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A spiritual comment and prayer to start the day with Fr John Burniston

Good morning.

Why do we keep anniversaries?

As well as being golden opportunities to celebrate someone we value, they also give us permission to wallow in a bit of nostalgia! We look at odd bits of memorabilia and try to recall how it felt all those years ago.

Yet the song of Harrow School says:
Forty years on, growing older and older,
shorter in wind, as in memory long,
feeble of foot, and rheumatic of shoulder,
what will it help you that once you were strong?

Forty years ago today I knelt alongside twenty five others in Durham Cathedral as we pledged ourselves to serve God in the ministerial priesthood. Inevitably I have been thinking of all that has happened since, the characters that I have met, the high days and the low moments, recognising the changes that have happened in society and in the Church in all that time. To be honest, lots of it has been a struggle but every bit of it has also been the most profound privilege.

Who was it who said : The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see. I may indeed be weaker now but today鈥檚 anniversary helps me to recognise that I have been part of a movement far bigger than me. Cardinal Newman talked about us being a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons.
As I keep this anniversary, I hope I can begin to understand what God has been doing amongst us, all these years.
Lord, help us to be willing to take our small part in serving the world that you have made. Amen.

"Forty Years On" is a song written by Edward Ernest Bowen and John Farmer in 1872.