These are worship resources for Mothering Sunday 2021, held on the Fourth Sunday of Lent. The resources are gathered from a variety of sources and, while assembled mainly for The Anglican Church of St Thomas the Apostle, Kefalas, on the island of Crete in Greece, others may find them useful.

A Note on Mothering Sunday

Hot on the heels of International Women’s Day this year comes Mothering Sunday, which is celebrated in the United Kingdom and Ireland, but very few other places. It is held on the Fourth Sunday of Lent, and so is a moveable feast. The very similar Mother’s Day is held on the second Sunday in May, which this year is May 9. Mother’s Day started in 1908 in the United States, and has since spread to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. In reaction to a perceived secularism and commercialism of Mother’s Day, Constance Penswick Smith in England started the Mothering Sunday movement in 1913, claiming roots in medieval and early modern traditions. The Fourth Sunday of Lent was supposedly a day when servants would go home from their places of work and visit their mothers and attend church in which they had been baptised – their mother church. Presented as a revival in 1913, by the 1950s its observance had become quite common in Britain and Ireland and some commonwealth nations. The Book of Common Prayer knows nothing about it, but Common Worship has a wealth of resources for us, which are incorporated in our worship this Sunday online at St Thomas’s,

Share

We will be observing Mothering Sunday on the same day as people in England. This will be a Zoom-only service. Please join us by clicking this link or by entering the following into your Zoom application:
Meeting ID: 850 4483 9927
Passcode: 010209.
We will be joined by our Diocesan Bishop, the Rt Rev Dr Robert Innes, who will lead parts of the service and preach.

An Order for Mothering Sunday can be downloaded below. It has the lyrics of the hymns we will be singing, as well as the readings. You do not need to download it, though – whatever will be said by the people in the service will be shared on the Zoom screen.

Read

The readings appointed for Mothering Sunday are: Exodus 2.1-10, Psalm 127.1-4, Colossians 3.12-17, and John 19.25-27.

Reflect

Last year on the Fourth Sunday of Lent we were under a lockdown, but had not yet begun to do services on Zoom. Instead I directed folks to bigger churches that were doing pre-recorded services or livestreams. I did write some thoughts about the readings for Mothering Sunday, which you can find by clicking here.

You can listen to a pre-recorded sermon by Fr Leonard Doolan of St Paul’s Church, Athens here:

Pray

The Collect
God of compassion,
whose Son Jesus Christ, the child of Mary,
shared the life of a home in Nazareth,
and on the cross drew the whole human family to himself:
strengthen us in our daily living
that in joy and in sorrow
we may know the power of your presence
to bind together and to heal;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen

An Intercession.
As children of a loving God who always listens to our cries,
let us pray to our Father in heaven.

The person leading the prayers may add particular requests and thanksgivings to the following.

Loving God, you have given us the right to be called children of God. Help us to show your love in our homes that they may be places of love, security and truth.
God of love,
All   hear our prayer.

Loving God, Jesus, your Son, was born into the family of Mary and Joseph; bless all parents and all who care for children; strengthen those families living under stress and may your love be known where no human love is found.
God of love,
All   hear our prayer.

Loving God, we thank you for the family of the Church. We pray that all may find in her their true home; that the lonely, the marginalized, the rejected may be welcomed and loved in the name of Jesus.
God of love,
All   hear our prayer.

Loving God, as we see the brokenness of our world we pray for healing among the nations; for food where there is hunger; for freedom where there is oppression; for joy where there is pain; that your love may bring peace to all your children.
God of love,
All   hear our prayer.

At the end of which we pray:
Praise God who loves us.
All   Praise God who cares.

For the care of mothers;
All   Thanks be to God.

For their patience when tested;
All   Thanks be to God.

For their love when tired;
All   Thanks be to God.

For their hope when despairing;
All   Thanks be to God.

For their service without limit;
All   Thanks be to God.

