Police have apologised to a church minister after officers interrupted a lawful service in Milton Keynes and told him he would be prosecuted for breaking Covid regulations.

Pastor Daniel Mateola normally preaches to a full church, but since communal worship is banned under Covid rules, his congregation gets support from online worship instead.

Services are filmed professionally and streamed online, but last Friday worship was interrupted by the police who said there were too many people present.

To avoid confrontation, the church sent their five musicians home but police said the film crew was too big and called seven more officers as back up.

Pastor Daniel said: “It was very challenging, very intimidating, at one point a little bit scary too. At one point I was thinking, what’s going on here?

Read it all.

“It was intimidating, a little bit scary” A pastor from Milton Keynes tells @itvanglia how he felt when the police turned up to stop an online church service https://t.co/k94wkn3FwP

— Elodie Harper (@ElodieITV) December 1, 2020

It is a nomadic existence and, in a pandemic, a particularly high-risk one. The nurses parachute into cities like New York, Phoenix, Los Angeles and Green Bay for weeks or months at a time, quickly learning the ways of a new hospital and trying to earn the trust of the existing staff.

At the end of their shifts, they return to their temporary homes: hotels, Airbnb apartments or rented houses. Their families and friends are sometimes thousands of miles away, available only through phone calls or FaceTime.

Last week in Green Bay, where the surrounding county has averaged more than 150 cases a day since late September, a team of four travel nurses worked at Bellin Hospital, grappling with the unrelenting pressure of the emergency room and a Thanksgiving holiday far from home.

More than eight months into the pandemic, many travel nurses have done little else but treat Covid-19 patients.

Read it all.

One nurse traveled from one hot spot to another: New York in April, Arizona in July and Wisconsin in October. https://t.co/aTmDii9WOq

— Julie Bosman (@juliebosman) December 3, 2020

Loving God, who didst call Francis Xavier to lead many in India and Japan to know Jesus Christ as their Redeemer: Bring us to the new life of glory promised to all who follow in the Way; through the same Jesus Christ, who with thee and the Holy Spirit livest and reignest, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

On his feast day 3 Dec, here is:

The Miracles of St. Francis Xavier
Peter Paul Rubens, 1617/18

This monumental painting was displayed alternately with The Miracles of St. Ignatius of Loyola on the high altar of Antwerp’s Jesuit Church

(Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien) pic.twitter.com/oJcfZMRdga

— John McCafferty (@jdmccafferty) December 3, 2020

Keep us, O Lord, while we tarry on this earth, in a serious seeking after thee, and in an affectionate walking with thee, every day of our lives; that when thou comest, we may be found not hiding our talent, nor serving the flesh, nor yet asleep with our lamp unfurnished, but waiting and longing for our Lord, our glorious God for ever and ever.

Bit of snow on Rum this morning as @CalMacFerries Lord of the Isles sails by on the way to Mallaig. Home time for me. Been a good couple of weeks on board. Thanks to the crew, port staff and our passengers for making it great pic.twitter.com/IEP1chv4pD

— Byron Griffiths (@byrogriffiths) December 3, 2020

I love thee, O Lord, my strength.
The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer,
my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge,
my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised,
and I am saved from my enemies.

The cords of death encompassed me,
the torrents of perdition assailed me;
the cords of Sheol entangled me,
the snares of death confronted me.

In my distress I called upon the Lord;
to my God I cried for help.
From his temple he heard my voice,
and my cry to him reached his ears
Then the earth reeled and rocked;
the foundations also of the mountains trembled
and quaked, because he was angry.
Smoke went up from his nostrils,
and devouring fire from his mouth;
glowing coals flamed forth from him.
He bowed the heavens, and came down;
thick darkness was under his feet.
He rode on a cherub, and flew;
he came swiftly upon the wings of the wind.
He made darkness his covering around him,
his canopy thick clouds dark with water.
Out of the brightness before him
there broke through his clouds
hailstones and coals of fire.
The Lord also thundered in the heavens,
and the Most High uttered his voice,
hailstones and coals of fire.
And he sent out his arrows, and scattered them;
he flashed forth lightnings, and routed them.
Then the channels of the sea were seen,
and the foundations of the world were laid bare,
at thy rebuke, O Lord,
at the blast of the breath of thy nostrils.

