Parish Visitations, Lent 2010
The Bishop writes:
I am asking our parish clergy to carry out a Visitation this year. To assist them, I shall be producing a leaflet for members of the congregations and also a small card to be left in each home as a reminder of the visit. I have carried out such Visitations myself as a parish priest and found it to be a great time of blessing and a wonderful opportunity of doing what I was ordained to do – to minister to the people entrusted to my care. In parishes with large congregations, clergy may wish to invite Readers and lay people to assist.
I am therefore asking all of you to welcome your parish priest to your homes.
What is a Visitation?
We often associate the word Visitation with the visit of Mary to Elizabeth in Luke’s gospel. In fact, the theme of visitation runs throughout Luke’s gospel because his message is that God ‘has visited and redeemed his people’. The birth of Jesus was the great moment of visitation and so it is little wonder that visitations (formal and informal) have always been a part of the life of the Church.
In the early Church, Christians frequently visited one another to share hospitality, to read the scriptures, to break bread (eucharist), to pray and to minister to one another. By the sixth century, there were formal pastoral visitations when bishops visited their congregations. As the Church grew, bishops often commissioned others to assist with the visitation process.
In some places, it is still the custom for the priest (or deacons and laity) to visit the homes of the congregation either during the forty days of Lent or the fifty days of Eastertide to read the scriptures, to pray and minister, and to bless the homes. It is a reminder that God has visited his people and that when we visit one another in the name of Jesus, we are also meeting in the presence of the Lord who visited and redeemed his people.
In the Church in Wales, the bishops and archdeacons carry out regular formal and informal visitations of their dioceses, parishes, cathedrals, and religious communities, and I am now inviting the parish clergy to carry out a visitation of their congregations. Where they have large congregations they may be assisted by lay visitors.
I pray that it will be a time of great blessing upon you and your homes.
+Dominic