Dear Friends

Lent is here. But Lent can mean so many things. For some it may just mean the all too early appearance of Hot Cross buns and chocolate easter eggs. But for us it has to mean a time of spiritual reckoning, a time when we spring clean our souls.

The name itself comes from the Anglo-Saxon word meaning the lengthening of the days, which is what the northern hemisphere has for spring – its other half, fall, survives in American English as the season of Autumn, the time of the falling light.

What I would like you to consider is that it is a good time to lengthen our spiritual discipline. We talk about this traditionally with the three goals of Lent: prayer, fasting and almsgiving, the extra things we take on at this time. But it is also a time for us just to take time to look outside what we normally do. Instead of spending we give, instead of eating we enjoy what we do eat, instead of rushing we just take time to pray. Perhaps one way of describing this is we use this time to see the world around us in new ways.

By this I mean that we usually see the world around us with blinkered eyes. We don’t look for dragons. We see the ordinary, not the extraordinary around us. Now dragons are very important – our Scriptures warn about the evil one and if you ever read Anglo-Saxon poetry there is a nasty one in Beowulf who finally kills our hero. Dragons personify the evil around us that we ignore to our peril. When we don’t want to see dragons, we don’t want to see the suffering it causes, from the victims of war to the plight of refugees.

We also don’t look for angels. There are countless good things that happen around us, from strangers doing small acts of kindness to simple service for the need of others. We don’t appreciate the little angelic acts that happen around us, and those we can give.I would suggest this Lent that you consider the dragons and angels. Use your time to see the spiritual world around you. The greatest weight on life is materialism and its dullness. The world is not meant to be grey, but instead full of the colour of dragons and angels. Do look.

I rather like this quote about Fr Austin Farrer (1904-1968) which touches on seeing the world in different ways. He was a chaplain at Keble College in Oxford and went every morning to celebrate mass. I served under a bishop when I was in Wangaratta, Fr Paul Richardson, who used to serve for him at times. Fr Austin was devoted, but his friends sometimes wondered why he bothered. “Doesn’t it get lonely in there, with just one or two students, and them, half asleep?” Farrer replied, “Quite to the contrary. What with all of the apostles, prophets, saints, martyrs, angels and archangels—well, it’s a wonder there’s any room for us at all.”

New Archbishop

Our new archbishop, the Most Rev’d Brad Billings, will be enthroned on Saturday in the Cathedral. The bishop holds degrees in theology and ministry from Ridley College, a Master of Arts in Classics & Archaeology (on ancient Ephesus) from the University of Melbourne and a doctorate in theology from the Australian College of Theology on the Gospel of Luke. After being ordained, he worked in parishes for approximately 15 years in the Diocese of Melbourne, including serving as vicar at Toorak, and was Archdeacon of Stonnington and Glen Eira for five years. In April 2016 he was consecrated and appointed as assistant bishop in the role of Bishop for Theological Education and Wellbeing, with responsibility for clergy across the Diocese of Melbourne.Well, that’s what the official records say. Bishops have tended to have a strained relationship with our parish, but the new bishop has a reputation for dealing well with parishes like ours, holding to the Catholic faith, as well as the more Protestant forms of Anglican worship. So, we look forward to meeting him sometime in the year ahead. Let’s see how often he wants to come here.

Lent

Our Lenten studies continue each Wednesday evening at 5.30 pm with a short compline service in the church, followed by the study in the gardens with pizza and drinks.

We have our Lenten envelopes for donations to the Diocese of Aipo Rongo in PNG. If you would like to give electronically, please see the details on the last page. Stations of the Cross are also each Friday at 8 am, flowed by mass at 8.30. The Friday mass, unless a requiem, follows the old English Missal format (which we once used here until the mid 20^th C), a version of the Book of Common Prayer in Tudor English.

Vestry

Each year we have our annual vestry meeting, where the reports of the parish over the last year are given. This will take place on Sunday 29 March.

Mothering Sunday

Mothering, or Refreshment Sunday, marks the half point of Lent. We will have the blessing of the traditional simnel cake on that Sunday. Unfortunately, I will be away at a family wedding, but Fr Michael Whiting will be here for the masses that Sunday.

