Dear Sisters and Brothers

May is – and how we hope and pray! – the month when things finally seem to warm up: the gardens get going with a will, we can abandon the extra coat, the sun is there more than once a fortnight... It does seem to have been an endlessly long winter of cold and wet, so let's enjoy it. I guess being an island people we should be used to the vagaries of the weather, but at least it gives us a near-infinite source of conversation!

May is the month of Mary, of course. Fifteen of us will be in Walsingham on pilgrimage in the coming week, when we will pray hard for the life and people of St Mary's. It is a month when we can reflect with special concentration on all that we learn from Our Lady – especially her openness to the will of God, however extraordinary and unlikely what is asked of us might be. We call on her daily in church to pray for us, and maybe this is a time to deepen that prayer that we all share. One way to do this is to pray the Rosary. It's a wonderfully settling and peace-bringing way to pray. We ponder the many mysteries of Christ's life (always Mary points beyond herself, to her Son), and in the gentle repetition of the Hail Mary we can sink into a real receptive calm.

with all my good wishes for a prayerful and blessed May-time
Fr Andrew

With love in Christ, Fr Andrew