He reached from on high, he took me,
he drew me out of many waters.
He delivered me from my strong enemy,
and from those who hated me;
for they were too mighty for me.
They came upon me in the day of my calamity;
but the Lord was my stay.
He brought me forth into a broad place;
he delivered me, because he delighted in me.

The Lord rewarded me according to my righteousness;
according to the cleanness of my hands he recompensed me.

–Psalm 18:1-20

Good morning beautiful 💕💕 pic.twitter.com/FXhIc9wVi6

— Sezgin Keskin (@sezginkeskin719) December 3, 2020

The Rev. Anna Greenwood-Lee, incumbent at St. Laurence Anglican Church in the diocese of Calgary, was elected bishop of the diocese of British Columbia Sept. 26.

She was elected on the seventh ballot during a virtual synod.

Greenwood-Lee says the diocese’s vision of transformation spoke to her. “It felt like my gifts and what they were looking for in terms of their vision lined up.”

Greenwood-Lee points to her interest in social justice, particularly in the creation of the Wisdom Centre, an online network that connects people with events and resources. She also has experience with and teaches courses on congregational development, and teaches courses on the topic. In 2006, when she became the incumbent at St. Laurence, she was given three years to “either turn the place around or close it,” she says. “It’s still here!”

Greenwood-Lee says she has an interest in helping the church try to enter a new stage of its life. “I feel like we’re called to be midwives of what God is birthing in our midst…. Death is a natural part of life, so some parts of our institutional life are dying. But at the same time, I think amazing things are struggling to be born, or are being born in our midst.”

Read it all.

Calgary priest elected 14th bishop of the diocese of British Columbia https://t.co/rHAfZo0DA0 via @anglicanjournal #BCAnglican #SJDVic via ^Alastair

— St. John's Church (@StJohnVicBC) December 2, 2020

The world must act now to prevent a surge in global slavery under the conditions created by the coronavirus pandemic, the International Justice Mission (IJM) has warned today, the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery.

Covid-19 is exacerbating poverty and the circumstances that cause people to fall into bonded labour and servitude, the IJM, a Christian anti-trafficking charity, has said. Furthermore, the lockdowns that many governments have imposed in an effort to control the virus have led to a marked increase in online sexual exploitation of children, as adults in the West who are restricted to their homes have spent more time on the internet, facilitating the abuse of children elsewhere.

Estimates from the World Bank suggest that 49 million extra people will be forced into extreme poverty as a result of the pandemic. The IJM said that it had already observed people-traffickers trying to exploit this by offering false job offers or loans to entrap vulnerable people who had lost their income because of the virus.

The IJM’s principal adviser on modern slavery, Peter Williams, said that evidence suggested that certain vulnerabilities were key key, and that these — loss of income, family medical emergencies, isolation — were “characteristic of the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on people in poverty”.

In the developing world, public institutions that were needed to combat trafficking and modern slavery — such as local police forces, social services, and the courts — were being put under unprecedented pressure by the pandemic, Mr Williams said.

Read it all.

LATEST. The world must act now to prevent a surge in global slavery under the conditions created by the coronavirus pandemic, the International Justice Mission (IJM) has warned today, the International Day for the Abolition of Slaveryhttps://t.co/3uUjzic1HD

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) December 2, 2020

When the first coronavirus wave hit in the spring, most churches shut down live worship at the peak of the Christian calendar, with Lent leading into Holy Week and Easter.

While many churches reopened to at least some in-person worship in the ensuing months, some are now scaling back those in-person activities with the recent resurgence in COVID-19. And that happens just as churches today usher in another season that normally draws some of the biggest worship attendance of the year — the start of the Advent season, the four-week period leading to Christmas.

That means that more worshipers will be listening at home to “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” rather than singing out the traditional opening hymn of the first Sunday of Advent in church. And other services marking the season also are going on line. Services like “the hanging of the green, that’s not happening,” said the Rev. Sheldon Sorge, general minister for the Pittsburgh Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), referring to ritual decorating of churches with Christmas symbols.

Several churches that had resumed live worship have gone back to online-only.

“Almost none of our churches are going to have a live Christmas Eve program,” he added. “Christmas Eve is typically a crowded service. It’s going to be difficult to do socially distancing.”

He added: “This is a hard decision. People don’t want to stop meeting.”

Read it all.

