Chollerton Churches

In 1960 (so, well over sixty years ago), I was a boy at St Cuthbert’s Grammar School, Newcastle. One piece of music we learned was the ballad “All in the April Evening”. Set to music by Sir High Robertson, it was a well-known part of the Glasgow Orpheus Choir repertoire. I must have been a ‘pious bairn’, as I found it quite moving: “All in the April evening, April airs were abroad. The sheep with their little lambs passed me by on the road. All in the April evening….I thought of the Lamb of God.” (I’m sure some other ‘oldies’ will remember it!)
As I type this, it’s very chilly. (Your editor wants this piece in by mid-March, hence this early writing.) We’ll soon have the Easter weekend influx of visitors here in Bellingham, but just now there are few people on holiday. For 11 years, I was parish priest in Consett, where, at nearly 900 feet up, ‘lambing snow’ was a regular event.
Everyone loves the sight of the mother-ewes with their lambs in the fields, but town people often don’t appreciate the worry and tension involved when cold, wet weather arrives – as often happens in hilly country in the north-east.
This year, worry and tension are part of everyone’s life, thanks to the cost-of-living problem and the drawn-out effects of Covid-19. But for Christians, the sufferings of Jesus Christ are also part of the April experience. He was the “Lamb of God, who took away the sins of the world”, as John the Baptist introduced him. The Jews had used roasted, sacrificial lamb as part of their Passover, and for Christians, Jesus’ death on the cross was a sacrifice of love that reconciles us to God and to each other.
As adults of any religion – or none – I don’t think we can escape all problems and suffering. (I wish some politicians would stop pretending that we can.) For me, shouldering burdens – our own and others’ – is part of being grown-up. The difference Christianity makes is that, for believers, God came to share all this in the person of Jesus. He didn’t ‘magic’ suffering away, but offered us a path through it. Just as better weather should have arrived by the time you read this, so the rising of Jesus from the dead can offer us hope for something better.
Happy Spring-time!
Fr Jim Dunne, St Oswald’s RC Church, Bellingham