16th August, 2020.
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My dear friends,

Yesterday, the 75th anniversary of VJ (Victory over Japan) Day in 1945, began in my parish with torrential rain. It eased off – sort-of – and we gathered for our commemorative service at Great Bardfield war memorial in fine, drizzly mist. To my surprise, so many people turned up that we ran out of orders of service. The Church of England did not issue any special form of service, so I used an adaptation of the service used by the House of Commons when they gave thanks to God for the end of the Second World War on this day 75 years ago.
 
It turned out to be a very poignant service, as we gave thanks to God for the peace, but also remembered before Him all the human pain and suffering of that terrible conflict. As a little personal touch, I wore a 1930s linen surplice (the white robe worn over the long black cassock) which I inherited from a lovely old priest called the Rev. Wilfrid du Pré. Father du Pré had been a missionary in the late 1920s and early 30s, and returned home to become the vicar of St Simon’s Church, Jersey. In 1940 it became clear that Hitler’s armies were going to over-run France and the British government took the decision not to defend the Channel Islands. Father du Pré was faced with a terrible decision. In the end, he put his wife Betty and their three children on the last ship from Jersey back to Southampton, and remained at his post in his parish to look after his parishioners. He wore this surplice during the years of the German occupation, and I wore it yesterday in his memory.
 
In later years Father du Pré would sometimes talk about the German Occupation of Jersey. He saw the Gestapo at work, brutal behaviour by German soldiers, and slave labourers being worked to death. He did what he could to comfort and support his parishioners for five long years. Food was terribly short, and at one point Father du Pré became gravely ill and nearly died. Fortunately he was a beekeeper, and an old lady nursed him and managed to spoon some warm milk and honey into his mouth, which kept him alive until he managed to pull through. By the time Jersey was liberated in 1945, he said he was so emaciated could hold his hand over a Bible and read the black print through his flesh. When he was finally reunited with his wife and children after five years’ separation, they had to get to know one another all over again.
 
There were millions of people like Father du Pré in the Second World War, muddling through as best they could, showing devotion to duty and resourcefulness in difficult and painful circumstances. It would be very interesting to know what happened to the members of St John Ambulance in Jersey during the German Occupation (anyone know?). I am sure they also exhibited devotion and resourcefulness, and were never more needed by their fellow islanders. It is a useful reminder that there are many different forms of courage, and most courage, sadly, goes unrecognized.
 
We in St John today are faced with a crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Clearly, it is not nearly as awful as the Second World War – but infection rates appear to be going up again, and the pandemic is affecting the nation’s economic life, which in turn affects the running of St John, just as it likewise affects the Church of England and so many other elements of our daily lives. As I meet members of St John in Essex, I am frequently humbled and moved by what I see of your devotion to the care of the sick, and your resourcefulness. We don’t know what the coronavirus pandemic has in store for us; but we do know that the public stands in great need of St John Ambulance, which means you and me.
 
And what of Father du Pré? He was the uncle of Jacqueline du Pré, the famous cellist, in case you were wondering. He lived for another 45 years and died in 1990 aged 86, having celebrated 60 years in the priesthood. I helped conduct his funeral. His experiences during the German Occupation of Jersey were never far from his mind in later life. Despite his own sufferings, he was one of the kindest, most cheerful men I have come across. His photograph sits on my desk in the vicarage and I am grateful to God for the privilege of knowing him.
 
From time to time in life, we look back and see how God has sent someone into our lives to help us, and perhaps to guide and change us for the better. I have no doubt that God is using the members of St John in precisely this way during the present coronavirus emergency. But that is a tale that is still unfolding, and in which we all continue to play our part.

With continued prayers and kindest regards,

The Rev. Dr ROBERT BEAKEN, County Chaplain
THE ASSUMPTION – 16th AUGUST 2020.
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Gospel: St Luke, chapter 1, verses 46-55
Today we celebrate the great festival of the Blessed Virgin Mary known variously as the Assumption, the Dormition or the Falling Asleep of the Mother of God, and Our Lady-in-Harvest. The Church of England’s Common Worship book plays it safe by simply saying The Blessed Virgin Mary. Our Gospel reading for this holy day is the Magnificat, the wonderful song of joyful praise by Mary, the young girl from Nazareth who found herself pregnant with the Son of God. Today’s feast celebrates the other end of the story, the death of Mary. As in so many commemorations of the deaths of Christians, it is an opportunity to look back; but uniquely in the case of Mary, it is also an opportunity to look forward.