Some churches scale back in-person worship amid COVID-19 surge https://t.co/Xt4KVh2w6a

— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (@PittsburghPG) November 29, 2020

During a public health emergency, individual freedoms can be curtailed where necessary to protect against the spread of disease. Most of this authority is at the state and local, not the federal, level. But when public health measures intrude on civil liberties — not just religious exercise, but other constitutional rights — judges will insist that the measures be nonarbitrary, nondiscriminatory and no more restrictive than the facts and evidence demand.

The real disagreement between Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Breyer and the majority was over a technical though important detail. This disagreement made the court look more fractured than it actually was. Just days before the decision, on Nov. 19, the governor’s lawyers sent the court a letter stating that he had redrawn the red and orange zones in Brooklyn, conveniently putting the churches and synagogues that were the focus of the litigation into the more permissive yellow zone. The letter cited no reasons for the reclassification and offered no assurance that it might not happen again, at a moment’s notice, with no more explanation than this time.

The court majority regarded the governor’s about-face as too fleeting and changeable to derail a decision on the merits. Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Breyer, by contrast, concluded that the change eliminated any need for the court to intervene, at least for now. That is a reasonable position (though we disagree with it) — and it does not indicate any fundamental disagreement with the five justices in the majority about the need to protect civil liberties even in a time of emergency.

Read it all.

"The right to exercise religion in accordance with conscience is one of the most important in the Bill of Rights, and it is time for mayors and governors — and courts — to treat it that way.” https://t.co/pCAmIIKsxF

— Josh Hammer (@josh_hammer) December 2, 2020

O God, who in thy providence didst call Channing Moore Williams to the ministry of this church and gave him the gifts and the perseverance to preach the Gospel in new lands: Inspire us, by his example and prayers, to commit our talents to thy service, confident that thou dost uphold those whom thou dost call; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Almighty and everlasting God, you called your servant Bp. Channing Moore Williams to preach the Gospel to the people of China & Japan: Raise up in this and every land evangelists and heralds of your kingdom, … pic.twitter.com/WSh4lxFrRZ

— The Seabury Society (@SeaburySociety) December 2, 2019

O God, Father of mercies, who didst so love the world that thou didst give thine only begotten Son to take our nature upon him for us men and for our salvation: Grant to us who by his first coming have been called into thy kingdom of grace, that we may always abide in him, and be found watching and ready when he shall come again to call us to thy kingdom of glory; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

'Tis time for Day 2 of The Seventeenth Century Lady's 2020 Advent Calendar 🎄🎅!
Behind Door No. 2…
Linard Gontier's stained glass, 'The Life of St Anne', 1623.
Saint-Pierre-Saint-Paul Cathedral, Troyes. pic.twitter.com/ktRJ2b3RNl

— Andrea Zuvich (@17thCenturyLady) December 2, 2020

Thy testimonies are my delight,
they are my counselors.

–Psalm 119:24

Hope stretches light …#Advent pic.twitter.com/ixiOZAL9fi

— Msgr Brian Bransfield (@BrianBransfield) December 2, 2020

I am in my 75^th year, a bellwether of the Baby Boom generation, and I am looking forward to getting my Covid-19 vaccinations as soon as possible.

I am also a retired priest. Most of my ordained colleagues are younger than I and are serving active congregations.

So who goes first?

The Centers for Disease Control is apparently drawing up priority guidelines as to “essential” recipients, and it is thought that the elderly and “first responders” will go to the head of the line. I have heard no mention of clergy being on the list of essential workers.

It is, I suppose, not surprising that in a secular society, clergy are considered non-essential, but what surprises me is that there has been no call from church leaders in this matter. All too frequently there has been a sheepish plea for compliance with regulations restricting worship, even when secular bodies are exempted from them. The Supreme Court just struck down such a provision in New York as a violation of the free practice of religion, which is good, but such a decision lacks the rationale that religion – and Christianity in particular – is a matter of the life of the immortal soul, not just the body.

Read it all.

Just over twelve years ago, Sir Jonathan Sacks, as he then was, gave an address to the Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops—the first Jewish speaker to be invited to this event. He spoke with all the energy and clarity he invariably displayed as a lecturer, and had a palpable effect on all. The atmosphere of the conference was a bit fragile—a lot of absentees, frustration on the part of many that we were not planning to pass resolutions, even a cynicism that the event was an exercise in evading unwelcome decisions. We were discussing the idea of an Anglican “covenant” to affirm the vision (and the limits) of our shared identity, often with more heat than light.

