okay we're nearly ready to give you your breakfast i think here we are there we go i'm very impatient this morning aren't you good morning hello we're here in the herb garden this morning with a rather impatient tiger who was very much wanting his breakfast on this day it's a lovely day light cloud day and welcome wherever you are from across the world as we come to say our prayers on this friday morning the 27th of august it's a a day when all our themes tend to be of holy places and there are holy places of course right across the world some of them will be favorites of yours and many of them are connected with wells and water because they tend to be places where oases have created a wonderful atmosphere sometimes high up on mountains sometimes in places which are special because of various people who have lived there or died there so we've we've come out here in the herb garden with all these lovely box hedges to the little well and fountain which pleasure created i think probably five or six years ago and now it is so much part of the place but the sound of the water adds tranquility to one's meditations and reflections very necessary at a time when there is a a complete range of pictures which cause us sadness even tears at what is happening across the world and our desire to pray for those places becomes stronger and stronger and we can do that together as we pray in these morning prayers so bring your own prayers and intentions and have in mind the desperate scenes in afghanistan and the fear of all those there the violence and the horrendous scenes of of of bloodshed that so we think of the citizens of kabul all those at the airport those who are longing for release and escape those who are trying to help them and at the same time we have in mind those endangered by flood and fire and earthquake and water and the actions of governments and pandemic and those who will risk their lives today in attempting to help resource and save them we think also of course of the paralympics going on in tokyo as a sign of a world coming together at this time and a flame an olympic flame is is something that is almost a holy site in the gathering of nations so let's say our prayers on this 27th day of the month o lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise your faithful servants bless you they make known the glory of your kingdom blessed are you sovereign god ruler and judge of all to you be praise and glory forever in the darkness of this age that is passing away may the light of your presence which the saints enjoy surround our steps as we journey on may we reflect your glory this day and so we may ready to see your face in the heavenly city where night shall be no more blessed be god father son and holy spirit blessed be god forever the night has passed and the day lies open before us let us pray with one heart and mind and as we rejoice in the gift of this new day so may the light of your presence o god set our hearts on fire with love for you now and forever are men our psalm this morning is one of the lovely little bouquet of short songs which follows our almost three-day reading of psalm 119 the longest of all the sounds set out in sections but this morning begins with psalms 120 to 125 and then onwards to the next section in the afternoon of little sounds like a bouquet bouquet of freshness for their pilgrim psalms and their psalms for journeying and singing on the journey of pilgrimage until they come to the holy place and i'm going to read one of the morning psalms which is psalm 122 is a favorite psalm for many i was glad when they said to me let us go to the house of the lord and now our feet are standing within your gate so jerusalem jerusalem built as a city that is it unity in itself though the tribes go up the tribes as the lord as is decreed for israel to give thanks to the name of the lord for there are set the thrones of judgment the thrones of the house of david o pray for the peace of jerusalem may they prosper who love you peace be within your walls and plenteousness within your palaces for my kindred and companions sake i will pray that peace be with you for the sake of the house of the lord our god i will seek to do you good i realize that old habits die hard and i came from memory at peace be within your walls and plenteousness i said coverdale in fact the translation here says and tranquility within your palaces and perhaps tranquility is a good word for a holy place which is using the city of jerusalem the place where the pilgrims are going as the psalmist writes and then finding themselves standing there their holy place but also a sign of all holy places and als also the capacity of human society at its best to reflect the qualities of heaven so that the heavenly jerusalem becomes an image of that perfect place within the companionship of heaven and earth combined and in the presence of the creator of all who gives us life and light so let's turn to the book of genesis and find a rather moving story i'm reading chapter 23 of genesis following the dramatic story yesterday so well known and this is a a touching story and also takes us deep within the habits and culture so far back with abraham himself in old age sarah lived for 127 years these are the years of the life of sarah and sarah died that is hebron in the land of canaan and abraham went in to mourn for sarah and to weep for her and abraham rose up from before his dead and said to the hittites i am a sojourner and foreigner among you give me property among you for a burying place that i may bury my dead out of my sight the hittites answered abraham hear us my lord you are a prince of god among us bury your dead in the choicest of our tombs none of us will withhold from you his tomb to hinder you from burying your dead abraham rose and bowed to the hittites the people of the land and he said to them if you are willing that i should bury my dead out of my sight hear me and entreat for me ephron the son of zohar that he may give me the cave of machpila which he owns it is at the end of his field for the full price let him give it to me in your presence as property for a burying place now ephron was sitting among the hittites and their from the hittite answered abraham in hearing of the hittites of all who went in at the gate of his city no my lord hear me i give you the field and i give you the cave that is in it in the sight of the sons of my people i give it to you bury your dead then abraham bowed down before the people of the land and he said to ephron in the hearing of the people of the land but if you will hear me i give the price of the field accept it from