Rector’s Letter – April 2026
St James the Less Penicuik and St Mungo West Linton
Scottish Episcopal Churches
The Rectory
23 Broomhill Road
Penicuik
EH26 9EE
01968 678254
07950 607574
Rector.pandwl@gmail.com
26th March 2026
Dear sisters and brothers in Christ,
Rector’s letter for April 2026
Personal Notes
Please remember the clocks go forward at 2am on Sunday 29th March, Palm Sunday. If you come into church an hour late we will know who forgot to change their clocks!
We are fast approaching Palm Sunday, where the first thing we do as we enter church is hear the Liturgy of the Palms which describes the cries of joy of the crowds as Jesus enters Jerusalem. We then receive palm crosses which are blessed and we joyously process into church. The mood changes shortly after when we have the reading of the Passion Narrative where we find those cries of joy have turned into betrayal, rejection, crucifixion, and the death of Jesus. I find this a very moving service as we hear the Passion Narrative. It provides the ‘book ends’ of Holy Week and I know some priests don’t like using the passion narrative as they think it means their congregants won’t follow the daily Bible readings and journey with Jesus through Holy Week and reach the Last Supper on Maundy Thursday and the events of Good Friday, but rather can pitch up on Easter Sunday and celebrate the Risen Christ. I am a little sympathetic to this, as I think the real joy of the Easter Proclamation is all the richer for journeying through each day of Holy Week, and especially attending the Maundy Thursday service. The Maundy Thursday service is my favourite service of the whole year; it is laden with tension, humility, betrayal and Jesus’ love for his disciples, even the one who betrays him. The darkness, the stripping of the altar, the absence of anything holy and sacred is profound. I invite you to join us this Maundy Thursday and after the service consider spending some time in prayer.
The Maundy Thursday service is the start of the Triduum, three days of services, where there is no dismissal at the end of the Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services, to make clear that these are all one service culminating in the proclamation of the resurrection on Easter Day.
Bishop-elect Dagmar Winter will be installed as Bishop of Edinburgh on the 30th of May at St Mary’s Cathedral. Please pray for Bishop Dagmar as she prepares to leave the Diocese of Ely and join us in Edinburgh.
The re-advertisement for a Priest-in-Charge of St Peter’s Peebles and St Andrew’s Innerleithen has resulted in an application, I am glad to say. I am hopeful that this may result in an appointment of a priest. I am not involved in the interviews themselves. Please pray for the applicant and the congregations of St Andrew’s and St Peter’s.
News and new things happening
Faith Development Book discussion – 30th March – change of time
We were originally due to discuss this book at 7.30 pm but I want to change it to 2 pm, so I can attend the PCT Holy Week service in the evening. Please join us if you have read ‘Communion with God’ by N D Walsh.
Day of Prayer for the people of the Middle East – 31 March
We have decided to open our churches on Tuesday 31st March for people to come in and pray and light a candle if they wish. The times the churches will be open are:
St Mungo’s: 9 am to 2pm
St Jame’s: 10.20 am to 2pm
During Holy Week, the Primus, Bishop Mark Strange, had planned to visit Jerusalem and the West Bank, with one of his aims being to provide the background for a season of prayer for the region. The flights for this trip have now been cancelled and Bishop Mark cannot travel to the Middle East, so he has asked for a Day of Prayer for the churches and people of the Middle East on the Tuesday of Holy Week (31 March), the day he would have been on the West Bank.
More details about the Day of Prayer will follow, so please keep checking the dedicated page on the SEC website. In the meantime, Archbishop Hosam Naoum, the Anglican Archbishop in Jerusalem and Primate of the Province of Jerusalem and the Middle East, asks us to pray:
God of mercy, look with compassion on all who are affected by the present conflict. Grant insight to hardened hearts, comfort to the fearful, protection to those in danger, and hope to those who are despairing, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Penicuik Churches Together Prayer Breakfast – 9.30 am on 28th March
The next PCT prayer breakfast to pray for all the Penicuik children’s and young peoples’ work, which will be on Saturday 28th March at Trinity Church Hall, between 9.30 and 10.30 am. Please consider going along to pray and also to enjoy breakfast together. It’s a very informal gathering and it’s been great at the previous ones to have people from the different Penicuik churches coming along.
There will be tables set out to pray for the different aspects of the work with young people.
Good Friday Services – Friday 3rd April
There will be a service at noon at St Mungo’s for Good Friday. The church will be open for quiet reflection between until 3pm.
At St James the Less, the programme will be:
Noon: a time meditation of words and music based on ‘Seven Words for Three Hours’ by Edmund Newell. This will be in the hall.
1pm: a time of reflection on the Stations of the Cross, with words by Timothy Radcliffe OP, and pictures by Martin Erspamer. This will be in the hall.
2pm: Good Friday service in church.