Jonathan (unprompted by the organizers) spoke precisely about covenant, and transformed the word for us. From the Jewish point of view, he said, a covenant could be a “covenant of fate,” a solidarity grounded in shared trauma and pain, or a “covenant of faith,” the free decision to risk mutual commitment and to be implicated in one another’s acts and sufferings. The unchosen common experience of slavery in Egypt was the foundation of one profound strand in Jewish identity; but only at Sinai, when Israel says yes to God’s invitation to seal the human side of the covenant, is the full nature of covenantal identity established, as the people make their promise to one another as they do to God.

He had spelled out some of this a year or so earlier in what is surely one of his best books, The Home We Build Together. In it, he explains how social solidarity cannot be secured just by the market, or just by the coercive authority of the state; it needs the conscious investment of covenanting with one another for the common good. This is significantly more than just a social “contract” because it presupposes a continuing sympathetic regard for one another, a willingness to make constant adjustments to maximize the well-being of the community as a whole. It needs attention, flexibility, and, above all, loyalty.

Read it all.

Rabbi Sacks transformed the notion of covenant for us. https://t.co/JxUZNWFUzi

— First Things (@firstthingsmag) December 1, 2020

Given the huge decline in churchgoing beginning in the 1960s, can religion play a role in turning things around like it did at the beginning of the 20th century?

Garrett: I definitely think there’s a role for religion to play. But religion will have to be innovative in meeting the moment. We have seen some religious innovation aimed at combating the decline in churchgoing — in such things as megachurches, for example. But some of those megachurches are characterized by a theology that is highly individualistic — the prosperity gospel — the idea that God blesses the righteous with riches for themselves. That’s been used to draw people back into religion, but it’s reflective of the destructive, highly individualistic drift over the past half-century, which we chronicle in the book.

For religion to play a role in another upswing, it’s going to have to find a way to speak to a changed social landscape and to remind us our religious traditions speak directly to the situation we find ourselves in today — a situation where we need to take better care of our most vulnerable. We need to think about how we organize a society more fairly. There are great templates in every great religion for how to do this but we have to choose that religious narrative. There’s a moment here where our religious leaders have the ability to shape a religious narrative in order to inform our social problems. We’re seeing some early signs of that happening. For example, the Rev. William Barber, who is organizing “moral marches on Washington” and taking up the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign.

Putnam: King moved America from the bottom up as well as the top down. He did it above all by using the Exodus narrative. He knew it appealed well beyond the Black church he was in himself. The point is religious narratives and religious symbols have a huge power to move lots of people.

Read it all.

"There’s a moment here where our religious leaders have the ability to shape a religious narrative in order to inform our social problems. We’re seeing some early signs of that happening," said @shaylynromney. https://t.co/nYXkX3WYj9

— Religion News Service (@RNS) November 28, 2020

An artificial intelligence (AI) network developed by Google AI offshoot DeepMind has made a gargantuan leap in solving one of biology’s grandest challenges — determining a protein’s 3D shape from its amino-acid sequence.

DeepMind’s program, called AlphaFold, outperformed around 100 other teams in a biennial protein-structure prediction challenge called CASP, short for Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction. The results were announced on 30 November, at the start of the conference — held virtually this year — that takes stock of the exercise.

“This is a big deal,” says John Moult, a computational biologist at the University of Maryland in College Park, who co-founded CASP in 1994 to improve computational methods for accurately predicting protein structures. “In some sense the problem is solved.”

The ability to accurately predict protein structures from their amino-acid sequence would be a huge boon to life sciences and medicine. It would vastly accelerate efforts to understand the building blocks of cells and enable quicker and more advanced drug discovery.

Read it all.

An artificial intelligence network developed by Google AI offshoot DeepMind has made a gargantuan leap in solving one of biology’s grandest challenges — determining a protein’s 3D shape from its amino-acid sequence. https://t.co/tzWgwIgRNt

— Nature (@nature) December 1, 2020

France’s Muslim Council is due to meet President Emmanuel Macron this week, to confirm the text of a new “charter of Republican values” for imams in the country to sign.

The Council (CFCM), which represents nine separate Muslim associations, has reportedly been asked to include in the text recognition of France’s Republican values, rejection of Islam as a political movement and a ban on foreign influence.

“We do not all agree on what this charter of values is, and what it will contain,” said Chems-Eddine Hafiz, vice-president of the CFCM and Rector of the Paris Grand Mosque. But, he said, “we are at a historic turning point for Islam in France [and] we Muslims are facing our responsibilities”.

