On Sunday 1st July 1990, in the Cathedral and Abbey Church of St. Alban, (to give what is commonly known as ‘St. Alban’s Cathedral’ its correct, full name), I was ordained priest by the then Bishop of St. Albans, Rt Rev’d John B. Taylor. Therefore this coming Wednesday will be the twenty-fifth anniversary of that significant day. So with today being the nearest Sunday to the anniversary, within our Eucharist at St. Clement’s this morning, I renewed my ordination promises or vows.
In the absence of a bishop, I arranged for Licensed Reader Jack Noonan & American Presbyterian Minister Karen Moritz, to once more ask the questions that were put to me within that Ordination Service twenty-five years ago. I found it both moving and challenging even when putting together the printed text for today’s service. All the more so, as I responded to each question in front of the St. Clement’s congregation this morning. If you want to know what exactly is asked at an ordination service, go here and scroll down to ‘The Liturgy of Ordination’.
After I had responded to the questions and had also received the loud support of the congregation, promising to both pray for me and to continue to uphold and encourage me in my ministry, I knelt and we sang the ancient hymn Veni Creator Spiritus – ‘Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire’, which is when the photograph at the beginning of this post was taken. Karen then led us in intercession, using the form of intercession from the ordination service.
Whilst I was warmly greeted when sharing the Peace, what I wasn’t expecting was what occurred just before the end of the service. In advance of the final hymn, I was giving the notices when both of the Churchwardens got up, wishing to also make an announcement. There followed an effusive eulogy written and spoken by Churchwarden Stephen Weeks, the text of which I was later told, had been approved by fellow Churchwarden Gordon Truefitt and gained the blessing of Jack Noonan. I was then given a most humbling long standing ovation by the congregation.
This afternoon, I have been searching through two boxes that sit in my office, famously ‘waiting to be sorted’, trying to find a photograph of me standing before St. Alban’s Cathedral in cassock, surplice and stole on that special day. Unfortunately, I’ve drawn a blank. But below is a scan of the legal document confirming my ordination, signed and sealed by Bishop John. I do love the line, ‘Of whose sufficient learning and godly conversation We were assured’ 🙂
Oh dear! April is gone and I haven’t written or posted anything here for nearly a month. So finally, an update, explaining what I’ve been up to.
Worship
The first few days of April were the latter days of Holy Week, leading to Easter Sunday. As I’ve previously written, Easter Day is the Sunday when we normally have the biggest congregation of the year. However, 2015 proved exceptional with a total attendance of 136, (121 adults and 15 children), the largest ever during my seven Easters in Prague.
The additional encouraging thing is that a higher level of numbers attending worship has been maintained post-Easter. Low Sunday, (the Sunday after Easter Day), was far from being ‘low’ and on the following Sunday 19th April, the congregation numbered 74, nearly 50% up on our Sunday average for the year, of around fifty.
Besides being thankful for this rise in numbers, I’ve obviously asked myself what has brought this about. I think the answer is that our core congregation has slightly increased in size and is putting in a higher regularity of attendance. This has combined with an increase in visitors to Prague, joining us for worship. Well over half of our Easter Day congregation were visitors. Nearly all of these find us via our Church website which I constantly seek to keep up-to-date. I recently read some research which indicates that having a Church website that is not up-to-date, is a sure way of discouraging people from attending your Church.
Despite writing in early March, that Spring seems to be arriving, winter has been somewhat reluctant to release its grip. There were several occasions during the last week of March and the first week of April, when Prague experienced heavy snow showers, most notably on Maundy Thursday when I took this picture from the balcony of the Chaplaincy Flat. Much to the amusement of the congregation, I did say at the beginning of our service that evening, in view of the weather I was tempted to change the opening hymn to ‘In the bleak midwinter’ 🙂
However, since the Easter weekend, the weather has been much improved. It was pleasantly fine for our mini-pilgrimage on Holy Saturday and positively warm when I went walking to further explore Ceský Ráj.
