St Agnes' Kennington Park is a Church of England parish church.
Worshipping in the catholic tradition, it is part of the See of Fulham, and
under the pastoral care of the Rt Revd Jonathan Baker, Bishop of Fulham
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CORONAVIRUS / COVID-19
I have news: It looks as though we are going
to be able to re-enter our churches on 4th July
(or maybe even earlier), but what we might
be allowed to do (or not do), in the way
of worship is still anyone’s guess.
At the moment no one is saying.
I will continue to publish an electronic bulletin each Sunday as long as we are obliged to
keep the church closed (see 'Anno Domini' on the drop-down menu at the top of this page).
On a more practical note I need to mention the thorny subject of money.
Like many other organisations, St Agnes' finances have fallen off a
cliff since the closedown, but our outgoings remain undiminished.
We are now financially sustained only by those who have in the past taken-out direct debits.
Many more are part of the envelope scheme. During these days whilst we cannot meet,
might I ask those of you involved to continue to use your envelopes week-by-week,
that when we meet again, St Agnes will have at least a little money to get us by.
And... if there is anyone out there who would care to make a donation
to the life and work of our community, please get in touch.
Be assured of my prayers.
I wish you all (and all for whom you have a care),
well, in these very peculiar times.
Fr Paul
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'Quote of the day'
Thursday 4th June:
Yesterday we looked towards Africa. Today we return home, to the far west of England.
It is St Petroc’s Day. St Petroc (6th century-564AD), is patron saint of Devon and Cornwall.
Petroc was the younger son of Welsh king, Glywys. On his father’s death,
the people of Glywysing called for Petroc to take the crown of one the country’s sub-divisions,
but Petroc wanted a religious life, and went to study in Ireland. Several years later he returned to Britain, landing on the River Camel in Cornwall. Directed by St Samson to the hermitage of Saint Wethnoc, Wethnoc agreed to give his cell to Petroc to found a monastery on the site.
After 30 years as abbot, Petroc made a pilgrimage to Rome.
On his return, just as he reached Newton Saint Petroc, it began to rain.
Petroc predicted it would soon stop, but it rained for three days. In penance for presuming
to predict God’s weather, Petroc returned to Rome, then moved on to Jerusalem,
and India where he lived seven years on an island in the Indian Ocean.
He returned to Britain, founding churches at Saint Petrox and Llanbedrog.
He left his monastery at Llanwethinoc (now Padstow), to live as a hermit in the woods
at Nanceventon (Little Petherick), some fellow monks following his example at Vallis Fontis.
While in the wilderness, a hunted deer sought shelter in Saint Petroc’s cell.
Petroc protected it from the hunter, King Constantine of Dumnonia,
and converted the king to Christianity into the bargain.
Petroc later moved deep into the Cornish countryside, encountering the hermit Saint Guron.
Guron moved south allowing Petroc, with the backing of King Constantine, to establish
a monastery called Bothmena - the Abode of Monks (Bodmin), at the site of the hermitage.
He died at Treravel, while travelling between Nanceventon (Little Petherick)
and Llanwethinoc (Padstow), and was buried at Padstow.
This quote is from the Orthodox, St Arsenios of Paros, written in 1877:
‘The Church in The British Isles will only begin to grow when she begins to venerate her own Saints’
Wednesday 3rd June:
Today we honour the ‘Martyrs of Uganda’, a commemoration close to the
heart of St Agnes, Kennington Park. About the time this parish was formed,
religious wars were taking place in Uganda.
On 29th October 1885, the king had the incoming Anglican Archbishop of East Africa,
James Hannington, murdered on the eastern border of Buganda. Hannington's crime
was to attempt to come to Buganda through Busoga (a shorter route than that employed
by earlier visitors, who took the route from south of Lake Victoria). Buganda's kings
regarded Busoga as a backdoor to Buganda and thought anyone coming through the
backdoor must have evil intentions towards the kingdom.
Between 1885 and 1887, Mwanga had over forty-five people put to death on his orders.
Their crime, failure to renounce their newly-found Christian faith.
