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When Thou From Hence Art Passed
Every day we are urged to pray for one parish or another within the diocese. The Archbishop's Chaplain collects requests for these prayers from the parish priests and publishes them in the monthly Diocesan Prayer List. It is interesting reading.
Because of the cutbacks, there are groups of parishes the size of a small county. To save us praying for them individually these conglomerates have been given a romantic collective name which disguises the fact that one clergy-person is doing the job of twelve. Some areas have an over-abundance of retired clergy. When his Grace’s chaplain asked me to name of the ones I had to help me in this mega-parish he received a blunt reply. As you know, it’s a round number. Others have Assistant Curates aplenty, stipendiary, freebies, and honorary assistants, mainly in the wrong places. The ones with a single church usually have all the Readers who the multi-parish clergy would give their right arm for. It’s a cruel world. A surprisingly large number of incumbents seem to throw anything with a Bishopthorpe postmark straight in the bin because they don’t reply to the prayer request.
There are, of course, the others, there always are. The ones who use the prayer list to trumpet the success of their Alpha Course, Youth Group, Mothers and Toddlers spill-your-orange-juice-on-the-floor Club and other such peripheral triumphs.
As well as praying for the parishes we pray for the Bishops and Archdeacons, wherever they are lunching. This gives us plebeians wind of whether they are in the vicinity so that they don’t catch us coming out of the pub with a blonde.
Our parish always appears in the prayer list on 2nd November. Yes, the Commemoration of All Souls! We are lumped in with the dear departed. This doesn’t mean that them at York think that we are dead. It’s just that we are the first parish in the Deanery of Scarborough. What’s wrong with that? We are first, aren’t we? November is a depressing time of the year, dark, damp, and full of the terrors of the night, so it is good to think that the whole diocese is praying for us right at the beginning of the month. We need it!
May God bless you all, Fr. Allan
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