Reflecting on family life & climate change

Tomorrow, at St Martin-in-the-Fields, we host BBC Radio 4 Sunday Worship. The occasion is Mothering Sunday and the theme is ‘A sword will pierce your own heart also.’ The preacher is Revd Anna Poulson, whose daughter had Aicardi Syndrome and died aged three.

Then, at our 10.00am Eucharist, I will be preaching on the theme of What constitutes family life? Remembering Jesus and his Mother, with reflections drawn from our 'Praying with Dementia' evening and my own experience of extended family life.

At our 5.00pm Issues of our Time service, Revd Dr Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, explores the Church’s perspective on the themes of our time. Tomorrow's theme is Climate Change: Crisis Management or Full-Scale Repentance? While ecology is always among the leading concerns of our time, two events happened in 2015 to give it an especial focus. The first was the publication in June of the papal encyclical Laudato si'. The second was the United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Paris in December. The two events map the territory of the ecological crisis in contrasting ways. In his sermon Sam intends to dig inside both the Pope’s thinking and that of the Paris delegates, and identify what the ecological debate is really about, and where we can focus our energies in responding faithfully to it.

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Sergei Rachmaninoff - Ave Maria.