farewells last Sunday after our very well attended Sung Eucharist that morning. I trust that those of you who have travelled have by now arrived safely, especially after the disruption caused to both air & rail transport because of the severe weather that most of Northern Europe is currently experiencing.
However, for all of you who are still in Prague over the forthcoming Christmas weekend, a reminder of our services to celebrate the Incarnation – the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ into our world as an infant in Bethlehem.
Christmas Eve – Friday 24th December at 23.30 – Midnight Sung Eucharist
Christmas Day – 25th December at 11.00 – Family Eucharist
Sunday 26th December at 11.00 – Said Eucharist for the Feast of Stephen
And looking ahead to the beginning of the New Year.
Sunday 2nd January at 11.00 – Sung Eucharist to celebrate the Epiphany It would be good if we could have Coffee Hour following this service. But as Caroline Studdert, who so faithfully runs Coffee Hour most Sundays, isn’t back in Prague until the following day, we do need a volunteer(s) to organise it. Please let me know if you would be willing to do so.
‘On the Feast of Stephen’ – The service we recorded at St. Clement’s for BBC Radio 4
A reminder that this service will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 08.10 GMT (09.10 CET here in the Czech Republic) on Sunday 26th December. There are now details about it here http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wqkvd on the BBC website from where it will be possible to listen to the programme online as it is broadcast. It will also be possible to listen to it from the BBC website anytime in the following seven days. This should be a great help to some of our friends currently in the USA for whom the live broadcast will be in the middle of the night!
Yesterday, I finally received several CDs of the edited recording which I’ve thoroughly enjoyed listening to. I spoke to Canon Stephen Shipley the BBC producer today & he has said that it will be in order for us to make further copies for anyone who would like one in return for an appropriate ‘donation’. We can only do this once the service has been broadcast. We also have permission to upload the recorded service to www.anglican.cz after 26th December.
John & Margaret Philpott
In the past week, I’ve received both an electronic & a hard copy of an Advent Prayer & Newsletter from my predecessor as Chaplain of St. Clement’s, Canon John Philpott & his wife Margaret. I’ve pinned the hard copy to the noticeboard at the back of Church. As you will see, John is still quite active in his retirement & would particularly value our prayers as he goes with Margaret to Kiev in March & April, to look after the small Anglican congregation there.
Chaplaincy Flat
Longer standing members of St. Clement’s will remember the major fundraising effort of several years ago, which sought to raise sufficient funds to put down a deposit to enable the purchase of a Chaplaincy Flat rather than continue to pay out rent month by month. That fundraising allowed the purchase of Flat 7 at Pat’anka 2614/11B where Sybille & I currently live. The Chaplaincy Flat is being purchased on a 20 year mortgage & December 2010 marks the end of five years of mortgage payments. In other words, the Chaplaincy is one quarter of the way towards owning it’s own Chaplaincy Flat.
It is of course, one of the additional hurdles that we face as a relatively new congregation, that we are still involved in purchasing a property for your Chaplain to live in. Longer established Chaplaincies don’t have the same cost because they already own a property. But put another way – we are now only 15 years away from achieving that goal. And the additional good news is that the flat is almost certainly now worth nearly twice what St. Clement’s paid for it. In other words, it was a very good investment!
This is my last electronic “Message’ for 2010. May I take this opportunity to wish all of you a happy & blessed Christmas. And I look forward to seeing many of you at our Christmas services and many more of you once you return to Prague early in 2011.
Best wishes
Ricky
