Easter Day, Hong Kong Island, St. John’s Cathedral, 2025
Happy Easter to you all. Christ is Risen, Hallelujah! On Maundy Thursday we gathered at the altar, stripped it bare, and remembered that “on the night before he died, he had supper with his friends”. At the Eucharist, we are asked to repeat it. “Do this in remembrance of me” is what Jesus asks. Remember.
Continue readingSt. John’s Cathedral, Hong Kong Island
Let me begin by thanking Archbishop Andrew and his fellow bishops for their invitation to preach this morning at this Chrism Mass. It is truly an honour to be with you. And perhaps the most important thing to say at the start of this homily is a huge “thank you” to you, as clergy and ministers in Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui. Ministry is tough, demanding and exhausting. It is also inspiring, rewarding and exciting. But I know, as you do, that it is costly: personally, to your families and friendships, and to our lives.
Continue readingI am unsure what my old English Literature teacher, Bruce Ritchie, would have made of this chapter. I count myself blessed to have been taught by him at A-level, and having grown up in a house that was not especially into books or English literature (that is some understatement), it was no mean feat of his to inspire our class of somewhat lazy, precocious late adolescents to read at all. And then to begin to love reading. Here, I do mean ‘love’. I have never stopped since. That said, my adult novel habit would probably have disappointed Bruce. It is rarefied by any measure. I read exceptionally, very few novels – perhaps one or two a year – and mostly choose to graze on history, politics, theology and social theory. Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby was one of the set texts for our A-level class, and it is some 45 years since I sat in Bruce Ritchie’s class at his feet, as we debated the text with one another and its multiple layers of meaning.
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With the process of choosing a new Archbishop of Canterbury now underway, it perhaps won’t come as a surprise that many commentators have already quietly written off the next incumbent, even before those running the process have started sifting through names, let alone choosing one. It is not their fault, mind. However, turning another page makes no real difference to a narrative drama that is essentially bound to rehash and repeat the previous storylines.
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