22nd November, 2020.
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My dear friends,

          I was very pleased and indeed moved to see Their Royal Highnesses the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall attend the Volkstrauertag or Day of Remembrance ceremony at the Neue Wache in Berlin last Sunday. Indeed, I am only sorry that this did not happen sooner: it is, after all, seventy-five years since the end of the Second World War.

I must say, though, that the ceremony in Berlin – which consisted mostly of the ceremonial touching of wreaths on stands, a period of silence and the playing of the song ‘I had a comrade’ – struck me as chilly. I quite understand the need of the German government to avoid anything that smacked of the hero-worship of dead soldiers which was part of the Volkstrauertag during the Nazi era; but I am afraid the ceremony in Berlin still seemed to me to be very cold.
 
I think the aspect that struck me forcibly was that it was all terribly secular. God was not mentioned at all at the ceremony at the Neue Wache: there was just the sad recollection of man’s inhumanity to man and of the tragic loss of so much life. This attitude or approach is one that the Christian can never go along with. Yes, there is much terrible sadness at Remembrancetide as we remember human evil, lives lost, and other lives that were never the same afterwards. But the difference is that in England, our ceremonies of Remembrance are clearly Christian, our services include prayers, and many of our war memorials take the form of the Cross. As Christians, we believe that God’s love is greater than the worst evil: that is the key message of the Resurrection at Easter. As part of the Day of Judgement at the end of the world, God will unscramble human history, wipe away all tears, heal all wounds, and sort out those things which were so big or complicated they never could be sorted out on earth. We must always remember the past; but also remind ourselves that because of Jesus, the future is more important than the past. Christians are supposed to be hopeful people.
 
            As I type these words, we are hearing the exciting news that a third vaccine against Covid-19 appears successfully to have been developed. I am sure there will still need to be further tests, and there may be set-backs, but perhaps there is a chance that the end may perhaps be in sight.
 
How, I wonder, will people in the future remember the Coronavirus pandemic of 2020? I daresay some parts of life will return to normal quite quickly. Other things will take longer, and we may have to lead some aspects of our lives quite differently.
           
            I hope that our future remembrance of the Coronavirus pandemic will not be entirely secular, but that God will get a mention. If the Coronavirus pandemic has seen some people behaving in an irresponsible and selfish manner, I am conscious that it has drawn out the good in many more folk and caused us to draw closer together. I have seen people caring for other men and women who previously were entirely unknown to them; volunteers deliberately placing themselves in harm’s way in order to care for the sick and dying, and to support their families; the development of all sorts of imaginative and ingenious ways in which a helping hand can be extended to others. The closure by the government of our churches for public worship has been a blow, but we have all found ways to carry on and to speak of the love of God to men and women who are anxious to know they have a Father in heaven who cares for them and those they love. In my own parish, I launched an appeal for food for Braintree food bank, and we have been humbled and moved by the sheer amount of food that has been left at the back of St Mary’s each week. I hope we shall find ways of thanking God for all of these things, as well as seeking avenues in which they may be continued once the pandemic is ended.

​​With my prayers and all good and warm wishes,

The Rev. Dr ROBERT BEAKEN, County Chaplain
ST KATHARINE OF ALEXANDRIA – 22nd NOVEMBER 2020
THE PATRONAL FESTIVAL OF LITTLE BARDFIELD PARISH CHURCH

​Gospel: St Matthew, chapter 10, verses 16-23
When the parish church at Little Bardfield was built in 1040 A.D., it would have been the Canary Wharf of this part of North-West Essex. Most Anglo-Saxon houses nearly 1,000 years ago were made of wood, wattle and daub. Houses were usually single-storey, large rooms, in which everyone lived, including some of the animals. There was little privacy, even for the gentry.
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            In Little Bardfield, it was decided during the second-quarter of the eleventh century to build a large church and tower. This was an expression of faith: the villagers wanted somewhere to gather for Mass, and they wanted to build the best church they possibly could, to the glory and praise of God. It would have been a costly undertaking for a small farming community and a difficult one, because there was no local stone. The Anglo-Saxons might have had fewer possessions than we do, and enjoyed less information about the world, but they certainly weren’t stupid. They understood mathematics and the principles of architecture, and so they constructed their church from odd bits of stone, old Roman bricks, and whatever they could lay their hands on. They knew how to use lime mortar bind it all together, and nearly a thousand years later their church and tower are still standing, and have been used without interruption ever since.

            Once the Anglo-Saxons had built their church, they had to decide what to call it. It had long been the custom to dedicate a church to a particular saint. The idea was that that saint selected would keep an eye on the church and its congregation, and would pray for them in Heaven. The people of Little Bardfield decided to dedicate their new church to St Katharine of Alexandria. There are seven saints called Katharine, but our saint, Katharine of Alexandria, is the oldest. Her story has become embroidered over the centuries, but if we strip away all the accretions we are confronted with a young woman who was well-educated, from a good background, and a Christian to boot. Katharine lived in the early fourth century when it was still punishable by death to be a Christian in the Roman empire. She protested to the Emperor Maxentius about the persecution of Christians. He sent clever men to try to win her over to paganism, but they failed and allegedly some of them became Christians. Hell hath no fury like a Roman emperor scorned, and Maxentius ordered Katharine to be killed by having her spine broken on a wheel. When they tried to execute Katharine, the wheel broke – from this we get the Katharine-wheel firework – and so Maxentius next caused Katharine to be despatched by the more conservative method of having her head chopped off.

            Katharine’s body is believed to be in the Orthodox monastery in the desert at Sinai, where it is a centre of pilgrimage and devotion. She is the patron saint of nurses, barristers and students. Her emblem is the wheel. She was a very popular figure to have as a patron saint about a thousand years ago – hence she is our patron saint. Lots of the parish churches dedicated to St Katharine in England and France contained cycles of wall-paintings depicting her life, and I wonder if there were ever any wall-paintings here in Little Bardfield? If there were, they are long gone. We do have a delightful 1860s stained glass window of St Katharine to the right of the organ, made by the same artist who made the window behind the altar, and paid for by the children of the parish, as well a modern statue of St Katharine by Ivor Livi in the south-west corner of the tower.

And so we come to our patronal festival. We all enjoy birthdays with their rituals of cards, cake and presents. They are an opportunity to say how much we love and value someone. Birthday celebrations, though, are a comparatively modern invention. For hundreds of years people celebrated their name days: the festival of the saint after whom they were named.

            Patronal festivals for parish churches are much the same as name days for individuals. A church’s patronal festival is the annual celebration of the life of its patron saint and also of the life of the parish church and its people. Like birthdays, they are an opportunity for us to say how much we love and value our church, and one another, and we are grateful for the many ways in which we have met God in this holy place, sanctified by the prayers of forty generations of villagers.  
            From St Katharine, we learn the lesson that we must stick up for the truth of Christianity, even when many influential people believe in something else and wish to dissuade us from our Christian faith. From the men and women who almost a thousand years ago found the money to build this church – so much better than their own homes – to the glory of God, we learn that we must give to God of our very best. It isn’t enough just to turn to God when we want something sorted, or a fix – and an undemanding one at that. The more we give to God, the more we find we get back.

St Katharine of Alexandria, and the very stones of this ancient church, seem to echo some of the words of Christ: You shall love the Lord you God with all your heart, and all your mind, and all your soul, and all your strength.