Twenty-three of them were Anglican and twenty-two Roman Catholic.
These murders and Mwanga's continued resistance alarmed the British,
who backed a rebellion by Christian and Muslim groups who supported Mwanga's half-brother.
Mwanga was defeated in 1888 and his brother elevated to the throne. He lasted only a month,
to be replaced by yet another brother. However, Mwanga escaped and negotiated with the British.
In exchange for handing over some of his sovereignty to the British East Africa Company.
The British changed their backing, giving it back to Mwanga,
who regained the throne the following year.
On 27th August 1894, Mwanga acquiesced for Buganda to become a British Protectorate;
however, on 6th July 1897, he declared War on the British and launched an attack,
which he lost on 20th July. He was arrested and interned.
He was deposed, in absentia, on 9th August 1897. A tenacious man, he escaped
and returned to Buganda with a rebel army but was again defeated,
this time on 15th January 1898. He was captured and in April 1899,
exiled to the Seychelles.
In a remarkable turn of events, whilst in exile, he was received into the Anglican
Church and baptized with the name of Daniel. He died in 1903 at the age of 35.
The twenty-two Roman Catholic Martyrs were canonized by Pope Paul VI and are regarded
as Saints. To honour them, he became the first reigning pope to visit sub-Saharan Africa
when he visited Uganda in July 1969; a visit which included a pilgrimage to the site of the
martyrdom at Namugongo, where he dedicated a site for the building of a shrine church in
their honour. It was dedicated in 1975 and subsequently named a basilica.
Two miles east of the Roman Catholic Basilica there now stands an Anglican shrine,
at the place where the Anglican martyrs met their death. Archbishop Robert Runcie, the then
head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, went on pilgrimage there, in January 1984.
Pope John Paul II in turn honoured the martyrs with his own pilgrimage in February 1993.
Every year on 3rd June, the day when most of the martyrs were killed,
is a national holiday in Uganda. In 2018, Police estimated that the crowd gathered at
the Basilica in Namugongo totalled as many as 4 million people. They went there from Uganda,
Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
Japan and America. The 3rd June is also marked in the lectionary as a day
to honour the Uganda Martyrs.
There is a stained-glass window in St Agnes’ depicting the ‘Final Triumph of Christ and his Church'. Amongst the figures in the window is a kneeling boy wearing an orange shift.
He is representative of the teenage Ugandan Martyrs.
Today’s quote is attributed to St Charles Lwanga, said to the
‘Guardian of the Flame' as Charles was being burnt alive:
‘It is as if you are pouring water on me. Please repent and become a Christian like me.’
Tuesday 2nd June:
Very little is known about the lives of Ss Marcellinus and Peter, whom we honour today.
Later hagiography suggests that Marcellinus, a priest, and Peter, an exorcist died in the year 304
(the same year as St Agnes was martyred), during Diocletian’s persecution.
Pope Damascus I claimed he heard the story of the two martyrs
from their executioner, who went on to become a Christian.
Damascus states they were killed at an out-of-the-way spot by the magistrate Severus
(or Serenus), so that other Christians would not have a chance to bury and venerate their bodies.
The two saints cleared the spot chosen for their death: an overgrown thicket three miles from Rome, and were beheaded and buried there.
This quote is from Fr Don Miller, OFM:
‘The foundation of our faith rests on the lives of these holy men and
women of the early Church who willingly gave themselves over to the faith,
courageous and joyful in their martyrdom. When we consider the struggles of today
and our own personal difficulties in daily life, we might pause to consider the sacrifice
of these early martyrs and be inspired to greater faith, trust and love and be filled
with that impulse of encouragement!’
Monday 1st June:
This year the ‘Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary’ is celebrated today
(because of the complications of the Lectionary). This quote is from
Pope Benedict XVI. It takes in both the Feast of Pentecost and Our Lady:
‘Mary is a woman who loves. How could it be otherwise?
As a believer who in faith thinks with God's thoughts and wills with God's will,
she cannot fail to be a woman who loves. We sense this in her quiet gestures,
as recounted by the infancy narratives in the Gospel. We see it in the delicacy
with which she recognizes the need of the spouses at Cana and makes it known to Jesus.
