Saturday 7th November at 1.30pm, there will be a Sung Mass at St Michael’s at which Michael Lester will be formally admitted and consecrated as a brother of the Anglican Order of Preachers, becoming a friar of this Dominican order. It would be good if friends from St Michael’s could be there to support Michael in this important step, and to welcome visitors. All are welcome to this service, as always.

The Choir will sing Mass for 4 Voices by William Byrd.

Michael has supplied the following information and thanks all for their prayers and support.

“The Anglican Dominican Order would consider themselves as being primarily based on primitive Dominicanism modelled on the life of St. Dominic and his companions in the 13^th century; those courageous people who discovered a radical renewal in God’s gift and preaching during a time of doubt and spiritual lethargy.

Our order contrasting with the great traditions of cloistered monasticism is an itinerant and missionary order based on the foundations of ascetic practice, apostolic example and a charismatic dedication to Truth, which we understand as the living God.  A passion that is demonstrated both externally through the ministry of proclamation and internally through rigorous personal study and contemplative prayer. Our greatest gifts are the understanding that the work of study can be in itself a form of prayer when it is offered up to God and learning not just to contemplate God through our prayers but also ultimately to contemplate the world through the eyes of God, revealing its inherent beauty as the testament of all creation.

Anglican Dominicans are therefore not all rigorous Thomist scholastics and systematic theologians, though some are; instead we are united around the vocation of the preacher in the power of the Spirit which we experience through our unique practice of spirituality.  The Anglican Branch of this ancient Order is very young, having been founded by a group of individuals moved by the Spirit in response to a general spiritual lethargy that was viewed as having taken root inside Anglicanism following the fallout of the great doctrinal debates of the recent century.  Our first chapter was convened in 1999 and since then we have grown rapidly both in terms of brothers and sisters but more importantly in our understanding of ourselves and our uniquely catholic and reformed spirituality.”