Biddings
I bid your prayers for the Church:

• for Robert Innes & David Hamid, our bishops;
• for Justin Welby our archbishop, Stephen Cottrell the Archbishop of York, and the General Synod of the Church of England;
• we remember our beloved in Christ in other denominations, especially the leadership in:
  • The Orthodox Church: Vartholomaĩos, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople; and Irinaios Athanasiadis, Archbishop of Crete; and the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece in Athens;
  • The Roman Catholic Church, especially Pope Francis, and the bishop for Crete, Petros Stefanou;
  • our relationship of full communion with the churches of the Porvoo agreement, especially The Church of Sweden, the Rev. Björn Kling, and Thomas Petersson, Bishop of Visby with oversight of the Church of Sweden Abroad;
  • the Greek Evangelical Church, the independent Greek Pentecostal churches, and the various Lutheran, Reformed, and other Protestant churches ministering to foreign populations;
• we pray especially for congregations that have been obliged to cease in-person services, and give thanks that we are able to gather over the internet;
• for the churches and peoples of Denmark, Faroe Islands, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden (World Council of Churches Ecumenical Prayer Cycle);
• in the Anglican Communion, we pray for Iglesia Anglicana de Chile (Anglican Cycle of Prayer);
• (from the Prayer Diary of the Diocese in Europe):
  • the Serbian Orthodox Church, for Robin Fox as Archbishop of Canterbury’s Apokrisiarios to the Patriarch of Serbia.
  • for the autocephalous Orthodox churches of Eastern Europe and the Baltic.
  • for Ben Gordon-Taylor (Liturgy Officer); John Newsome (Spirituality Advisor); our team of Spiritual Directors; and for John also in his role as Area Dean.

I bid your prayers for the leaders and people of the nations; especially

• Katerini Sakellaropoulou, President of Greece, and
  • Kyriakos Mitsotakis the Prime Minister of Greece;
• Elizabeth, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and her other realms, and also in her role as Governor of the Church of England;
  • and Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister of her British government;
• In the European Union,
  • Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission;
  • Charles Michel, President of the European Council; and
  • Josep Borrell, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs & Security Policy;
• For the United Nations and its work, and its Secretary General, António Guterres;
• For the peoples of the United States, and for their President, Joe Biden and their Vice-President, Kamala Harris; the Congress and the federal courts; and the state governors, legislatures, and state court systems;
• the peoples of Myanmar, Belarus, Hong Kong, Russia, Sudan, Kyrgyzstan, Peru, Bolivia, Nigeria, Brazil, and Thailand as they continue to demonstrate for democracy and justice;
• for the maintaining of peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia, and between Russia and Ukraine, North and South Korea, and for a final, just resolution to their conflicts;
• for peace and justice between Palestinians and Israelis;
• for advocates of Indigenous rights and the adoption and implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples;
• prisoners and captives, especially the over one million Uygers being held in detention in China;
• the over 79.5 million refugees and nearly 4 million stateless person, remembering especially the crucial situation of Greece, and the work of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (“UNHCR”);
• for a lessening of tensions between Turkey and Greece; and
• for peace in Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, and Ethiopia.

I bid your prayers for the sick and suffering and all who minister to their needs;

• remembering the over twenty-one million active cases of the novel coronavirus, giving thanks that this numbers are beginning to go down in some countries; has begun to go down;
• mourning with the families of the over 2.61 million who have died in the pandemic;
• for the 820,000 people in the UK with active cases of covid-19, the over 124,500 who have died of it there, and the 23,406 active cases here in Greece, and the families of the over 6797 dead here;
• remembering those ill with other diseases, and those whose operations have been postponed;
• all those having issues with mental health;
• those suffering from addiction, and those in recovery;
• those who have been affected severely by the economic effects of the pandemic, especially in food services and tourism;
• and giving thanks for the efforts of researchers in finding vaccines, and for the rollout of vaccines across the world.

Sing

Hymn: God of Eve and God of Mary    Tune: Love Divine by John Stainer   

Fathers and Mothers

Hymn: Canticle of the Turning
A Paraphrase of the Magnificat, The Song of Mary
https://youtu.be/F9QeTmRCpW4