PUBLIC EXAMS:- are underway! SATS, GCSE, A.s & A levels, as well as the differing university exams. These can therefore be anxious and tense times, both for those undertaking exams and for their families and friends, so, even if you are not directly involved in such matters, please do keep those concerned in your prayers at this time, that there be ‘level heads’ patients, discipline, and understanding. Very many thanks.

GIFT AID ENVELOPES 2026/2027:- As always, our grateful thanks to all those who are able to make financial contribution to the parish via the ‘Gift Aid’ scheme. For those who do so via the envelope system, we are pleased to tell you the envelopes for this tax year 26/27 are available in the sacristy, please collect your box with your name on a printed label on it at the earliest opportunity. Very many thanks. Our thanks to all those who are able to support our parish financially. It is a legal obligation that those who donate via the Gift Aid scheme receive an annual statement of their donations and the amount of tax that has been reclaimed via this scheme. Those who have a recorded email address will have received a statement via email, for everyone else please collect your paper copy from the parish office as soon as possible to avoid wasting your money on postage. A final plea, please do not use old envelopes as the numberings have been reassigned and these will NOT be added to your donations unless your name and current envelope number are on them. Any old envelopes can be recycled as they contain no useable personal data. Should you have an queries please contact …….. Many thanks

Following the fall of the Leadbeater assisted suicide Bill, fresh bids to introduce an assisted dying law in England and Wales are anticipated. Any new law would likely pressure NHS staff to be involved in some way and offer even less protection to institutions like hospices. You can help protect healthcare workers and hospices by signing the Bios Centre online petition. It calls on Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, to protect conscientious objection rights for religious and personal beliefs. Sign the petition at https://bioscentre.org/petition-on-conscience-protection/ or scan this QR code with your smartphone.

The dawn crow of the cockerel in the Passion Narrative: - (Part 2) The Midrash, about King Solomon who desires to build the Temple, the shamir and the Hoopoe begins by announcing that King Solomon got himself a male and female demon (derived from shiddah and shiddot which could mean ‘singers’ (see Jerusalem Bible version) but is obscure enough, according to the footnote, to possibly mean demons) who, in turn, eventually got a hold of the king of the demons, Ashmedai, who pointed King Solomon in the direction of the hoopoe, the guardian of the ‘shamir’. The text continues:- “Solomon replied, “I want nothing at all that is yours. But because I desire to build the Temple, I need the shamir.” Ashmedai (the king of demons) said to him. “ The shamir was not placed in my charge but given to the prince of the sea, and he gave sole charge of it to the wild cock, (the hoopoe) who is entrusted with it on oath. Do you know what he does with it? He takes it to an uninhabited mountain and sets it down upon a peak, and the mountain splits asunder. Then the wild cock gathers seeds of trees and scatters them in the split, which consequently attracts settlers .” (Hence the Aramai Targum calls the wild cock the “splitter of mountains.”)” (See:- “The Book of Legends Sefer Ha-Aggadah” No. 122 P. 130 Ed. Hayim Nahman Ravnitzky, Schocken Books, New York, 1992) If, in Judaism at the time of our Lord, the cockerel announces the new day and the call to first prayers, the clearing by the priestly caste of the ashes of the previous days sacrificial oblations in the Temple as preparation for sacrifices of the new day, and indeed, the cockerel is recognised as the one who has charge of the shamir then surely, we can equate the shamir with our Lord and the wood of the cross! The cross upon which our Lord was nailed, would have been erected in the rock, that is, it would have split the rock, and so we could say that symbolically, Christ is indeed the shamir who ‘attracts settlers’, the new Covenant, which is the Church, and therefore it is no surprise, the shamir disappeared after the building of the Second Temple, because Christ is the shamir, the tool required to build the (new) Temple, announced by the cockerel on Good Friday morning. When, as the Gospel recounts our Lord died upon the cross, the veil of the Temple was torn from top to bottom (Mk 15:37, Matt 27:51) and thus the Covenant of Sinai is superseded, the New and Everlasting Covenant (of the Church) is established through the Resurrection of Jesus and the institution of the Ministerial priesthood and the Holy Eucharist at the Last Supper; these surely all point to Jesus as being the shamir. The cock crow on that Good Friday would see our Lord died upon the Cross and again, as the Gospel relates, there was an earthquake and the ground was split open and the souls of many rose from the dead (Matt 27:51).  Is it that Christ is the shamir, the tool who enables the new temple to be built, the ‘keystone’ over which many would stumble, but upon whom, the Church, the New Temple or Tabernacle is built? In which case, the dawn crow of the cockerel, the splitter of stone, if the Gospel narrative references the Midrash, is of greater significance than we may think!