We see it in the humility with which she recedes into the background during Jesus' public life,
knowing that the Son must establish a new family and that the Mother's hour
will come only with the Cross, which will be Jesus' true hour (cf. Jn 2:4; 13:1).
When the disciples flee, Mary will remain beneath the Cross (cf. Jn 19:25-27);
later, at the hour of Pentecost, it will be they who gather around her
as they wait for the Holy Spirit (cf. Acts 1:14).’
Sunday 31st May:
PENTECOST SUNDAY
William Sloane Coffin Jnr. - they don’t write names like that anymore,
from his book Living the Truth in a World of Illusions:
‘Christians have no business thinking that the good life consists mainly in not doing bad things.
We have no business thinking that to do evil in this world you have to be a Bengal tiger,
when, in fact, it is enough to be a tame tabby — a nice person but not a good one.
In short, Pentecost makes it clear that nothing is so fatal to Christianity as indifference.’
(Please see ‘Anno Domini’ on the drop-down menu for today’s bulletin)
Saturday 30th May:
Josephine Butler (1828-1906) is honoured as a social reformer and a champion of women’s rights.
Born in Northumberland into a family of wealthy political reformers (the Whig
Prime Minister Earl Grey was a cousin of her father), Josephine Grey
was mostly educated at home, where she was schooled in social reform
and in a form of Christianity that emphasised practical action.
In 1852 she married the academic and Anglican clergyman Dr George Butler,
who shared her hatred of social injustice. George’s career took them first to Oxford,
where Josephine achieved a level of education unusual for a woman of her time,
and was provoked by the arrogance on show in the all-male academic environment.
The Butlers moved to Liverpool in 1864 and it was there Josephine became increasingly
involved in women’s rights. She was particularly passionate about higher education and
the plight of prostitutes.
In 1869 she was appointed Secretary to the Ladies’ National Association
for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts. Introduced in the 1860s to reduce
venereal disease and regulate prostitution, these laws required all women believed to be
prostitutes in seaports and garrison towns to submit to intrusive medical examinations.
Their male clients, however, were not subjected to this.
Butler and her fellow campaigners recognised the examinations as unjust
and humiliating and she conducted a long and ardent campaign for their
repeal, confronting Victorian sexual taboos head-on.
The Acts were finally repealed in Britain in 1886.
Josephine Butler: ‘Economics lie at the very root of practical morality.’
Friday 29th May:
Something today from Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-88).
He is remembered as a Roman Catholic priest and one of the most
important theologians of the 20th century:
‘What you are is God's gift to you, what you become is your gift to God.’
{N.B. You can find past 'Quotes of the Day' on
the drop-own menu at the top of this page}
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Find us:
St. Agnes' is located behind Kennington Park. The full address is:
St Agnes, Kennington Park, 37 St Agnes Place, London SE11 4BB
The nearest tube stations are:
Kennington (Northern Line)
Oval (Northern Line)
Elephant and Castle (Northern, Bakerloo and national rail)
Bus links:
133 (Liverpool Street to Streatham)
155 / 333 (Tooting to Lambeth)
415 (Tulse Hill to Old Kent Road)
There are also other direct bus links from Brixton,
New Cross and across South-East and Central London.
Use the bus stops on Kennington Park Road,
Camberwell New Road and the Oval
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Regular Mass times
All masses begin at 10.00 a.m. unless otherwise specified
Low masses last approximately half-an-hour and Solemn masses one hour
SUNDAY: SOLEMN MASS (Sung)
Monday: Low Mass (said)
Tuesday: Low Mass (said)
Wednesday: Low Mass (said) followed by a Bible Study
Thursday: Low Mass (said)
Friday: Low Mass (said)
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Hall booking enquiries:
Please contact Fr Paul at frpaulensor@btconnect.com or 020 7820 8050 More information can be found by clicking the link below: |
Safeguarding:
St Agnes' takes the safeguarding and care of children and vulnerable adults very seriously. Further information about this can be found by clicking the link below: |
