Listen to it all and the composer’s website is there [I first learned of this through Preston Trombly].
Thanks be to Thee, Lord Jesus Christ
For all the benefits Thou hast given me,
For all the pains and insults
Which thou has borne for me.
O most merciful Redeemer, friend and brother,
May we know Thee more clearly,
Love Thee more dearly,
And follow Thee more nearly
Day by day.
Amen.
–St Richard of Chichester (1197-1253)
We thank thee, Lord God, for all the benefits thou hast given us in thy Son Jesus Christ, our most merciful Redeemer, Friend, and Brother, and for all the pains and insults he hath borne for us; and we pray that, following the example of thy saintly bishop Richard of Chichester, we may see Christ more clearly, love him more dearly, and follow him more nearly; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, now and for ever.
St Richard of Chichester, bishop, Chancellor of Oxford University, & patron of Sussex, died #OTD in 1253. This was the site of his shrine: pic.twitter.com/xIvbgg0NF7
— Eleanor Parker (@ClerkofOxford) April 3, 2017
Thanks be to thee, O Lord Jesus Christ, for all the benefits which thou hast given us, for all the pains and insults which thou hast borne for us. O most merciful Redeemer, Friend and Brother, may we know thee more clearly, love thee more dearly, and follow thee more nearly, now and for evermore.
Happy St Richard of Chichester Day: "see Thee more clearly, love Thee more dearly, follow Thee more nearly" #DayByDay pic.twitter.com/PDocWcSxhA
— Diocese of Salisbury (@DioSalisbury) June 16, 2014
But I trust in thee, O LORD, I say, “Thou art my God.” My times are in thy hand; deliver me from the hand of my enemies and persecutors! Let thy face shine on thy servant; save me in thy steadfast love!
–Psalm 31:15-16
The extraordinary story of Mr Browder’s transformation from hard-nosed capitalist to human rights campaigner, based on his 2015 book Red Notice: How I Became Putin’s Number 1 Enemy is being turned into a film. “There are a couple of things that are so crazy in the story that the Hollywood screenwriter says, ‘No one will believe it. They will just think it’s not true’,” he says. Yet the plot is still unfolding. “The book doesn’t scratch the surface — it finishes in 2012 and crazy stuff has happened since then: assassinations and cover-ups and western enablers.”
The grandson of Earl Browder, the former leader of the American Communist Party, he became a capitalist as an “act of rebellion” and spent more than a decade living as a businessman in Moscow, running Russia’s most successful investment fund. He was deported in 2006 after he started to expose corruption, and was blacklisted by the Russian government as a “threat to national security”. Since then he has been convicted in absentia on what he calls trumped-up charges and sentenced to nine years in jail.
The death in 2009 of his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, who had uncovered details of a $230 million tax fraud, made him only more determined to get to the truth. “They arrested him, tortured him viciously for 358 days and they killed him at the age of 37,” he says. “To this day it’s a burden I carry on my shoulders that a young man died in my service to protect me. It’s my duty to get justice for him and make sure that the people who killed him don’t get away with it.”
Others who have worked with Mr Browder to expose the links between the Russian mafia and the Kremlin have also mysteriously died or been injured. Only last week Nikolai Gorokhov, a Russian lawyer who is representing the Magnitsky family, fell from the fourth floor of an apartment building near Moscow in suspicious circumstances. “He had come across dramatic and important evidence of collusion and corruption and cover up of the murder by the Russian law enforcement authorities,” Mr Browder says. “He was going to go to court the day after he plunged four storeys. I believe that he was pushed off the balcony.”
Read it all (requires subscription).
They are among the country’s most treasured and historic buildings, but England’s listed churches are about to lose the dedicated state funding they have relied on for four decades.
Next week, the Heritage Lottery Fund will announce that it is scrapping its £25m Grants for Places of Worship fund as of 2018. Money for the maintenance of church buildings will instead come out of its overall heritage programme, which supports everything from industrial buildings to neolithic standing stones.
The HLF, part of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, said church organisations would still be able to apply for funding for repairs and it would “target” a similar amount of spending for churches and other religious buildings.
But Becky Clark, secretary of the Church of England’s church buildings council, said previous funding levels were no longer guaranteed.
Watch it all.
The Church of England has attacked the BBC after the broadcaster decided to shut down its in-house religious affairs television production department.
Graham James, the Bishop of Norwich, who speaks for the church on media matters, said: “It is a failure of the BBC as a public service broadcaster.”
He was commenting on a leaked email from a senior BBC executive which warned that the recent loss of the contract to make Songs of Praise in house had forced it to rethink its business model.
Lisa Opie, director of factual, BBC Studios, told staff that this “means we will no longer have a permanent religion and ethics department in Salford”.
Read it all (requires subscription).
O God, who by the cross and passion of thy Son Jesus Christ didst save and deliver mankind: Grant that by steadfast faith in the merits of that holy sacrifice we may find help and salvation, and may triumph in the power of his victory; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.
O give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his steadfast love endures for ever!
–Psalm 118:1
Grant to thy servants, O God, to be set on fire with thy love, to be strengthened by thy power, to be illuminated by thy Spirit, to be filled with thy grace, and to go forward by thine aid; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
I am speaking the truth in Christ, I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen by race. They are Israelites, and to them belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ. God who is over all be blessed for ever. Amen.
–Romans 9:1-5