Vicar's View

Holidays are Coming  

The holiday season will soon be upon us and the annual rush to the coast or airports will begin. Holidays are good for they cause us to break off from our normal routine and do something different, often in a completely different place. Sadly that can mean that we miss Sunday worship which is somewhat ironic as the word ‘holiday’ is clearly derived from ‘Holy Day’ as at one time such days were the only times when work stopped. Two of our annual holidays are still linked to holy days, Christmas and Easter, but our other bank holidays have other origins. New Year’s day only became a holiday in England in 1974 and the May Day holiday in 1978, whilst as I wrote a couple of months ago, the Spring Bank holiday replaced the Christian Whitsun.

I have to admit that often I do not manage to worship when away on holidays, but I can recall a number of very special Sundays whilst abroad. Several times I have travelled to the Southern Hemisphere over the Easter period, the climate often being very agreeable at that time of year. I remember sitting for an hour gazing at the Victoria Falls, one of the greatest wonders of the natural world, whilst the Easter Day service was taking place in Luddenden. On another Easter Day a group of us who were at Uluru walked down to the base of the rock to see the sun rise over it, taking with us a bible so that we could read the Easter story before we began our seven mile walk around the base of the rock. Easter in La Paz was a very different experience. I was woken at 6am by a band processing up the main street below my hotel window. I grabbed some clothes and joined the back of the procession to find myself heading for an America evangelical church up the hillside. The catholic churches didn’t stir until seven when they all welcomed Easter by ringing their bells, a sound magnified by the effect of the steep-sided bowl in which the city is located.

Nearer to home, I visited St Peter’s Square in Rome on one occasion to find it very full of people all looking expectantly at the wall of the Vatican. Within a few minutes Pope John Paul appeared at the window and I received an unexpected blessing. But what an event to be part of. 

I love joining Russian Orthodox worship and have done so in places as far apart as Moscow, Murmansk and Irkutz. It is so dramatic, the music very moving and the churches so elaborately decorated. It was in the then newly re-opened church in Murmansk in 1993 that I learned from our English speaking guide, very much a new Christian, what an icon meant to her.

This year I have worshipped in St John’s Cathedral on Antigua, a loud, lively and dramatic lead up to the taking of communion, a quiet church in Oxfordshire with an adult congregation and not a child in sight - and a large Evangelical Free Church in Surrey, with many young people in their teens and twenties in a congregation of several hundred with much singing of Christian songs and a 40 minute sermon but without, so I felt, any feel of personal worship. 

We may all like best being in our own modest congregation, worshipping with those we know, in a church which serves its local community in many different ways. That is natural. But it is also good sometimes to see how others worship and seek to experience more of the Christian church. Of course, we can always slip off on a Sunday to experience a different local church and some people do, but a holiday to a different place provides an obvious opportunity of a new experience. I remember a family camping holiday in Swaledale where we noticed that the local parish church advertised an evening service. We and another family walked across to the church swelling the congregation of three elderly ladies by adding four more adults and six children. The vicar looked down at his expanded congregation and gave a great talk aimed primarily at the children. 

In a village like Luddenden one can live quite a narrow life in many respects. Holidays provide a time to do something different, go to new places, experience different lifestyles and, can I add, worship God in different environments. 

Geoff Budd