St James the Less Fellowship Lunch – 5th April
At the first Sunday lunch on 5th April, we will be asking for donations towards the Bishop’s Lent Appeal which this year is for Aberlour Children’s Charity. You can find more information about Aberlour here. As it is Easter Sunday, quite a few people may be dashing off after the service for a family lunch, so please if you are doing so, consider making a donation by bank transfer and letting our Treasurer know.
St James the Less Fellowship Lunch – May and June
We ideally need three volunteers each month to make soup for about ten people each. The soup is to be vegetarian and gluten-free. Please contact me or Marion Mather if you wish to help out for May or June’s lunch.
St Mungo’s, Service of Prayers for Healing – Sunday 3rd May at 5pm
This is a new service at St Mungo’s that will take place on the first Sunday of each month. The LORD declares in Exodus 15:26 that he is Yahweh-Rapha, the LORD who heals. We see the truth of this throughout the bible as people are healed spiritually, emotionally and physically. And, of course, we continue to pray for healing today. In order that we may experience the healing touch of the Lord together in a corporate act of worship and prayers, we are offering this new service of Prayers for Healing. This will be a quiet, reverent act of worship with opportunity to join in prayer for others in need of healing or to pray for ourselves and/or be prayed for by others.
Monday Study Group ‘Meeting Jesus’ – 13th April to 11th May 2026 at 10.30 am at St James the Less
This is the second set of five sessions, on the Miracles Jesus Performed. Please do consider joining us and discussing aspects of our faith. We had some interesting and wide ranging discussions in the first five sessions on ‘Stories Jesus Told’.
In Other News…
I have been approached to do a pulpit swap this summer, so for three Sundays I shall be preaching and celebrating holy communion in All Saints, Rome. Many of you will know Rob Warren, formerly of this ilk, (2002 to 2011) who is the chaplain at All Saints, and will staying in the Rectory here for a couple of weeks and preaching and celebrating holy communion at both St James and St Mungo’s. I shall be using up some of my holidays and a week of retreat time whilst I am in Rome. It will be the hottest time of year in Rome, so I am researching museums and cool churches to visit.
I am currently reading Bishop Mariann Budde’s book, ‘How We Learn to be Brave; Decisive Moments in Life and Faith’. She is the Bishop at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. It make for interesting reading, and she talks about the different types of decisions we have to make during our life. I am just over halfway through it, so I’ll see if the rest lives up to the first half.
Nick Bowry
Regular Activities
Ministry in Care and Nursing Homes
Cowan Court, Penicuik: We have been part of a rota with the other Penicuik churches, visiting Cowan Court on a Sunday afternoon for the last year. We visit Cowan Court about once every 5 or 6 weeks. Our next visit is on 19th April.
Aaron House, Penicuik: We are part of a rota with the other Penicuik churches, visiting Aaron House on a Wednesday afternoon at 2pm. As with Cowan Court we will visit once every 5 or 6 weeks. Our next visit is on 6th May. If you able to join the team offering this ministry, please let me know.
Whim Hall, Lamancha: We visit Whim Hall Care Centre on the 2nd and 4th Thursdays of each month. Our next visit is on 9th April.
If you are interested in supporting this rewarding ministry by being part of the visiting teams then please let me know. Normally three of us attend each time, so we can support and guide people through the service and have a chat afterwards with whoever attends. Your prayers are welcome for this activity in and for members of our local communities.
Faith Development ‘Faith Books’
When we have a fifth Monday in the month, we hold a discussion at 7.30 pm about a book as a way of introducing people to different authors which may pique an interest to read more of their work (or not!). In looking for new or used books, I have often used www.bookfinder.com I am sure there are other search sites that will help people find the books on our reading list. The books we shall be discussing in 2026 are:
30th March: ‘Communion with God: An Uncommon Dialogue’ by Neale Donald Walsh (published by Hodder & Stoughton ISBN 0-340-76784-7)
29th June: ‘A Big Enough God: Artful Theology’ by Sara Maitland (published by Mowbray ISBN 0-264-67331-X)
31st August: ‘The Great Spiritual Migration: How the World’s Largest Religion is Seeking a Better Way to be Christian’ by Brian McLaren (published by Hodder & Stoughton ISBN 978-1-473-62677-5)
30th November: ‘Places of Enchantment: Meeting God in Landscapes’ by Graham B Usher (published by SPCK ISBN 978-0-281-06792-3)
Morning and Evening Prayer
We meet online Monday to Friday at 9.00 am and at 5.30 pm. It is a good way to start and end our day, coming together for worship, with daily readings including the psalms; a good rhythm for worship in the Anglican tradition of saying the Daily Offices. Please do consider joining us.
If you wish to access the Daily Office liturgy with the daily scripture readings, go to the Provincial Website, www.scotland.anglican.org and place your cursor on the ‘Spirituality’ heading. A submenu appears and you can select the appropriate Daily Office from the right-hand side of the page.
Mid-week evening services on Zoom
On the first Wednesday of each month, at 7.30 pm, we hold a service of Prayers for Healing online. If you wish someone or a situation to be prayed for, send an email to me or Marion Mather.
