Five years ago, on Mothering Sunday, the first national online service was broadcast on the Church of England’s media channels in response to lockdowns mandated by the Government to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

Marking the anniversary in Sunday’s broadcast, the Archbishop of York expressed his gratitude to this online worshipping community, and “to those who have made it happen”. Last year, 59 weekly services were produced which accrued 21 million views. An average of 4000 people a week watch the service from start to finish.

“These services have connected us together as a Christian community, as an online community, and my prayer now is that, in our worship this morning, we will be more deeply connected to Jesus,” Archbishop Cottrell said.

This week’s broadcast, for the 3rd Sunday of Lent, featured highlights from previous services, including the Revd Richard Allen leading the confession from a lifeboat in the Trelawny Benefice, in Cornwall, and hymns from St Martin’s Voices, on locations in Holy Island and in a stable, where Clover the donkey interrupted filming with her own chorus of braying.

Read it all.

Five years ago, on Mothering Sunday, the first national online service was broadcast on the Church of England’s media channels in response to lockdowns mandated by the Government to slow the spread of the coronavirus https://t.co/KXnR0XbFUN pic.twitter.com/PzVaw5jqiS

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) March 24, 2025

People first began to think about theology not because they were looking for intellectual stimulus or solutions to abstract problems, but because they found themselves living in an unsettling and vastly expanded ‘space’. They were conscious of new dimensions in their connection with each other, new dimensions in coping with their own fear, guilt, despair, a new sense of intimate access to the limitless reality of God. They connected these new experiences with the story of Jesus of Nazareth, executed by the Roman colonial government, reported by his closest friends as raised from death and present with them and their converts in the communication of divine ‘spirit.’ As we read Christian scripture, we are watching the first generations of Christian believers trying to construct a workable map of this unexpected territory. 

When I started writing the assorted pieces that make up the little book on Discovering Christianity (published earlier this year), my hope was above all to convey something of this sense of Christian thinking as a process of mapmaking in a new and bewildering landscape. That’s why one chapter – originally drafted for a Muslim audience – tried to list some of the things that an interested observer might spot in looking from outside at the habits of Christian believers: not first and foremost their spectacular and uniform embodiment of unconditional divine love (if only), but just the sorts of things they said and did, the sort of language used about Jesus, the rituals of induction and belonging. Indeed, if there is one biblical text I had in mind in virtually all the chapters, it is the simple phrase, ‘Come and see’ that Jesus uses in St John’s gospel when he is first followed by those who will become ‘disciples’, literally ‘learners.’ 

‘Come and see’. When we use language like that in everyday life, we’re encouraging others to share something that has excited or troubled us (or both). It’s not a proposal for solving a problem. It’s not even a recruitment campaign. It’s an invitation to stand where someone else is standing and look from there. In the rich symbolic context of John’s gospel, it’s about sharing Jesus’ ‘point of view’ – which is, as we’re told right at the start of the gospel, a point of view unimaginably close to the heart of eternal life and reality itself.  

We can only see in this way when we move away from our ordinary perceptions a bit….

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"We read and think in company; our theological reflection like the rest of our lives of faith is a shared, ‘conversational’ affair."https://t.co/BZdeLOgjVw

— Seen and Unseen (@seenunseenmag) March 19, 2025

And so his question to all those who have the freedom to speak in the Church and for the Church is ‘who do you really speak for?’ But if we take seriously the underlying theme of his words and witness, that question is also, ‘who do you really feel with?’ Are you immersed in the real life of the Body, or is your life in Christ seen only as having the same sentiments as the powerful? Sentir con la Iglesia in the sense in which the mature Romero learned those words is what will teach you how to speak on behalf of the Body. And we must make no mistake about what this can entail: Romero knew that this kind of ‘feeling with the Church’ could only mean taking risks with and for the Body of Christ – so that, as he later put it, in words that are still shocking and sobering, it would be ‘sad’ if priests in such a context were not being killed alongside their flock. As of course they were in El Salvador, again and again in those nightmare years.

But he never suggests that speaking on behalf of the Body is the responsibility of a spiritual elite. He never dramatised the role of the priest so as to play down the responsibility of the people. If every priest and bishop were silenced, he said, ‘each of you will have to be God’s microphone. Each of you will have to be a messenger, a prophet. The Church will always exist as long as even one baptized person is alive.’ Each part of the Body, because it shares the sufferings of the whole – and the hope and radiance of the whole – has authority to speak out of that common life in the crucified and risen Jesus.

So Romero’s question and challenge is addressed to all of us, not only those who have the privilege of some sort of public megaphone for their voices. The Church is maintained in truth; and the whole Church has to be a community where truth is told about the abuses of power and the cries of the vulnerable. Once again, if we are serious about sentir con la Iglesia, we ask not only who we are speaking for but whose voice still needs to be heard, in the Church and in society at large. The questions here are as grave as they were thirty years ago. In Salvador itself, the methods of repression familiar in Romero’s day were still common until very recently. We can at least celebrate the fact that the present head of state there has not only apologized for government collusion in Romero’s murder but has also spoken boldly on behalf of those whose environment and livelihood are threatened by the rapacity of the mining companies, who are set on a new round of exploitation in Salvador and whose critics have been abducted and butchered just as so many were three decades back. The skies are not clear: our own Anglican bishop in Salvador was attacked ten days ago by unknown enemies; but the signs of hope are there, and the will to defend the poor and heal the wounds.

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St Oscar Romero, Archbishop of San Salvador, died #onthisday in 1980.

He committed himself to the poor and the persecuted of his native El Salvador and was assassinated while celebrating Mass in the chapel of the hospital where he lived.

He was canonised in 2018 is one of ten… pic.twitter.com/hqU2aVCXcE

— Westminster Abbey (@wabbey) March 24, 2025

Almighty God, who didst call thy servant Oscar Romero to be a voice for the voiceless poor, and to give his life as a seed of freedom and a sign of hope: Grant that, inspired by his sacrifice and the example of the martyrs of El Salvador, we may without fear or favor witness to thy Word who abideth, thy Word who is Life, even Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with thee and the Holy Spirit, be praise and glory now and for ever. Amen.

Today is the feast day of St. Oscar Romero. He was canonized by Pope Francis in 2018 and is remembered for his faithfulness as Archbishop of San Salvador. On March 24, 1980 he was shot to death while offering Mass.

Amidst persecution we face today, St. Oscar Romero, pray for us! pic.twitter.com/G24TQP0EIw

— EWTN Global Catholic Network (@EWTN) March 24, 2025

Heavenly Father, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you: Look with compassion upon the heartfelt desires of your servants, and purify our disordered affections, that we may behold your eternal glory in the face of Christ Jesus; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

Sunrise over Bamburgh #Northumberland #photography #landscapephotography pic.twitter.com/spnlIq5Y9E

— Jim Scott (@jimscottphoto) March 24, 2025

The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “Stand in the gate of the Lord’s house, and proclaim there this word, and say, Hear the word of the Lord, all you men of Judah who enter these gates to worship the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Amend your ways and your doings, and I will let you dwell in this place. Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.’

“For if you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly execute justice one with another, if you do not oppress the alien, the fatherless or the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your fathers for ever.

–Jeremiah 7:1-7