Viewing all items in Resource Category: Editorial

‘The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. … They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the...

National Tree Week (Saturday 27th November to Sunday 5th December) is the UK’s largest annual celebration of trees. It marks the start of the winter tree planting season, and so aims to encourage anyone with space to consider planting a tree. That includes churches with churchyards. The Conservation Foundation would be happy to advise anyone...

National Tree Week is the UK’s largest annual tree celebration, marking the start of the winter tree planting season (November to March each year). This year, it runs from Saturday 27th November to Sunday 5th December. It is a good time to both celebrate your current trees, and to plant more trees in your area. You...

1          Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury – the Poor Man’s Earl 1          Remigius 1           Theresa of Lisieux 2          Your Guardian Angel 3          Hewald the Black and Hewald the White 4          St Francis – and the Life of Simplicity 4          St Francis of Assisi 6          William Tyndale, Bible translator and Reformation martyr 8          Demetrius...

Think of Piccadilly Circus, and that small statue of the angel poised with bow and arrow. Most people think it stands for Eros.  It does not. It stands for Anteros, his brother, the god of selfless love.  It is a memorial to the greatest Christian Victorian philanthropist, politician and social reformer of his generation –...

Theresa of Lisieux (1873-97) should be the patron saint of teenage girls and young women who want to make the most of their lives, despite being constrained by family and school or work. Theresa grew up in a strict, devout Roman Catholic middle-class family in France, one of four sisters.  Her father was a watch-maker. ...

If you’ve ever prayed for the ill children of non-Christian friends, then you are following in the steps of Remigius (d.533). Remigius was bishop of Reims late in the 5th century, and the king’s son was ill.  The queen, Clotild, was a Christian, but the king of the Franks, Clovis I, was not.  Then Remigius...

The teaching of Jesus encourages us to believe in guardian angels.  He once said, ‘See that you do not look down on one of these little ones.  For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.’  (Matthew 18:10) The existence of angels was suggested in various...

With Islamic State’s current savage persecution of Iraqi Christians in mind, here are two saints for this autumn:  Hewald the Black and Hewald the White (d.c. 695).  These 7th century Anglo-Saxon priests were living peacefully in Frisia among the Old Saxons, worshipping the Christian God by daily Mass on a portable altar, and reverently devoting...

Just about the only thing most people know about Francis of Assisi is that he talked to the birds. Church-goers also know the popular hymn based on his famous prayer, ‘Make me a channel of your Peace’, which was sung at the funeral of Princess Diana. However, Italy’s patron saint, whose feast day is this...

St Francis (1181 – 1226) is surely one of the most attractive and best-loved of all the saints.  But he began by being anything but a saint.  Born the son of a wealthy cloth-merchant of Assisi, Francis’ youth was spent in fast-living, parties and on fast horses as a leader of the young society of...

This month is the 501th anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation, and so a good time to pay tribute to an outstanding English scholar, translator and martyr of the Reformation. William Tyndale (c. 1494 – 6th October 1536) was born near Gloucester, and studied at Oxford and Cambridge.  He could speak seven languages, and...