Eight years ago, he said, he thought very differently.

Read it all.

France Islam: Muslims under pressure to sign French values charter – BBC News https://t.co/1tWacHUr2F

— Eric The Red (@millerman14) December 1, 2020

Lord God, make us so reflect thy perfect love; that, with thy deacon Nicholas Ferrar and his household, we may rule ourselves according to thy Word, and serve thee with our whole heart; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Anglicans remember Deacon NICHOLAS FERRAR (1592-1637) who formed a spiritual community of married and single persons called Little Gidding. He was responsible for publishing George Herbert's "The Temple" in 1633. "Little Gidding" is part 4 of T.S. Eliot's "The Four Quartets." pic.twitter.com/INB4ov3Mcy

— St. Francis Anglican (@SaintFrancisREC) December 4, 2018

O Lord Jesus Christ, who at thy first coming didst warn us to prepare for the day when thou shalt come to be our judge: Mercifully grant that being awake from the sleep of sin, we may always be watching and intent upon the work thou hast given us to do; who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end.

Bon dia, Good morning my friends Twitter from Catalonia 💛 🌞 🍀 🍁 🌿 pic.twitter.com/DTvN45EroV

— Lluís Cat (@lluispriorat) December 1, 2020

But I through the abundance of thy steadfast love will enter thy house, I will worship toward thy holy temple in the fear of thee.

–Psalm 5:7

Good morning twitter friends! It's Dec 1st! As we close out 2020, may the new day bring much joy and goodness to you…and love! pic.twitter.com/H3PXeaGAEh

— Sydney Park (@SydneyPark18) December 1, 2020

Few organisations have taken a bigger hit from the coronavirus pandemic than the Serbian Orthodox Church.

Over the past two months, Covid-19 has deprived the religious institution of its top leadership in both Serbia and Montenegro. But critics say the blows are self-inflicted, with traditional acts of worship the likely cause of infection.

The chain of events is extraordinary:

Last month, the Church’s senior bishop in Montenegro, Metropolitan Amfilohije, died after contracting coronavirus
Then, the Church’s leader, Patriarch Irinej, tested positive for Covid-19 days after presiding at his colleague’s funeral, and died
Last week, Bishop David of Krusevac, who conducted part of the service marking the Patriarch’s death, confirmed that he had contracted coronavirus for the second time
Amfilohije’s successor in Montenegro, Bishop Joanikije, has been unable to take up his duties due to his own struggle with the disease
Regardless of the decimation of its leadership, the Orthodox Church remains central to many people’s lives. And while schools in Serbia have mostly moved online because of the epidemic, communion is still performed in person, often in breach of the ban on gatherings of more than five people.

Read it all.

The church hierarchy being battered by Coronavirus https://t.co/TLyRSYgYX1

— Gerrarrdus (@Gerrarrdus) November 29, 2020

Now that vaccines are awaiting approval, the question looms: To what extent will remote work persist? In this article, we assess the possibility for various work activities to be performed remotely. Building on the McKinsey Global Institute’s body of work on automation, AI, and the future of work, we extend our models to consider where work is performed. Our analysis finds that the potential for remote work is highly concentrated among highly skilled, highly educated workers in a handful of industries, occupations, and geographies.

More than 20 percent of the workforce could work remotely three to five days a week as effectively as they could if working from an office. If remote work took hold at that level, that would mean three to four times as many people working from home than before the pandemic and would have a profound impact on urban economies, transportation, and consumer spending, among other things.

More than half the workforce, however, has little or no opportunity for remote work. Some of their jobs require collaborating with others or using specialized machinery; other jobs, such as conducting CT scans, must be done on location; and some, such as making deliveries, are performed while out and about. Many of such jobs are low wage and more at risk from broad trends such as automation and digitization. Remote work thus risks accentuating inequalities at a social level.

Read it all.

Remote work may increase gender disparity in the workplace, exacerbating the regressive effects of #COVID19. Our new article explores what’s next for remote work https://t.co/sNt86P24PH pic.twitter.com/FsJqcaULm7

— McKinsey Global Institute (@McKinsey_MGI) November 26, 2020

Continuing the spate of stunning news about COVID-19 vaccines, the biotech company Moderna announced the final results of the 30,000-person efficacy trial for its candidate in a press release today: Only 11 people who received two doses of the vaccine developed COVID-19 symptoms after being infected with the pandemic coronavirus, versus 185 symptomatic cases in a placebo group. That is an efficacy of 94.1%, the company says, far above what many vaccine scientists were expecting just a few weeks ago.

