Message from Fr Robin

Short thanks -

I write this with a sense of gratitude and sorrow, gratitude for it is the actual date of my 40th anniversary of Ordination-I haven't yet worked out any celebrations and in a curious way the day has been forgotten in the demands of so many other things, but I'm grateful of heart, yet also a little sorrowful, because I look at my priestly ministry and wonder at how little I have done - and what in any sense have I to show for it! I ask pardon of those I have offended or hurt, and trust in God's mercy for whatever I have not done!

It certainly hasn't been a normal ministry, monastic, ecumenical in all kinds of ways, academic/teaching, transfer to the Eastern Rite to help a Middle Eastern Byzantine church in the UK, a writer and broadcaster, whose hidden side is that of an artist and animal lover! Forty years on, the journey of a priest isn't finished, it will be interesting to see what my 50th will see me doing, that is, God willing!

I wanted just to thank ICN and all of you, who read my reflections, for your support too. Keep me in your prayers, as I will you. The little card I share with you all is one done for my by my good Friend Fr Dobromir, I asked him to put together an image of me, my cats (essential travellers with me) offering thanks and praise to Christ held in the icon-image of the Theotokos of the Sign, a great devotion of mine. The Cross, which you and I take up, giving life to all and on either side, particular saints. My patrons Robert of Rheims and Philip the Apostle, facing them St Maria of Paris died in Ravensbruck March 31 1945, with whom I feel a particular affiliation and St Collette of Corbie, who founded the convent in Poligny, Jura, the town which has so many associations with my maternal family in France and where her relics now rest in the Convent of the Poor Clares. I visited her shrine often and in gratitude for her care, wanted her remembrance in this image. The words on the reverse are taken from St Maria, they speak eloquently without any other explanation!

The message reads:

Please remember in your prayers
Rev Canon Dr Robert Gibbons
(Fr Robin)
on the occasion of his
Ruby Jubilee of Ordination to
the priesthood.
31 March 2019

Ordained Priest
at St Michael's Abbey
Farnborough
31 March 1979

'Le chemin qui mene a Dieu
repose sur l'amour des gens.
Au Jugement dernier ...
On me demandera si j'ai nourri l'affame
revetu le nu,
rendu visite aux malades et aux prisonniers.
C'est tout ce qu'on me demandera'

St Maria of Paris
Executed at Ravensbruck
March 31 1945