me that i may bury my dead there ephron answered abraham my lord listen to me a piece of land worth 400 shekels of silver what is that between you and me bury your dead abraham listen to ephron and abraham wait out for ephron the silver that he had named in the hearing of the hittites 400 shekels of silva according to the weights current among the merchants so the field of ephron in machpelah which was to the east of mamrie the field with the cave that was in it and all the trees that were in the field throughout its whole area were made over to abraham as a possession in the presence of the hittites before all who went in at the gate of his city after this abraham buried sarah his wife in the cave of the field of machpila east of mamrie that is hebron in the land of canaan the field and the cave that is in it were made over to abraham as property for a burying place by the hittites so the place becomes and still is a holy place it's a holy place for three great faiths judaism christianity and islam and therefore should be a sign of unity of shared possession in fact so often holy places have been fought over with violence or intentionally destroyed in order to weaken the morale of a place canterbury itself never felt it was going to be a target of violence and yet across the ages it has been when seen as a special place for one particular group of people and that we can trace through history when violence occurs and at the same time here we are giving thanks for holy places for the consecration shall we say of a spot on the earth on the planet is a sign of its total holiness just as the way in which when we take bread and the cup of wine or use water they become shall we say sacramental signs of those gifts of the creator right across the planet which is our home but let's return to this rather touching story where in old age and we've been through the story not all of it but most of it as we've read through and we shall continue tomorrow because isaac the child of promise is still there with abraham and ready to begin his journey of faith but that cave just east of the oak of mamrie where abraham received the three angelic visitors and heard the voice of god all of that becomes important within the concept of the holy place abraham himself will come carried by others when he dies to be buried in that cave abraham and sarah to lie together and later isaac and rebecca will also be buried in that place and later the sons of jacob will bring his body back from egypt to bury him in the cave of mack pila and that makes it a really special place rachel jacob's beloved wife is buried well we know from matthew's gospel in bethlehem where all things began again and so the holiness of bethlehem has a double count and you remember when the mothers are weeping for their children after the slaughter of the innocent spiking herod in matthew's gospel the sound is said to be rachel weeping for her children holy places where terrible things have occurred and become places of sadness and tears but also where wonderful things have occurred and become places of thanksgiving and reflection and the way in which we come to them again and again special ones for us and in your hearts and minds you will have special places which you think of as holy places let them just be signs of a reflective passage each day which can happen wherever we are for in truth it's for us to make this whole planet a holy place in thanksgiving to the creator for the life that he has given of beauty and wonder and fruitfulness all around us let's look at the things which have happened today and first of all our own calendar our calendar of the church of england day by day gives us this as a day to remember sint monica monica was the mother of augustian of hippo one of the the great minds of the western church the latin church rather than the greek church and augustine's writings in latin are important documents for the church and and his his uh all his words are used as teaching for the church but it wasn't always so yet his mother was a christian married to a pagan father patricius but at the same time longing for the child that they bore to be brought up as a christian his father objected to christian baptism it was something he he managed to stand for his wife but his son was certainly not going there at the time that the child became very ill indeed monica begged patricius that he might be baptized and the father consented but before the baptism could happen the uh child began to get better and so he rescinded his consent and monica then uh really wept for what was was happening and the tears of saint monica as the mother of augustine as he then grew up became intensely clever and was educated and after the death of patricius went his own way and yet we know that his mother's influence was profound and yet she had great sorrow when patricia's died she followed her son to rome where he'd gone secretly and wanting to claim him for the faith in which she believed and she found in rome that he'd already gone to milan so she went to milan and there found an ally in her intention to attract augustine body mind and spirit to the christian faith now his conversion we shall deal with tomorrow for tomorrow is the feast of central augustine and i think probably monica has been put here on the eve of the feast of central gaston not because of a particular date in her life but because she was the precursor to his christian faith she went to milan and eventually after a long wait augustine became a christian much to her joy and she then went with him on the way to his journey to africa north africa then full of christian communities along there he was going off to be bishop of the important city of hippo and she got as far as austria still in italy and then died and augustine created a tomb for her there and also her death prompted great sadness and remorse really in him and occasion his writing of probably his most popular book the confessions of central augustine by confessions rather like the apologia of uh cardinal newman were meaning his setting out in all honesty of his own journey with nothing hidden and it is uh very much his his most popular book but all of that for tomorrow for the moment we're thinking of saint monica and when she got to augustine tells this story now when she got to milan she did what she always did and she went to various holy places and in that area and she took with her porridge and bread and wine and water and left it there as an offering and ambrose helped her to see that she should go to the shrines with prayer the offering of prayer and give her heart as christina rosetti