A Good Year

by Mark Oakley (Editor), Sarah Mullally, Rowan Williams

How can we enter fruitfully into the seasons of the Church’s year? Why have the seasons become shaped as they have and what can we do to make them good?

As Mark Oakley explains in the hugely enjoyable, earthy and wide-ranging introduction to this exceptional volume, we can experience them in stimulating company! Here are reflections by the most senior pastors and teachers in the Church

SARAH MULLALLY, Bishop of Crediton, on A Good Advent, a season ‘pregnant with hope’, when our waiting is anything but inactive.

ROWAN WILLIAMS, Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, on A Good Christmas, and the overwhelming surprise of ‘a God who values our humanity beyond all imagining’.

LIBBY LANE, Bishop of Stockport, on A Good Epiphany, when through discomfort ‘we begin to discover at first hand the hospitality of God’.

JUSTIN WELBY, Archbishop of Canterbury, on A Good Lent, ‘which takes hold of human sinfulness and, in an extraordinary way, makes space for the hope of Christ’.

STEPHEN COTTRELL, Bishop of Chelmsford, on A Good Holy Week, when we ‘revel in the sensuous and very hands-on re-enactment of liturgical drama’.

STEPHEN CONWAY, Bishop of Ely, on A Good Easter, which is ‘life lived shot through with grace and glory’.

KAREN GORHAM, Bishop of Sherborne, on A Good Pentecost, when our life’s journey ‘brings us encounters, challenges and opportunities we can rise to, equipped by the Spirit of God’.

122 pages, Paperback

First published November 17, 2016

About the author

Canon Mark Oakley is Chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral in London. He is a Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, King's College, London.

Reviews

[hendersweet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some were great and thought-provoking and others not so much. I may return to one or two selections but won’t reread the entire book (and probably won’t rave about it to others). That said, however, I loved the premise of this collection so much that it inspired me to do my own thinking/writing/praying on the prompt of “a good ____”.

[Ronald Schoedel III · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some excellent essays for spiritual reflection on the meanings and depths of spirituality that can be found and marked or celebrated within the various seasons in the liturgical church year, with thoughts on Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, Easter, and Pentecost.

[Nick Benson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Parts excellent - Oakley introduction, Rowan Williams on Christmas - rest only so so