At 9pm every Wednesday evening we hold the service of Compline. Please do join us for this short service of calm and settling prayers before sleep.
Continuing our Mission: Leading Your Church into Growth Prayer
Each weekday morning, we pray for growth in our church. If you are not able to join us online for Morning Prayer at 9 am, can I encourage you to pray this once a day. The prayer is given below.
God of Mission, who alone brings growth to your Church,
send your Holy Spirit to give:
vision to our planning, wisdom to our actions, and power to our witness.
Help our church to grow:
in numbers, in spiritual commitment to you, and in service to our local
community, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
In Touch Magazine for St James the Less and St Mungo’s
In Touch is circulated to all on email and is issued in paper format to those who do not have email. The cost of a paper copy is £2 for an A4 version, and about £1.50 for an A5 version. We print a very limited number of paper copies to keep out costs down, and to reduce our consumption of paper. If you receive an email version but would also like a paper copy, please let Sue Owen know and we invite you to make a suitable donation (preferably by bank transfer rather than in cash) to cover the cost. The deadline for content to be submitted for the next issue is 5th April 2026. I would like to encourage you to submit something for inclusion in the magazine; a poem, a review of a book or a film, an article on a subject of interest. If you wish to submit an article, please send them to intouch@stjamesthelesspenicuik.org
Financial giving to St James the Less or to St Mungo’s
If you are able, can I ask you to prayerfully consider setting up a recurring monthly payment to the church via on-line banking, to contribute financially on a regular basis. Details of the bank accounts are given below for each of the churches.
St James the Less:
Monthly donation by bank transfer (include your name in the reference line when setting this up – only the Treasurer knows the name of the donor). Bank details are: St James Episcopal Church Penicuik, acct no 17117264, sort code 80-22-60. If you wish to make a donation by cheque, please make out the cheque to ‘St James Episcopal Church Penicuik’.
St Mungo:
Monthly donation by bank transfer (include your name in the reference line when setting this up – only the Treasurer knows the name of the donor). Bank details are: St Mungo’s Vestry, acct no 00817851, sort code 80-09-39.
Ecumenical Relations and Community Involvement Work
The Penicuik Ministers continue to meet every month in the Storehouse for a chat. Once a month the Penicuik Churches Together (PCT) has a joint Sunday evening service. The schedule detailing where the services are each month is on the PCT website. http://penicuikchurchestogether.org.uk/ I continue to meet with Revd Dr Tony Foley to discuss joint services and matters of mutual interest, in West Linton. Tony has decided to demit office from the West Tweeddale Churches at the end of May this year.
Diocesan and Provincial Activities
I continue as the interim Pastor for Peebles and Innerleithen during their vacancy. They hope to interview an applicant in April. Please pray for both congregations. The Diocesan Personnel Committee next meets on Monday 25th May.
The Ministry Team
We continue to meet to plan for the coming months; planning services and faith development activities as well as exploring other aspects of what is offered to the congregations and to our local communities.
Zoom Links for Services
We have a regular pattern of services. Details of these are set out below. You can access them using the Zoom links.
Morning Prayer at 9 am, and Evening Prayer at 5.30 pm, Monday to Friday. (Zoom only)
https://zoom.us/j/6289561588?pwd=aGtNeE1ZM3l1Tkluckp3bVJtZkRHQT09
Meeting ID: 628 956 1588 Password: 040775
St Mungo, Holy Communion at 10.30 am on Sunday.
https://zoom.us/j/93417190423?pwd=K1ZoS0xKUWpRVENGTzFYL3NvakFHQT09
Meeting ID: 934 1719 0423 Passcode: 062021
St James the Less, Holy Communion at 10.30 am on Sunday.
https://zoom.us/j/92002197798?pwd=REp5NHQwVEdSd3A4a09lN1lHOUdnUT09
Meeting ID: 920 0219 7798 Passcode: 040775
1st Wednesday Evening Service at 7.30 pm (not July or August) (Zoom only)
https://zoom.us/j/96303841875?pwd=YmZiYkdNNzZJeWI5cmtZL2RLUWc1Zz09
Meeting ID: 963 0384 1875 Password: 040775
Wednesday Evening Compline at 9 pm (all year) (Zoom only)
https://zoom.us/j/95345457224?pwd=TDNoT20vR2dYMVQ5STdsS0lzR0dMQT09
Meeting ID: 953 4545 7224 Password: 040775
Zoom Links for Activities
‘Monday Evening Studies’ at 7.30 pm (Zoom only)
https://zoom.us/j/97670406222?pwd=WWUzL0dLNHdWdFJ0YVNnLzdvY2w2Zz09
Meeting ID: 976 7040 6222 Passcode: 202101
Use this link for Monday Evening Studies and the ‘Faith Book’ discussions.
Weekly Bible Study: Tuesdays at 2pm (Zoom only)
https://zoom.us/j/92510962481?pwd=L1hsaCtiWTh0ZFFib3N0WlluaVlaUT09
Meeting ID: 925 1096 2481 Passcode: 040775