says in her in the bleak mid-winter to go back to bethlehem for a moment but what can i offer give your prayers give your heart that's the proper offering there and then all your other resources which the bread and the wine and the water and the the porridge give to those who need it for that is the sign of your physical care of humankind in the world as they stretch out their hands for resources as we were talking about the life of food bank here in canterbury yesterday helping those families who've fallen on need and are struggling to find resources for feeding the family and monica obeyed and ambrose said that then gives us the the right heart to come to break bread and share the cup when we come to the communion the eucharist the mass itself all of those things we remember we remember monica's tears for her son on this day and remember that shrines can be places where deep emotions are called force from us deep acts of repentance deep acts of seeking one another's forgiveness but at the same time deep acts of thanksgiving sacrifices of thanksgiving to god in all sorts of ways and all this from that lovely story of abraham's love for sarah and his creating of a place where she could be remembered at the cave of machpila there's a a massive anniversary of an artist a dietician who died in venice on the 27th of august 1576 but there's an even bigger one titian painted lovely pictures of both scriptural scenes and also um classical scenes from mythology but at the same time today is the anniversary the 500th anniversary on this actual day 27th of august 1521 of the death of joscandi pray the french composer and the body of his work for the church is really so great if you look at the lists of the things he composed in terms of masses and canticles and holy songs but at the same time songs songs that could be sung by people to enjoy and all of those things and the experimenting with new kinds of music make him quite a modern feeling composer very often when you hear his music song well today we are giving thanks for that 500th anniversary of joss gandy pray he traveled earlier in life to italy and places of music in the renaissance it's thought that he was born around and there's there's no absolute date around 1450ish and he died in 1576. and uh sorry i'm i'm wrong he died in 1521 i'm reading titian's date so 1521 2021 500 years 27th of august 1521 but for the last 20 years of his life he came home and he came home to the village in which he lived the town in which he lived condesco which is just southeast of neil and if you cross the channel on eurostar leo comes quite quickly so it's not too far away from here as they say as the crow flies on the belgian french border there but in those days the collegiate church of notre dame was one of the largest and best equipped musical foundations in europe and he came home to take charge of it and people would journey there it became for them a creative holy place musicians would journey there in order to come and visit josh gandy pray and be part of the life there in the collegiate church of notre dame when he died his house became a place of pilgrimage and the statue of the virgin mary that he had placed outside his house became a place where musicians on pilgrimage stopped to sing his paternoster it was a habit of pilgrims there not the music of the water but the music of the our father being sung outside sadly as i said there are times when everything becomes um a a a place of hostility in and the destruction of the church of notre dame in that place in the french revolution in 1793 is a huge tragedy so that that site uh s-i-t-e is no longer one that has the memorial that i'm talking about nor the collegiate musical institution but it hardly matters because roskan's music in an enormous corpus of music is known to choirs in churches and cathedrals and also his songs sung by choral societies all sorts of groups and and and singers as they come together all over the world so a great thing to think about and give thanks for today as we think of holy places and also what inspires our reflection and our own prayers what inspires our hearing of words that we know really well when they're set to music and those masses and canticles and songs we give thanks for so let's say our prayers on this day of holy places and we're praying in the anglican communion for the missionary diocese of aha amufu in the church of nigeria and the enugu province and the life of that area and here in this diocese we're praying for justin our archbishop for rose bishop of dover and for tim bishop at lambeth and today for the parish of saint luke the evangelist in maidstone and the ministry of julian staniforth so let's pray our own prayers and i'm going first to use the prayer which is special for saint monica's day and then the prayer special for this week but bring your own images and your acts of thanksgiving and also of sadness and compassion at the scenes which our world sets before us on this morning of 27th of august in 2021 here is the prayer for saint monica's day faithful god who strengthened monica the mother of augustine with wisdom and through her patient endurance encouraged him to seek after you give us the will to persist in prayer that those who stray from you may be brought to faith in your son jesus christ our lord amen and the prayer for this week almighty and everlasting god you are always more ready to hear than we to pray and to give more than either we desire or deserve pour down upon us the abundance of your mercy for giving us those things of which our conscience is afraid and giving us those good things which we are not worthy to ask but through the merits and mediation of jesus christ your son our lord amen so each in our own language we say rather than sing like the pilgrims outside joshua's house we say the words our savior taught us our father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come i will be done on earth as it is in heaven give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom the power and the glory forever and ever are men moment of silence now for your own prayers the peace of god which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of god and of his son jesus christ our lord and the blessing of god almighty the father the son and the holy spirit be upon you upon those whom you love and those whom you would pray for today and always are men say tiger here we are we let's come across to you now you can enjoy your day a bit it's a nice day to be out here let's put this on here out of the way how are you okay hmm this is your special place isn't it you like this garden you