More impressive still, Moderna’s candidate had 100% efficacy against severe disease. There were zero such COVID-19 cases among those vaccinated, but 30 in the placebo group. The company today plans to file a request for emergency use authorization (EUA) for its vaccine with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and is also seeking a similar green light from the European Medicines Agency.

Read it all.

'Absolutely remarkable' : No one who got Moderna's vaccine in trial developed severe COVID-19 | Science | AAAS https://t.co/Hrtfy4XmWW

— Carl Zimmer (@carlzimmer) November 30, 2020

The majority concluded that the restrictions are not “neutral” or of “general applicability.” This finding is key in the court’s religious-liberty jurisprudence. Restrictions that apply to everyone and do not target religion but incidentally affect religious observance (e.g., a general ban on peyote use that happens to burden the rites of some religious groups) are presumptively valid. By contrast, restrictions that single out religion — i.e., that are not neutral or generally applicable — are subject to the “strict scrutiny” analysis that the court applies to burdens on fundamental freedoms. That means the state, to justify its restrictions, must show that they are narrowly tailored to serve a compelling governmental interest.

Here, there is no gainsaying that the state has a compelling interest in stemming the spread of a potentially deadly infectious disease. Yet, the court observed that “it is hard to see how the challenged regulations can be regarded as narrowly tailored.”

Read it all.

For Thanksgiving, the Supreme Court upholds religious liberty https://t.co/ldquzsllip

— Andy McCarthy (@AndrewCMcCarthy) November 29, 2020

Almighty God, who didst give such grace to thine apostle Andrew that he readily obeyed the call of thy Son Jesus Christ, and brought his brother with him: Give unto us, who are called by thy Word, grace to follow him without delay, and to bring those near to us into his gracious presence; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

November 30th is the feast of Saint Andrew the Apostle—missionary to Scythia and Greece, wonderworker, and martyr—crucified at Patras, circa AD 69. He is the patron saint of Scotland, Ukraine, Romania, Russia, Constantinople, and fishermen. pic.twitter.com/azWCMozAwf

— Tradical (@NoTrueScotist) November 30, 2020

Grant, O Almighty God, that as thy blessed Son Jesus Christ at his first advent came to seek and to save that which was lost, so at his second and glorious appearing he may find in us the fruits of the redemption which he wrought; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God world without end.

Get ready: For tis the season#Advent2020 #Hope

“The raising of the Advent Wreath is a sign of hope – the hope that light will come to our darkness, the hope that life will overcome death, and the hope that God will be with us.”@CottrellStephen @York_Minster @churchofengland pic.twitter.com/ntbPdnzA3q

— engcathedrals (@engcathedrals) November 27, 2020

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.

–Psalm 1:1-3

Happy Advent @SMCDSB_MRO #hope #Advent2020 🕯 pic.twitter.com/SCVak95uYX

— Jennifer Jeffries (@Mrs_Jeffries) November 29, 2020

Make us, we beseech thee, O Lord our God, watchful and heedful in awaiting the coming of thy Son Christ our Lord; that when he shall come and knock, he shall find us not sleeping in sin, but awake and rejoicing in his praises; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

AMEN ✝️🛐🕯️🕯️🙏🙏🙏 pic.twitter.com/eLRkdguF4w

— THOMAS GOMEZ ✝️🙏🇮🇳🙏 (@THOMASGOMEZ007) November 29, 2020

“Then the kingdom of heaven shall be compared to ten maidens who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom.
Five of them were foolish, and five were wise.
For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them;
but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps.
As the bridegroom was delayed, they all slumbered and slept.
But at midnight there was a cry, `Behold, the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’
Then all those maidens rose and trimmed their lamps.
And the foolish said to the wise, `Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’
But the wise replied, `Perhaps there will not be enough for us and for you; go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.’
And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast; and the door was shut.
Afterward the other maidens came also, saying, `Lord, lord, open to us.’
But he replied, `Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’
Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.

–Matthew 25:1-13

Abraham Bosse, French (1602-1676), The Wise and Foolish Virgins Together, etching on laid paper. pic.twitter.com/GblbRGQrSC

— Yiannis Einstein-Ιωάννης Αρβανιτάκης (@yianniseinstein) May 1, 2020