Easter Preparations

Palm Sunday is 29 March, followed by Holy Week and Easter. So, as we need to get the brass all ready for the services, we will have a brass polishing day on Friday 27 March, starting at 10 am. All hands welcome. On Holy Saturday, 4 April, we will have the setting up of the church at 10 am – this is when we replace the banners and set up the altars with clean linen. Once again, all hands are welcome.

Parish Lunch

We had a lovely crowd for our Shrove Tuesday lunch at the Goodwood Park Hotel, with over twenty attending. Our next parish lunch will be for the Ascension, on Thursday 14 May at 1 pm.

In the meantime, I encourage you to make time for your prayer life during Lent. Prayer is always the foundation of any relationship with God – if you don’t listen to God then you will never discern the best way to live your life. Happiness is not about possessions or relationships; happiness is about being the child of God living the life for which you were created. That can only be discerned by prayer. So, get to it.

God Bless,

Fr Scott

History Photo

Our historic photo this month and is from around 1910, and shows Fr Wise, looking very dapper in a summer suit, outside the newly built rectory at St George’s – the foundation stone was laid in 1907.The rectory was also designed by Thomas Lyon, the architect of the church, and brother-in-law to Fr Wise. Fr Wise was a widower and therefore was content with a small house. The rectory was designed therefore for a single man – when built it had one main bedroom and another small bedroom under the roof, reached very awkwardly through the only bathroom.

Fr Wise organised an extensive garden around the church and rectory. The grounds were used for the school children as well as for the annual fete, a feature of fund raising during those times. During the fete strawberries and cream were kept in the rectory cellar on the day to keep cool in the days before refrigerators and were ferried up the steps as orders were placed. In the photo you can see some of the church chairs on the veranda, so presumably this was for one such event. The Rectory was lit by gaslight until the 1920s, and electrified while Fr Wise was in England.

After Fr Wise a new bedroom and ensuite bathroom were added during the 1940s for Fr Moralee, who did marry. The bedroom upstairs was extended during the 1970s and later a new living room was added in the 1980s and one bedroom was made into a decent sized bathroom.

A Reflection on Lent and Fasting

By Patrick Hudson, Foreign Editor – The Tablet 18 February, 2026

Dear Reader,

St Macarius, the fourth-century Bishop of Jerusalem, appears as a put-upon provincial clergyman in Helena, Evelyn Waugh’s bouncy novel about the mother of Constantine and the True Cross. He is appalled by the Emperor’s plans for architectural glories to honour the holy places. His Lent is unsubtle:

It was a season not yet standardised in its austerity. At Jerusalem, where they kept holiday on Saturday as well as on Sunday, there were eight five-day weeks of fasting. And when Macarius said ‘fast’ he meant quite simply ‘starve’. Other dioceses indulged in mitigations – wine, oil, milk, little snacks of olives and cheese – which allowed the faithful to maintain a state of continuous rabbit-like nibbling. In Jerusalem if a man wished to attain the rewards of fasting he lived on water and thin gruel and nothing else. Some kept the full five days on this fare; many took Wednesdays off and dined heavily; others, weaker still, dined on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It was left to each to judge his own capacity. But if he did fast, he must fast thoroughly; that was Macarius’s rule.

Working on Helena was one of Waugh’s Lenten resolutions in 1948, along with abstaining from wine and tobacco. That’s a more familiar agenda than the neatly-sketched ascetism of the Early Church, as is Waugh’s failure to get the book to the printers until 1950. Lent turns our New Year’s resolutions into religious obligations, with absolutely no discernible effect on the rate of success.

Dietary rules have all sorts of benefits for personal and social health. Elizabeth I’s chief advisor William Cecil was so alarmed by the damage done to the English fishing fleet after the Reformation by the end of the Friday abstinence that he introduced a bill – dubbed “Cecil’s fast” – to make it a misdemeanour to eat meat on a Friday or a Saturday, with a half-fish day on Wednesday for good measure. We’re now accustomed to inversions like Dry January threatening the pub trade.