Dentist
Earlier this year, I was forced to visit the dentist for the first time for a few years, when one of my front teeth just fell out. Actually, it was a crown dating back nearly thirty years, which had come adrift because the tooth root to which it was attached, had died. A root canal filling and a new crown restored my good looks 😉
However, whilst fixing my front tooth, my dentist did point out that the rest of my mouth was a bit of a mess. So in late March, I decided to bite the bullet – please forgive the obvious pun – and get some further dental work done. Several visits later, on Friday 10th April, I had three new crowns fitted to the top left side of my mouth, into the large gap left by bits of tooth and filling falling out over previous years.
Whilst I’m very pleased with the end result, my three new crowns have inevitably cost me many Czech crowns – CZK13,500, (£400 at current exchange rates), to be precise 🙁 , making a serious hole in my bank account. My only consolation is knowing that having similar work done in the UK, would probably have cost twice as much!
Annual Church Meeting
At our Annual Church Meeting on Sunday 19th April, we did all the usual things such as receiving the 2014 accounts and electing the Churchwardens and Church Council for the next twelve months. But as well as looking back over the previous year, I took the opportunity to look forward.
I pointed out that in less than two years time, I would turn sixty-five, and that my current bishop’s licence as Anglican Chaplain in the Czech Republic, expires on 30th April 2017. Further to that, somewhere between my sixty-fifth birthday and the expiry date of my bishop’s licence, I intend to retire. Ahead lies an interesting two years as the Chaplaincy begins to prepare for finding my successor and as Sybille and I begin to sort out where we are going to retire to. Keep reading this blog if you want to know more!
As in many continental European countries, in the Czech Republic it is a requirement to have winter tyres fitted on cars, when driving in severe weather conditions. This realistically means between November and March each year. So on Friday 24th April, I drove to Nepomuk to visit my friend Adrian Blank, in order to change from winter back to summer tyres. Adrian’s in-laws truck and car servicing business, kindly store the set of tyres I’m not using at any given time.
As I’ve previously explained, once every two years in the Czech Republic, a car also has to pass STK, the equivalent of a British MOT test. Although my current STK is valid until 20th June 2015, I decided to take advantage of the opportunity of needing to be in Nepomuk for the tyre change, to also get the ‘Carly’ through STK slightly earlier than required.
As well as changing the tyres, I asked Adrian and his mechanic colleague, to check if anything else needed doing to ensure the ‘Carly’ would pass STK. Fortunately, the only thing wrong was that one light over the back number plate was not working, because the bulb was kaput.
After this, Adrian and I set off to the nearby town of Horažd’ovice, where the STK testing station is located. Conveniently, Adrian had another car that had been left with him by the owner, in order to get it through STK, so he drove that car and I followed in mine. I am pleased to report that the ‘Carly’ passed with flying colours, costing me only CZK1125 for the test and CZK9 for a new light bulb 🙂 Afterwards, Adrian and I had lunch together which I did also pay for as a ‘thank you’ for his continued help in keeping the ‘Carly’ legally on Czech roads.
As I mentioned in my first post of 2015, this year marks the six-hundredth anniversary of the martyrdom of the early Czech Church reformer, Jan Hus. So at the suggestion of my good friend and colleague Rev’d Dr Karen Moritz, our 2015 St Clement’s Lent Course has been looking at various aspects of the Bohemian Reformation, in which Hus was a major figure.
The course has been held on successive Tuesday evenings during Lent, commencing on Tuesday 24th February, and will conclude in two days time, on Tuesday 24th March. It has been really encouraging to have between ten to twelve attendees each week, nearly all of whom have been present for every session.
In our first session, Karen Moritz presented an excellent overview of the period in question; cca. 1350 – 1620. She explained how the reform movement began during the reign of Charles IV (1346 -1378), and continued after his death. Its theological foundations were then established over the following forty years, with the preaching and writing of Jan Hus being central.
Following Hus being burnt at the stake in Konstanz in 1415, there followed a period of both revolution and radicalisation, before a settlement was reached in 1434, whereby the Utraquist Church, giving Communion in both kinds, was allowed to exist alongside the unreformed Roman Catholic Church, where only bread was given, and then only on rare occasions.
