We are a Church of England parish with a strong tradition of music in worship, where all are very welcome. As an ancient Church in the centre of Durham, St Oswald's is a reservoir of peace for all who enter it.

The Sunday Eucharist is at 11:00am, and we have a play and books corner by the font for any younger worshipper who feels a parent or carer would enjoy it there. Evensong is at 6:00pm on Sundays, either in the chancel, or roughly every other week during term time when the usual hymns expand to a full choral setting, in the body of the church. Midweek Holy Communion is at 10:00am on Wednesdays, and the church is usually open from 9:30am till round about 5:00pm (or dusk, if earlier) on weekdays.

Tuesday, 12th May 2026 - Easter Season: Dom Gregory Dix, Priest, Monk and Scholar, 1952 [Commemoration]; Rogation Day; The Third Day of Christian Aid Week

Alleluia, Alleluia!

For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed. Therefore, let us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

Alleluia!

1 Corinthians 5:7b-8, New Revised Standard Version - Anglicized Edition

‘No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit; for each tree is known by its own fruit. Figs are not gathered from thorns, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil; for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.

Luke 6:43-45, New Revised Standard Version - Anglicized Edition 

The Collect of the Day:

God our redeemer, who hast delivered us from the power of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of thy Son: grant, that as by his death he hath recalled us to life, so by his continual presence in us he may raise us to eternal joy; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Amen.

Common Worship

A Prayer for a World free from Poverty:

God of justice, we pray for a world free from poverty,
where all people can live with dignity, hope and enough to thrive.

Be close to those facing hardship today.
Bring strength where there is struggle
and hope where there is uncertainty.

Open our eyes to injustice,
our hearts to compassion,
and our lives to action.

May we stand together in love
until poverty is no more.

Amen.

Christian Aid 

A Passage for Celebrating Eucharistic Action:

Was Ever a Command so Obeyed?

Was ever a command so obeyed? For century after century, spreading slowly to every continent and country and among every race on earth, this action has been done in every conceivable human circumstance, for every conceivable human need from infancy and before it to extreme old age and after it, from the pinnacle of earthly greatness to the refuge of fugitives in the caves and dens of the earth. Men and women have found no better thing than this to do for kings at their crowning and for criminals going to the scaffold; for armies in triumph or for a bride and bridegroom in a little country church; for the proclamation of a dogma or for a good crop of wheat ... for the famine of whole provinces or for the soul of a dead lover; in thankfulness because my father did not die of pneumonia ... for the repentance of Margaret; for the settlement of a strike; for a son for a barren woman; for Captain so-and-so wounded and prisoner of war ... tremulously, by an old monk on the fiftieth anniversary of his vows, furtively, by an exiled bishop who had hewn timber all day in a prison camp near Murmansk; gorgeously, for the canonization of St Joan of Arc — one could fill many pages with the reasons why men and women have done this, and not tell a hundredth part of them. And best of all, week by week and month by month, on a hundred thousand successive Sundays, faithfully, unfailingly, across all the parishes of Christendom, the pastors have done this just to make the plebs sancta Dei — the holy common people of God. 

The Shape of the Liturgy (1945), Dom Gregory Dix 

Durham Diocesan Prayer Cycle Deanery Intention for the Month:

May 2026 - Gateshead and Gateshead West Deaneries

The Prayer of St Oswald of Northumbria:

Let us together implore the living and true and almighty God in his mercy to defend us against the pride and fierceness of our enemy; for that God knows our cause is just, and that we fight for the salvation of our nation.

Amen. 

Prayed by King Oswald with his Army on the Battlefield on the Eve of the Battle of Heavenfield, AD634