            Today’s feast, which for convenience’ sake I will refer to as the Assumption, the most commonly-used name, is based upon ancient oral tradition and legends, but it is not any less important or valuable because of that. When the Roman Emperor Constantine was converted to Christianity in 315 A.D., he embarked upon a programme of building churches: the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, St Peter’s and St Paul’s-outside-the-Walls in Rome, and so on. It occurred to Constantine that it would be most fitting to build a big church to house the body of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and so he asked the bishops where she was buried. They answered that she was not buried anywhere; and indeed nowhere has ever claimed to have her body. Mary’s death, the bishops reported to the emperor, had been surrounded by strange and miraculous events, which had been passed on by word of mouth in rather garbled versions. According to one version, Mary had died but was later seen alive again, being carried off to Heaven by angels, rather like the assumption of Elijah in the Old Testament. In another version Mary died and was buried, but three days later (remind you of Easter?), St Thomas went to her tomb and found it empty. Easter, of course, is the key to all this, but more of that later. These stories do not appear in the New Testament because after the Resurrection and Ascension, the focus moves on elsewhere. Mary disappears from our sight and we presume she went to live with St John, perhaps in Ephesus for a while. At some point Mary died, and then we find ourselves confronted with these strange and blurry tales of her funeral and Assumption by God into Heaven.

If you go to Jerusalem there are two rival churches each claiming to be the spot where the Assumption happened. One is Greek Orthodox, dark, full of ikons and flickering candles, the walls covered with centuries of candle soot. The other is Roman Catholic, built in late nineteenth century, and today run by very efficient German Benedictine monks – so clean, you could eat your dinner off the floor. Where, historically speaking, there is a clash of traditions, it usually means there is something behind it.

            I was puzzled for years about the meaning behind the Assumption, until one day the penny dropped, in, of all places, St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle. I was then a curate in Gosport and every diocese was invited to send one curate to a special course at Windsor. I was sent to uphold the honour of the Diocese of Portsmouth; though I was not overjoyed to discover we were to spend a week studying death. In the end, though, the course was much better than I expected, and staying inside Windsor Castle was rather fun. Almost as an aside, the Canon of Windsor leading the course explained the Assumption. There is a little prayer we Christians sometimes say: May the souls of the faithful departed (1) rest in peace, and (2) rise in glory. This means that when we die we are buried or cremated – and we rest in peace – until the Day of Judgement, when we shall have a resurrection just like that of Jesus, after which we shall be judged, and hopefully welcomed into Heaven – we rise in glory.

            In the case of the Blessed Virgin Mary, God abrogated this and brought her resurrection forward. She didn’t have to rest in peace until the Day of Judgement, but rose in glory and was welcomed into Heaven three days after her death. It is important to stress that Mary didn’t bring the Assumption about by her own effort or power; it was entirely the work of God. If you like, Christ was the first-fruits of the Resurrection, and his Mother was the second. Thomas Ken, the seventeenth century Anglican bishop of Bath and Wells, wrote about the Assumption in his famous hymn Her Virgin eyes saw God incarnate born:

Heaven with transcendent joys her entrance graced,
Next to his throne her Son his Mother placed;
And here below, now she’s of Heaven possest,
All generations are to call her blest.
 
Some theologians have suggested that the Assumption is explicable because the body of the mother who bore Christ was so special, so precious, it could not be allowed to decay. St John of Damascus wrote:
 
It was necessary that she who had preserved her virginity inviolate in childbirth should also have her body kept free from all corruption after death. It was necessary that she who carried the Creator as a child on her breast should dwell in the tabernacle of God.
 
I would also suggest that the Assumption is God’s acknowledgement of the faith of Mary. I pointed out that our Gospel is the Magnificat, the joyful song of young Mary on her way to see Elizabeth. We must recollect Mary’s tremendous faith which allowed her, a very ordinary young Jewish girl, to say ‘Yes’ to the angel Gabriel at the Annunciation and to agree to be the Mother of God’s only Son, at great personal risk and sacrifice. We may think of her care of the Christ Child, her love and support for her Son. We recall her at the foot of the Cross on Good Friday, being alongside her Son in his death agony and then holding him in her arms for one last time before his burial. And then, we think of her joy again at his Resurrection, reunited with Jesus once more.
And at the end, Mary, who had spent her life not seeking the limelight but seeking to direct the attention of others to her Son, is assumed up to Heaven in a Resurrection like that of Christ. Her faith, quite simply, is shown by God to have been well-founded and true. 
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Have faith in Jesus Christ, the feast of the Assumption bids us; and one day we, like Mary, will enjoy our own share in the Resurrection of her Son.