However, from 1520 onwards, following the beginning of the German Reformation initiated by Martin Luther, the next one hundred years saw ever-increasing efforts to suppress the Utraquist Church, culminating in the Battle of White Mountain in 1620. This then led to the re-Catholicization of the Church in Czech lands.
It fell to me to lead our second session, where I explained the influence of the teaching and writing of the early English Church reformer, John Wycliffe, upon Jan Hus. My own alma mater is Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, named to celebrate his legacy.
Wycliffe lived from c1328/30 – 1384. Hus from c1371/2 – 1415. There was therefore, no direct communication between them as Hus was just entering his teens when Wycliffe died. But Wycliffe’s writings in Latin, circulated in Bohemia and greatly influenced the philosophy and teaching of Hus. Some of the published works of Hus, most notably his De ecclesia, are plagiarised versions of the writings of Wycliffe, in an era when no law of copyright existed!
I pointed out the irony of language. Wycliffe preached & taught in vernacular English, Hus in vernacular Czech. But Latin, the language of the educated elite, was their means of communication 🙂
The presenter for our third session, was Father William Faix, an American Roman Catholic priest living and working in Prague and a member of the Augustinian order. He mainly spoke about Martin Luther and his Roman Catholic years, also as a member of the Augustinian order! But at the end of his presentation, he remarked how Luther realised that his own writings which began the German Reformation, actually brought his thinking into line with that of Jan Hus.
The presenter of our fourth session last Tuesday, at which both photographs in this post were taken, was Dr Hana Tonzarová, a priest in the Czechoslovak Hussite Church. Her Church, until 1970, the Czechoslovak National Church, was formed in 1920. It arose from a movement within the Roman Catholic Church of the newly created nation of Czechoslovakia, wanting to celebrate mass in vernacular Czech or Slovak. When the request to do so was refused by Pope Benedict XV, with strong encouragement of the new Czechoslovak government, around 10-15% of the Roman Catholic Church within the new nation, broke away to form this new national Church.
Hana gave an excellent power point presentation, both explaining more about Jan Hus and his life and teaching, but also how her own Church sees him, and how his martyrdom in 1415, is going to be commemorated this year – the six-hundredth anniversary of his death in Konstanz.
Our final session this coming Tuesday, will be presented by Dr Peter Moree, a Dutchman married to a Czech, who teaches in the Protestant Faculty of Charles University. He is going to speak about the legacy of Jan Hus and how his teaching and writing have been both used and abused, down the past six hundred years.
In very simple terms, this course has been both educative and inspirational, one from which I have gained a great deal.
During the past three weeks, we’ve had numerous bright sunny days, enhanced by the hours of daylight getting longer each day. This has encouraged Sybille and I to get out walking and exploring again, especially on Mondays which are meant to be my regular weekly day-off.
As I wrote in an earlier post, three weeks ago on Monday 16th February, we made a round trip to Prague Zoo. A week later on Monday 23rd February, late in the morning, we left the flat, took the tram and travelled to Hlubocepy in the southern suburbs of Prague. From the tram stop, we made our way down to the side of the Vltava River and then walked all along the river bank to the village of Zbraslav.
Just as we were entering Zbraslav and were about to walk into the main square, Sybille spotted this beautifully decorated building in a street off to our left – the Barabizna Mexican Restaurant & Café. It was just as beautifully decorated inside as on the outside. Here we enjoyed a most delightful very, very late lunch 🙂 Sybille’s only disappointment was discovering that none of the staff hablaba español 🙁
Last Monday 2nd March, got somewhat taken over by preparation for my presentation the following evening for our Lent Course on the Bohemian Reformation, about the writing of the early English Church Reformer, John Wycliffe and its influence on Jan Hus. But with the sun still shining in the late afternoon, we set off and walked up to the top of the wooded ridge called Baba, that lies behind the complex of flats where we live. As I’ve previously explained, we live in Podbaba. ‘Pod’ in Czech, means ‘under’ or ‘beneath’ – hence we live under the ridge called ‘Baba’.
