Hi Everyone,

How are you doing? I hope and pray that you have been able to keep fit and well and that you had an enjoyable and blessed Christmas and New Year.

The new year has of course has brought our new Diocesan Bishop – Bishop Hugh Nelson, previously the suffragan Bishop of St. Germans in the diocese of Truro.

Saturday, 17th January, saw the welcome and installation service for Bishop Hugh and what a wonderful service it was too. I was particularly struck first of all by a sense of continuity between the final acts of Bishop John’s leaving service and the opening acts of this welcome service for Bishop Hugh.

Many of us at Bishop John’s leaving service were struck, I’m sure, by the final act of that service being for Bishop John to lay down his Bishop’s staff and to walk alone, dressed in a very simple robe the whole length of the Cathedral aisle and out through the West Door which then closed behind him.

This welcome service for Bishop Hugh, began with him being similarly quite simply dressed in a plain white robe and having to  seek admission to the Cathedral by knocking on the closed West door. Children from one of the schools asked who was at the door, and then told him he was very welcome to the Diocese.

The rest of the service proceeded with Bishop Hugh making declarations and promises concerning his ministry among us, being presented with the various splendid vestments of the Bishop of Worcester – a pectoral cross, a stole (scarf of office worn around his neck), a cope (a splendidly fine robe ) and finally his Bishop’s mitre (hat). He was then led to his Bishop’s chair to be ‘installed’ as our new Bishop.

A sermon was preached by Bishop Hugh; prayers were said by our archdeacons (in English) and by visiting Bishops from our link dioceses (in their native languages); messages of welcome were conveyed and Bishop Hugh was finally presented with the Bishop’s staff, that Bishop John had laid down all those months before. He then went back to the west door and with the doors opened wide and looking outwards, prayed a prayer of blessing upon the whole of his new diocese.

In all of this I was struck by the fact that underneath all the fine robes and trappings of his new office, was the simple white robe of humility and servanthood.

February brings with it the beginning of the season of Lent (Ash Wednesday falls on the 18th, this year) and the call to us to give up some of the trappings of our own lives in order through a more simple life to draw nearer to God, to know more clearly his love and compassion for us all, particularly as we focus ourselves on the journey towards the cross of Good Friday and the blessings of Easter Sunday.

What might you give up, I wonder, in order to make more space in your life for God’s love to be felt and shown?

Every blessing,

Andy.