We meet every Sunday at 11.30am, plus certain high and holy days. You are very welcome to join us. We come to worship God, to pray for the world and each other, and to raise money to help people less fortunate than ourselves. After the service, we serve coffee or a glass of wine, and have a time to get to know one another. We list below our regular events, our next Sunday service plus any online services which are taking place across the Malaga Chaplaincy.
There is a Holy Eucharist with hymns every Sunday at 11.30am. After the service there is a time of fellowship when refreshments are served outside the church.
We have just two Sundays this year between the end of Epiphany and the start of Lent, and these help us to set the scene for Lent. So we're nearly there, for the forty days that lead up to Easter. It is a very challenging time, a time to cut through the outer wrapping of our faith, to get below the words which we say so easily and the things that we so often do without thinking.
Today, 8th February, 2nd Sunday before Lent, Jesus encourages us not to over-worry about things as none of us can "by worrying add a single hour to our span of life". Rather we should "strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given" to us.
A helpful thought to have before us we appoach this season of self-reflection before the great feast of Easter.
Every Tuesday morning at 10am
Simply tune in on Zoom and enjoy a few moments of quiet, prayerful reflection as the week unfolds. It will last no longer than 10 minutes.
Meeting ID: 892 2955 4820 Passcode: 836488
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86523047387?pwd=cZ8g29z3nUYTbXh1VlxdGedrf7Pvid.1
A time to pause, pray, reflect and reconnect.
No preparation needed.
Time for conversation for those who can stay.
“….Waiting on God, learning to be passive in a way creative for your inner life, is not a question of thinking about God, but of growing in stillness. It has to do with prayer, and with music or from the simple contemplation of the world about you.” (Michael Mayne, ‘A Year Lost and Found’)
We have just two Sundays this year between the end of Epiphany and the start of Lent, and these help us to set the scene for Lent.
Today, the Sunday immediately before Lent, we hear the gospel story of the Transfiguration, a bizarre religious experience for Saints Peter, James & John, who, at the top of a mountain, see Jesus standing alongside Moses and Elijah. And yet when they come down, excited and exhausted and full of faith, they set about healing a sick boy, and they fail and the whole thing falls apart.
Sometimes we look back on distant religious, or just very touching, moments and we wonder if it was, in fact, real...or was it just that I was very sensitive that day, or I was particularly tired, or maybe I simply over-egged the whole thing....or dreamt it. I am sure that is how Peter, James and John must have felt. The vision is gone and life was back to its untidy and unspectacular normal. An amazing experience on one hand, and on the other all the mess, the ambiguity and perhaps disappointments of every day.
But when you hold these two things in your hand…, you are staring at the very heart of our faith, the very core of what it means to be a Christian. Because in Jesus Christ the Word was made flesh, God spoke directly to human beings, he walked among us, ….and the world was changed as a result. Religious experiences did break through into human daily life, and they were made real and meaningful and incarnate, and people's lives were changed.
Ash Wednesday marks the first day of Lent, the six weeks of penitence before Easter.
It is celebrated with a special service, at which churchgoers receive ash on their foreheads, prepared by burning palm crosses from the previous year's Palm Sunday. As the priest places the ashes on each person´s forehead, s/he says the words, "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."
So what´s behind this? In preparation for Easter, Lent is a time to be honest with ourselves and with our God. So on Ash Wednesday we think about where we have failed, where we have been hypocritical - saying one thing and doing another. The ashes are there as a kind of public statement, that those who receive them are prepared to make a commitment to try to live their lives more honestly and truthfully.
And it´s not easy: it is often so much easier to pretend, to go along with the crowd, to play act. It is, after all, from the language of the Greek theatre that the word "hypocrisy" was derived.