Rector's Letter - Rev’d Jeremy Trew - November 2025

November is a month of great contrasts. It starts with two commemorations, both of which cause us to look back. The first, right at the start of the month, is the twin festivals of All Saints and All Souls, where we remember the saints of the church, and all those loved ones who have died and gone before us. The second is Remembrance Sunday, when we recall all who served and gave their lives in service in the wars of the past century and more.

The “saints” are not just those great saints who appear to us in stained glass and statuary, but that broader and truer meaning of the word: all who have trusted in God, that mixed bag of God’s people. The “souls” are all we have known and loved, both saints and sinners, whom we remember before God, and trust that nothing that is good can ever be lost. God’s idea of redemption is greater than ours, thankfully. And in “remembrance”, we recall the service given by others out of patriotic duty, out of political belief, as an act of faith, or, for the great majority, simply because they had to. Human motivation is rarely a precise thing, and great trust is required on our part that the service was given in a just cause.

Both of these commemorations cause us to look back on lives and events past. But they also cause us to look forward; both with the historical imperative that, if we do not learn from the past, we are doomed to repeat it; and, with the hope kindled by faith that this life, and the value we see in it, is not all there is, but that human life and meaning continues beyond the confines of the grave. That is the great hope of faith, certainly of the Christian faith; that we are loved and valued so much by God that God comes to us as we are and accepts us as we are, knowing what we were created to be.

All of this leads us to the end of November, when we celebrate the beginning of Advent, that time of preparation for the celebration of Christmas and the unveiling of God’s most audacious and irreligious plot: to step down from the greatness and glory of whatever heaven may be like and to be born to peasant parents in an unruly backwater of the Roman Empire; to live a fully human life, and to accept the worst that humanity can do to a person, all born out of love. November takes us on a journey that moves us meaningfully towards Christmas. If we try to understand that journey, then we will truly be in a place to celebrate it.

Best Wishes
Jeremy