Two Westminster diocesan seminarians have been ordained as transitional Deacons. Giles Pinnock and Jeffrey Steel were ordained Deacons at Allen Hall seminary by Bishop John Arnold, Auxiliary Bishop of Westminster on 26 January 2013.

During his homily Bishop Arnold drew upon the life of St Paul to direct the men towards fulfilling their role as Deacons. Bishop Arnold said: “Yesterday we celebrated the Feast of the Conversion of St Paul. I love that Feast, not so much for what we celebrate as for all that the Feast suggests. We have three accounts of the “Conversion” of Paul and they are all written by Luke, in the Acts of the Apostles – Chapters 9, 22 and 26.

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Our keeping of Advent here at Allen Hall, began in earnest (in rehearsal at least!), with our weekly house music practice this morning.

In looking at music for Advent one becomes aware that there is a great deal of beautiful Advent hymnody in many a place; but there is a need to be rather magpie like in drawing it together, as the hymn books seem, for the most part, to struggle with a decent compilation of words and melodies.

Three wonderful pieces of accessible music are worth commenting upon:

The Advent Prose/Sequence, which we sang as our Introit at Mass this evening; known to many as Rorate Caeli, or, in the traditional English language version, Drop down ye heavens from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness, is a beautiful rendering of familiar words from Isaiah 45.  Although many will know this is as the proper introit for the Fourth Sunday of Advent, it has been made popular, as a more general Advent text, and certainly worth a sing.

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The seminarians and staff of Allen Hall were privileged to be addressed on Wednesday November 14th by Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank on the Just War tradition. Field Marshal Lord Guthrie, former Chief of the General Staff and now crossbench life peer, co-authored the 2007 book, Just War: The Just War Tradition: Ethics in Modern Warfare, with  Sir Michael Quinlan, former Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Defence and writer and lecturer on international security, nuclear weapons and military ethics.

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