Harvest thanksgiving to support Borderlands Rural Chaplaincy

Dai Gwatkin a Borderlands Rural Chaplain will be our Harvest Guest Preacher this year, and our offerings will go to support the chaplaincy’s work.

Dai is the seventh generation of Gwatkin to farm in the Welsh Marches. His background and his personal experience make him all too aware of the often overwhelming pressures farmers, their families and communities can face.

This year the incumbency is supporting rural chaplaincy through its collections at Harvest services. Borderlands is a genuinely ecumenical venture involving financial commitments from both the Anglican and Methodist churches, with chaplains drawn from both denominations, and a joint governance structure established to support our work.

Borderlands Rural Chaplains work in Herefordshire, Shropshire and Eastern Powys.

They are a confidential, listening ear offering pastoral support to farmers, farming families and agricultural communities.

 

Services & Lunch

8am Holy Eucharist

9.30am All Age Eucharist

11am Sung Eucharist  Preacher:Dai Gwatkn, Boarderlands  Rural Chaplain

1pm Harvest Lunch in the Priory Centre (Tickets available for the Tithe Barn)

 

 

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A replica of the Turin Shroud to visit the Priory

A replica of the Turin Shroud will be on display at St Mary’s Priory Church in time for the Food Festival this year.

The replica of the Shroud on its last visit to Wales at Nazareth House, Cardiff 

The Turin Shroud is one of the most famous, and controversial, images associated with the Christian faith and it will be fascinating to see this replica close up.

The Shroud itself is kept in the Chapel of the Holy Shroud, which is located within a complex of buildings which includes the Turin Cathedral, the Royal Palace of Turin, and the Palazzo Chiablese in Turin, Piedmont, northern Italy.

The replica Shroud  will be on display daily from Thursday, September 19th – Thursday, October 3rd. During this period there will be a programme of devotional activities using the replica.

The origins of the shroud – and how the faint, full-length image of a man could have appeared on it – are still the subject of intense debate around the world.

The many unproven theories include that the image was somehow left by Christ before his resurrection, that it is the work of a skilled forger, or that it could have been generated by chemical residue, scorching or radiation.

In 1988 a radiocarbon dating test was performed on small samples of the shroud, which concluded the samples were dated from medieval times – far too recent for the linen sheet to have been used in Christ’s burial. Those findings have since been questioned by scholars who contend that the sample tested was from a repair made hundreds of year after the shroud was created

 

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