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As a person new to Oxford, it is striking how quickly one is bombarded with history from every angle. The University Church, I am quickly learning, is a place where the riches and gifts of the past nourish and energise a living and learning faith. One snippet of unexpected interest for me this week has been to learn that Holywell Cemetery, by St Cross Church, is the resting place of Sir John Stainer (1840-1901), the popular English composer and organist. Stainer is best known for his 1887 oratorio, The Crucifixion: A Meditation on the Sacred Passion of the Holy Redeemer, which litters the repertoire of local choral societies each Passiontide. It is hardly an artistic masterpiece in most senses (Stainer himself thought his work ‘rubbish’), and yet in another sense it is a remarkable achievement in its ability to enrol the average pew-dweller and local concert-goer into the story of Christ’s journey to the cross. This is grassroots piety and sentimental devotion at its best – good luck not singing along after a pint.
The worldwide church celebrated this week the feast of the Holy Cross, on 14th September, and this Sunday at 5.00pm we hold our annual service of Evening Prayer at St Cross Church to mark its patronal feast. Among the proceedings comes Stainer’s hymn ‘Cross of Jesus’, from The Crucifixion, with text by William Sparrow Simpson. The feast serves almost as a ‘mini-Good Friday’, a chance away from the intensity of Holy Week when we may place ourselves before that event so awful and yet so potent, when Christ opens arms of love wide and bears the worst of human hatred and injustice in return.
O mysterious condescending!
O abandonment sublime!
Very God himself is bearing
all the sufferings of time!
This – all human thought surpassing –
this is earth’s most awful hour,
God has taken mortal weakness!
God has laid aside his power!
William Sparrow Simpson (1859-1952)
The Revd James Crockford Assistant Priest |
| | The Week Ahead:
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Monday
9.00am Morning Prayer
Tuesday Theodore of Tarsus, 690
9.00am Morning Prayer
12.15pm Eucharist
Wednesday John Coleridge Patteson, 1871
9.00am Morning Prayer
Thursday
9.00am Morning Prayer
12.15pm Eucharist
Friday
9.00am Morning Prayer
Next Sunday
Harvest Festival
10.30am All Age Eucharist
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| | Harvest Festival
Our annual Harvest Festival will take place on Sunday 24 September. There will be an all-age Sung Eucharist at 10.30am. This year we will be supporting the Gatehouse, Oxford’s refuge for people who are homeless or vulnerably housed. If you wish to make a donation, please bring the following items to the service or drop these items off at the University Church between 10am and 12noon on Friday 22 September: Bovril, Marmite, Jam, Honey, Chocolate spread, Peanut butter, Salad cream, Mayonnaise, Tomato ketchup, Brown sauce, Tinned ham, Tinned tuna, Tinned sardines, Teabags, Coffee, Hot chocolate, Cuppasoup, Cake (shop-bought and keepable for a while), Toiletries and sanitary products.
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| | Annual St Cross Service
On Sunday 17 September, we will mark Holy Cross Day (14 September) at a special service of Evensong at St Cross Church (Holywell) at 5.00pm. All welcome.
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| | Newman Walk
On Sunday 1 October at 12noon (following the Sunday morning service), we are going on a little pilgrimage to Littlemore as we walk from St Mary's to the church in Littlemore, which was established by Blessed John Henry Newman, who was Vicar of St Mary (1828 - 1843). Please bring a packed lunch, stout walking shoes and a waterproof (in case of inclement weather). If you would like to use this walk as an opportunity to raise funds for the restoration of Littlemore church, please email universitychurch@ox.ac.uk for a sponsorship form.
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| | | Poetry Corner
‘Twinkle, twinkle little bat;
How I wonder what you’re at…’
Theophilus Carter (1824-1904), who was buried at Holywell Cemetery, is believed by some to have been the model for the Mad Hatter in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Eccentric, voluble and, crucially, top-hatted, he would stand on the doorstep of his furniture shop on the High (near which he was living at the time of the census in 1851 – within the parish of St Mary’s). In 1931 (admittedly rather after the fact), the Rev W. Gordon Baillie wrote in a letter to the Times of Carter:
“All Oxford called him The Mad Hatter. He would stand at the door of his furniture shop . . . always with a top-hat at the back of his head, which, with a well-developed nose and a somewhat receding chin, made him an easy target for the caricaturist.”
However, Oxford historian Mark Davies, in a TLS article (online here https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/the-real-mad-hatter/) suggests a Mr Randall – a real Oxford hatter, as opposed to the mere hat-wearer Carter – as a more likely candidate. Either way, it seems that Oxford was not short of inspiration for idiosyncratic hatted characters.
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| | Other Events
Diocesan Festival of Prayer – Saturday, 9th September
Spiritual wisdom says, “We should pray as we can and not as we can’t.” The D.F.P. is a ‘taster day’ of prayer styles. Come and reflect, experience, and discuss prayer. Brochure and booking forms are at the back of the Church.
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