Come to enjoy Sunday service

Welcome to our community at St Thomas à Becket Church. We’ve been a place of Christian worship to Almighty God since at least the 12th century. And we are open every day, 8.30 to 5pm.

• Every Sunday we have sung Holy Communion at 9.45am.
• And on the first Wednesday of the month we have a midday ‘said’ Holy Communion.

St Thomas’ is always ready to welcome you to the presence of God. Take a little time amid the busy-ness of daily life – be refreshed and renewed in peace.

• The church is open every day for private prayer, and to visit from 8.30am to 5pm.
• We have a range of worship and social activities – see What’s On. Or pick up our free monthly Parish News.

Enjoy this oasis of calm and tranquillity, whether for a service, a visit, meditation, or private prayer.

 A message from our Vicar, Herbert:

Dear Friends,

‘Alleluia Christ is risen, He is risen indeed, Alleluia’. So Christians the world-over proclaimed on Easter Day and as we continue to celebrate in these Great Fifty Days of Easter, in which we are currently.

Our Paschal candle, lit for the first time at the Easter Vigil or on Easter Day, continues to be lit for all our services during Eastertide as a joyous reminder that Christ is risen and that the light of Christ has come into our world.

Eastertide continues with the Ascension, when the risen Christ returns to God the Father, which we celebrate on 14^th May this year. Then follows with the gift of God the Holy Spirit at Whitsun or Pentecost, the fiftieth day of Easter, on 24^th May.

In the gospel of St Luke there is that familiar and wonderful account of the disciples walking along the road to Emmaus, about 7 miles from Jerusalem, and the risen Jesus comes alongside to join them, first as just a fellow traveller, before then revealing himself  to them as the risen Christ. Jesus gives them the great commission to proclaim his forgiveness of our sins upon our repentance and with the promise of eternal life – God’s salvation is for all people.

Then at Jesus’ Ascension, when he returns to God the Father in Heaven, he says to the disciples ‘I am with you always, even unto the end of the world’. The Ascension is therefore closely linked to that theme of mission and of God’s presence being with us.

So dear friends, as we celebrate these great Fifty Days of Easter, let us remember and be comforted: amid our own times and with whatever life presents us with along our own Emmaus road, the risen Jesus is with us, in his presence, in the help and gift of others around us, he gently accompanies us in our life’s Christian pilgrimage. May the peace of the risen Christ be with you all.

With all good wishes and love,
Fr Herbert.