St Peter’s Anglican Church

Blessing of the Advent Wreaths

Each year just Advent, the start of the Church Year, St Peter's combines with the parish at the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit to bless the Advent Wreaths. This year we gathered at the Cathedral and the service was led by Father Joe Grayling and our own Vicar, Stuart Goodin.

C.S. Lewis - November 22

Apologist

“It isn't Narnia, you know," sobbed Lucy. "It's you. We shan't meet you there. And how can we live, never meeting you?"
"But you shall meet me, dear one," said Aslan.
"Are - are you there too, Sir?" said Edmund.
"I am," said Aslan. "But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.”

Clive Staples Lewis was born in Belfast in 1898. By the time he received a scholarship to Oxford in 1916 Lewis had developed a fascination with mythology. The First World War intruded on his studies. He served in the army and was wounded. Lewis graduated with first class honours, and by 1925 became a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, a position he held until 1954 when be became Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge. In Oxford he developed a reputation both as a tutor and writer on late medieval literature and as one of a group of widely read and entertaining conversationalists and writers. A particular group of friends know as the “Inklings” included J.R.R. Tolkien and Charles Williams.

By 1930 Lewis was beginning to explore Christianity again. He had abandoned any Christian faith in his early teens. However, his continuing interest in mythology and fantasy brought him in contact with George MacDonald a writer of Christian fantasies. He talked things over with Tolkien, a devout Roman Catholic, and others. That and reading The Everlasting Man by G.K. Chesterton, a convert to Roman Catholicism, eventually persuaded Lewis to abandon his atheism. By 1931 Lewis was an active member of the Church of England.