THE MESSENGER
MAY, JUNE, JULY

PENTECOST 2007


Peace be with you
As the Father has sent me, so I
send you…
    Receive the Holy Spirit 
(St. John 21, 22)


Come O Holy Spirit, Come.
Come as Holy Fire and burn in us.
Come as Holy Wind and cleanse us.
Come as Holy Light and lead us.
Come as Holy Truth and teach us.
Come as Holy Love and enfold us.
Come as Holy Power and enable us.
Come ~ Holy life and dwell in us.
Convict us ~ convert us, and consecrate us ~
Until we are Holy Thine for Thy using.
In Jesus name. Amen




Anonymous 4th Century
 Dear Friends
    There are very many things which are odd about
clergy. I expect the list that most of the readers of this
 magazine could  put together would make interesting
reading. The odd thing  that I would like to mention today
 is the clergy house.
    Now most people don’t live for too long a period in
the same house. Twenty years in the same house is considered a long
time these days. Houses, despite their character, or lack of it, are anonymous things. They don’t have a known history. Some people may have an interest in the history of the building, but the history of who lived in the house is usually a closed book. The hopes and struggles of the people who lived in a house are usually lost and irretrievable.
    Clergy houses are different. They have a memory. The nature of a priest’s job is that he knows who was before him. Therefore the house does not come clean of memories: often you learn about all the little oddities of the past occupants.
    The Rectory at St George’s is like that. Parishioners and priests have told me many stories about it. Children used to peer through Fr Wise’s bedroom window to see if he was up in his old age - poor man. That bedroom is now the main bathroom. The master bedroom which was built for  Fr Morralée when he was married. The patched hole in the wall in the upstairs bedroom, that two of the McCall boys caused, and then hid from their parents by re-arranging the furniture until discovered when the family moved out. Or the door in the laundry which is in two sections to keep Fr Peter Thomson’s dog Ambrose out.
    Well the Rectory is having its one hundredth birthday on 1 June this year. It’s nice to think back over all those have lived here. Wise, Morralée, Bradley, Hogan, Willoughby, Swetenham, McCall, Thomson, Devenport and now Moncrieff. The house has had enormous changes over the century. Bathrooms have moved around, halls have come and gone to accommodate pianos, extensions added: but it is still the Rectory of the Church of St George the Martyr Goodwood, still providing shelter for the priests and their families, allowing them to serve the people and bring them to worship.
    It is like the people here; we have aged and changed over the century since this parish was founded. What we do has altered at times. But despite all this we are still faithful to our function to worship God. We also carry with us a hundred and more little stories of the different people who have tried to be faithful to that calling to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.
    The great feasts of Easter are almost over now, and soon Pentecost and Corpus Christi will be here, then we will enter the green season of the year, what we now call the Sundays of Pentecost. Green from the green vestments we will be using then. There will be the odd high Saint’s day, but in general it will just be the weekly Sunday by Sunday of worshipping God. Yet in that round we see the faithfulness on our love for God. We are rarely called to do the spectacular, but we are called to be faithful in our love for God. At St George’s we can use this green season to relax, look around, and be comfortable. If were are comfortable, we can be welcoming and supportive of those who visit us and naturally be the Christians we are called to be.  Our best sales point is not our enthusiastic pitch to strangers: but our obvious happiness in our worship and  with each other, and of course by the great gifts of God.     So do enjoy these last great feasts before we enter our green season of rest and quiet enjoyment.  Let us also give thanks for our old Rectory, still doing its job over 100 years in June.
God  bless.     Father Scott
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