“Macarius’s rule”, as told, is striking because it is gratuitous: fasting will win you nothing but the rewards of fasting. Alongside those other Lenten staples, prayer and almsgiving, it doesn’t bear too much explanation. The value is in the act itself, and whether you emerge healthier in mind and body and with a better attitude towards your possessions doesn’t really signify. The latest apostolic exhortation Dilexi te ends with a brief-but-muddled explanation of almsgiving and a lame injunction: “It is always better at least to do something rather than nothing.” A better ending might have been more abrupt: “Give food to those who are hungry” was one of the epitaphs for the Brazilian politician and Franciscan Br Sérgio Görgen, the champion of the rural poor, who died in early February.

We pray, fast and give as we can, and that’s that. Some of us might even manage all three all Lent. If we’re still wondering what the rewards of fasting might be, we might try one of the few remembered lines from Waugh’s contemporary A.J. Cronin, in 1941’s The Keys of the Kingdom: “Eat less. The gates of paradise are narrow.”

Services

Sunday Services

8.00 am    Mass

10.00 am    Litany & Solemn Sung Mass

Weekday Services

Monday                       Fr Scott’s Day Off

Tuesday      10.00 am    Mass,

followed by gardening.

Wednesday   8.00 am    Litany & Mass

Thursday    12.00 noon Mass

Friday          8.00 am    Stations

8.30 am    Mass

Saturday       8.00 am    Mass

March

1       LENT 2

2       Chad, Bishop of Lichfield, Missionary, 672

7       Perpetua and her Companions, Martyrs at Carthage, 203

8       LENT 3

15       LENT 4 Mothering Sunday

17       Patrick, Bishop of Armagh Missionary, Patron of Ireland, c460

18       Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, Teacher of the Faith, 386

19       JOSEPH OF NAZARETH

20       Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, Bishop and missionary (d. 687) or 4^th Sept.

21       Transitus of Benedict, Abbot of Monte Casino, Father of Western Monasticism, patron of Europe, c550

21       Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1556

22       LENT 5 PASSION SUNDAY

24       Paul Couturier, Ecumenist, 1953

24       Walter Hilton of Thurgartan, Augustian Friar, Mystic, 1396

24       Oscar Romero, Archbishop of San Salvador, Martyr, 1980

25       THE ANNUNCIATION TO THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

26       Harriet Monsell, Founder of the Community of St John the Baptist, Clewer, 1883

29       LENT 6 PALM SUNDAY

April

2       MAUNDY THURSDAY

3       GOOD FRIDAY

5       EASTER DAY

12       EASTER 2

16       Isabella Gilmore, deaconess, 1923

19       EASTER 3

20       The Annotine Easter 2025

21       Anselm, Abbot of Le Bec, Archbishop of Canterbury, Teacher of the Faith, 1109

23       GEORGE, MARTYR, PATRON SAINT, c304

24       The Seven Martyrs of the Melanesian Brotherhood, Solomon Islands, 2003

25       ANZAC DAY

26       SUNDAY IN THE OCTAVE OF ST GEORGE

27       MARK, EVANGELIST AND MARTYR

28       Peter Chanel, Religious, missionary in the South Pacific, Martyr, 1841

29       Catherine of Siena, Mystic, Teacher, 1380

30       Pandita Mary Ramabai, Translator of the Scriptures, 1922

 

 

 

 

Our website

www.stgeorgesgoodwood.org

Address for correspondence

The Parish of St George the Martyr,

The Rectory

34 Angus Street

Goodwood, SA, 5034

 

Email: stgeorges8@bigpond.com

 

Consider giving to the church; our bank details are as follows.

For regular and general offerings:

Anglican Parish of St George the Martyr

BSB 105-033 Account 151 992 640

 

For mission offerings and special projects (e.g. Lent, disaster relief):

St Georges Association for Education

BSB 105-033 Account 151 259 040

 

You may donate anonymously, but please note a purpose – e.g. ‘regular offering’, ‘overseas mission’, ‘Lenten giving’.