On a clear day like last Monday, the views from the Baba ridge are outstanding. In the foreground of this photograph is ‘Residence Podbaba’, where the Chaplaincy Flat is located. Beyond, is the wonderful example of Stalinist-Baroque architecture, now once more known as ‘Hotel International’ (formerly the Crowne Plaza Hotel). The tall white chimney belongs to the plant that supplies our hot water and heating.
This is the view to the right of the first photograph and shows Stadion Juliska, the home of FK Dukla Praha. With Spring on its way, the Czech football season resumed a couple of weeks ago, following the regular mid-season break.
Whilst this view, shows our nearby Kaufland supermarket with a large red ‘K’ on the side of the building, with Hotel International directly behind and Prague Castle in the distance.
This past weekend, the weather really has become Spring-like, with warm sunshine during the day. The nights are still cool because of clear skies, but the temperature hasn’t been below freezing for several nights. Yesterday, Saturday 7th March, under these blue skies, the regular Farmer’s Market at Vítezné námestí resumed, after a break of over two months since Christmas. No market in the Czech Republic would be complete without flowers….
This morning, the warm sunshine meant that it was warmer outside the Church than within it! Following worship and Coffee Hour, Sybille and I decided to walk home. We crossed Štefánikuv most and then climbed the steps and steep path to Letna Park. Drinking Czech beer in a beer garden, with warm sunshine and a perfect view. I think Winter is over – Spring seems to be arriving!
Today, 25th January, is kept in the Christian calendar as the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul. This year, 25th January is a Sunday, and Church practice is that the readings set for a Feast Day, normally take precedence over those set for the Sunday – in this case, those set for the Third Sunday of Epiphany. So it was that this morning, we celebrated the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, with the account of his conversion recorded in the Acts of the Apostles chapter 9, being our first reading. And if you want to listen to my sermon from today, you can do here.
This is the second time during my time in Prague, that the the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul has fallen on a Sunday. The previous occasion was six years ago on 25th January 2009, a few months after my arrival here in late September 2008. That service six years ago, has remained long in my memory for reasons I will explain.
Being an English-speaking congregation based at a central location in a popular tourist destination, nearly every Sunday we have visitors from across the world, joining us for worship. Frequently among the visitors, are fellow ordained priests and ministers. But because they are nearly always in mufti, unsurprisingly since they are on holiday, I only get to know of their presence when speaking to them at the Church door after the service when they usually reveal themselves 🙂
Almost without exception, they express great appreciation for the service and the pleasure for once of being able to be part of the congregation, rather than being up-front. If married, the pleasure of being able to worship sitting alongside their spouse. The latter sentiment is one Sybille and I fully concur with as it is something we both enjoy on the rare occasions we are able to do so.
However, Sunday 25th January 2009, when the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul previously fell on a Sunday, was the occasion when I had to preach with two bishops in the congregation – Bishop Mike Klusmeyer of the Episcopal Diocese of West Virginia, and Bishop Jonathan Gledhill, the Church of England Bishop of Lichfield. The only consolation was that I did know of their presence in advance of the service, though in the case of Bishop Jonathan, only ten minutes beforehand.
But as well as being episcopally listened to and observed, the events of that day and the week that followed, were the catalyst for the beginning of this blog. The first post describing what happened, wasn’t finally published until ten days after that Sunday. But in many respects, rather than ten days hence on 4th February 2015, today is the sixth birthday of ‘Ricky Yates – An Anglican in Prague’.
Little did I know what I was starting and I now look back in staggered amazement at what has happened here, over the past six years. This is post number 304. The blog now attracts between 70 – 90 visitors a day. When there is a new post, visitor numbers promptly rise – for example on 19th January when I last published a new post here, there were 140 visitors.
I’ve met people at the Church door who have told me that they came to Church because they’ve read my blog. I’ve met a couple of people in one of our local bar-restaurants, who on discovering my name, immediately told me that they read my blog. Six years ago, not in my wildest dreams did I ever expect any of this to happen.
So on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul 2015, I thank God for his life, teaching and example. I also thank God for Ananias, for his faithfulness and obedience, without which, Paul’s conversion would not have happened. And I thank God for the way this blog has both become such an important component of my life and how it is appreciated and enjoyed by so many people.
