St Bride's Church, Fleet Street

Join The Revd Dr Jeff Lake, Associate Priest of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. The first reflection of the new year opens with Jonathan Dove's evocative setting of the poem The Three Kings by Dorothy L Sayers which begins and ends in melancholic mood and imaginatively depicts kings of very different ages and the varied gifts they bear. Sayers was be...

Join The Revd Dr Jeff Lake, Associate Priest of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. A fifteenth century carol text "There is no rose" from the Trinity Carol Roll opens this week's reflection on the fourth Sunday of Advent. The setting is by composer Robin Hodson. Many with a particular interest in Brigid our matron saint and her Celtic Christian connecti...

Join The Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce, Rector of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. Our reflection opens with a another setting of the "Benedicite, omnia opera" – the great song of praise and blessing for all of creation that we traditionally sing in Advent. This week's is by the prominent English cathedral musician, Herbert Sumsion, who spent most of his...

Join The Revd Steve Morris, Associate Priest of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. Our reflection for the second Sunday in Advent opens with the words of the Venerable Bede in a paraphrased setting of the text by Andrew Carter in his anthem "A maiden most gentle." The French melody and sparkling organ accompaniment captures the simplicity of the Christm...

Join The Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce, Rector of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. This week's reflection opens with a setting of the "Benedicite, omnia opera" – the great song of praise and blessing for all of creation that we traditionally sing in Advent. It is composed by the English cathedral organist and choirmaster, Robert Ashfield, who served as o...

Join The Revd Dr Jeff Lake, Associate Priest of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. Today is the feast of Christ the King which brings to an end the church's year as we proclaim Christ enthroned in heaven as sovereign king over all creation. The cycle then begins anew with Advent – that season of expectation and preparation for Christmas and the birth of...

Join The Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce, Rector of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. Stanford's most dramatic anthem – For lo, I raise up – opens this week's reflection. Written at the outbreak of the First World War, it sets Habakkuk’s Old Testament prophecies, beginning with a depiction of the violence and destruction of war but ending with a message of...

Join The Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce, Rector of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. This week we mark Remembrance Sunday when we as we gather, along with others across the nations, to pay tribute to those who lost their lives fighting for peace. In church, St Bride's Choir & Orchestra will perform Duruflé's Requiem as a mass for the fallen and this reflec...

Join The Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce, Rector of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. The choir begins this week's reflection singing verses from Psalm 84 – "O how amiable are thy dwellings : thou Lord of hosts!" – to a chant by the English composer Sir Edward Bairstow. Bairstow was very much wedded to his dwelling place of Yorkshire, the county of his birt...

Join The Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce, Rector of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. The late-Renaissance, English composer Thomas Weelkes – famed for his wonderful music and his wayward behaviour – set words from Psalm 132 in the jubilant seven-part anthem "O Lord, arise into thy resting-place" which the choir sings at the start of this reflection. He die...

Join The Revd Dr Jeff Lake, Associate Priest of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. Today in church we celebrate Harvest Festival and Creationtide at our two services so what better anthem to open this week's reflection than Haydn's "Achieved is the glorious work". It is the final movement of Part 2 of his most-accomplished work, The Creation, and closes...

Join The Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce, Rector of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. The choir opens this reflection with a beautiful double-choir setting of the Gloria from the mass "Missa Bell' Amfitrit' altera" by the sixteenth century composer, Orlandus Lassus. Although Flemish by birth, Lassus choose to live and work in Bavaria, first as a singer and...

Join The Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce, Rector of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. Our reflection opens as St Bride's Choir sings the eight-part motet "For he shall give his angels charge over thee" from Mendelssohn's great oratorio Elijah. In our reading we hear the parable of the rich man and the beggar, Lazarus. Alison goes on to reflect on this and o...

Join The Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce, Rector of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. This week we mark the feast day of St Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist, with our reading and in Alison's reflection. In church, it is also Inspire! Sunday, when we celebrate and give thanks for St Bride's Church and our community of fellowship. St Bride's Orchestra will be...

Join The Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce, Rector of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. This week we mark celebrate the feast of the Holy Cross, an occasion on which we reflect not on the cross of Good Friday – the instrument of torture and death – but on the cross as the tree of life, hope and reconciliation. St Bride's Choir sings one of the most perfect an...

Join The Revd Dr Jeff Lake, Associate Priest of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. St Bride's Choir opens this week's reflection with "Tantum ergo sacramentum" – the last in a set of four motets by Maurice Duruflé which are all based on Gregorian chants. This motet has a meditative character and sets text from the hymn by St Thomas Aquinas – Pange lingu...

Join The Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce, Rector of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. St Bride's Choir opens this week's reflection with a setting of the poem "Come, my Way, my Truth, My Life" by the metaphysical poet and priest, George Herbert, composed by William Harris. Harris spent thirty years as organist at St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle. During...

Join The Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce, Rector of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. The choir sings the first part of Handel's "Foundling Hospital Anthem", composed for a benefit concert to raise money for the Foundling Hospital children's charity founded by Thomas Coram. It sets text adapted from Psalm 41: Blessed are they that considereth the poor. The...

Join The Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce, Rector of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. Benjamin Britten was commissioned to write "A Hymn of St Columba" to commemorate the 1400th anniversary of a voyage by the sixth century Irish saint to the Scottish island of Iona, where he founded the famous Iona Abbey. The text is a hymn attributed to Columba and reflect...

Join The Revd Steve Morris, Associate Priest of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. Edward Bairstow's sombre and majestic anthem "All mortal flesh keep silence", written for the lofty expanses of York Minster, begins this week's musical part of our reflection. After the reading from Luke, Steve reflects on the life and death of the Oxford martyr, Thomas...

Join The Revd Paula Hollingsworth, Chaplain of St Paul's Cathedral, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. This week we are most grateful to The Revd Paula Hollingsworth, Chaplain of St Paul's Cathedral, who will lead our service of Parish Communion in church and has recorded a reflection for us to use online. In light of the man in the parable in today's reading, Paul...

Join The Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce, Rector of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. St Bride's Choir opens this reflection with the last from the set of Three Motets by Charles Villiers Stanford, "Beati quorum via" which sets Psalm 119: 1 – "Blessed are they whose way of life is wholesome: who walk in the law of the Lord." Today we celebrate the feast of...

Join The Revd Steve Morris, Associate Priest of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. This week's reflection begins in joyous mood with a setting of the Gloria by Jonathan Dove from his 'Missa brevis' – commissioned by the Cathedral Organists' Association in 2009. It is a spirited, lively dance, rhythmically reminiscent of Stravinsky. Our associate priest,...

Join The Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce, Rector of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. Our reading is the parable of the Good Samaritan and in her reflection Alison recalls her childhood stage triumph in re-enactment of the story. Although the parables are wonderful ways to engage children at their heart lie profound and uncomfortable truths for adults. The...

Join The Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce, Rector of St Bride's, and St Bride's Choir for this week's reflection in words and music. After the reading from Luke's Gospel, Alison reflects on when Jesus sent out his followers to proclaim his Kingdom as "lambs in the midst of wolves", and wryly recalls Gimli the Dwarf's line from The Lord of the Rings, "Certainty of death. Small chance of success. What are...