Coronavirus Response

Response to the Coronavirus

There is a message from the Chaplain, The Reverend canon Roger Hall MBE, here - recorded on 23 March.

As you will know, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York announced on 17 March that all public services are suspended indefinitely. Together with all other constituent parts of the Church of England, we at the Chapels Royal in the Tower of London are responding as best we can to this health emergency.

Our programme of events for the 500th Anniversary of the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula has naturally also been disrupted.  We hope to reschedule events as soon as possible.

On the right, you will find links to resources produced by the clergy, staff and members of the congregation of the Chapels Royal, HM Tower of London during the period of the Coronavirus restrictions on public worship. 

Please send any comments on these resources to us here.

When you pray at home, we invite you to use this short prayer, written in reaction to the Coronavirus pandemic:

God of love
we ask your blessing on those who are ill,
those who are vulnerable,
those who are worried about themselves and those whom they love
and on those who mourn.
We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

You may also like to use the prayer provided by the Archbishop of Canterbury:

Keep us, good Lord,
under the shadow of your mercy.
Sustain and support the anxious,
be with those who care for the sick,
and lift up all who are brought low;
that we may find comfort
knowing that nothing can separate us from your love
in Christ Jesus our Lord.

You can find more prayer resources from Archbishop Justin here.  

While our services are suspended, you may want to say Daily Prayer at home.  If so, you might like to look at the following page on the Church of England
website: https://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-and-worship/join-us-service-daily-prayer .  As you will see there, if you scroll down to below the two photographs, there is a link to MORE OPTIONS.  Click on that link. Under ‘Type of service’, use the drop-down menu to choose Book of Common Prayer.  Under ‘Time of day’, choose whichever service you require.  The date underneath will automatically set itself to the day on which you access the website.  Then click on APPLY and you will see a green panel underneath, with a label to the right of it saying, for example, ‘Morning Prayer (Traditional) on [date] - A Service of Morning Prayer from The Book of Common Prayer (Traditional)'.  Click on either the green panel or the words to the right of it and the order of service will open up, complete with the correct readings and Collect for the day.  You may want to scroll down and start from where you see the following:  'Morning Prayer: The Introduction is used on Sundays' ...

A convenient alternative to the above, if you have an iPhone, iPad or an equivalent Android device, is to download the Daily Prayer app.  This costs £2.99 for a year – about the price of one cup of coffee! It automatically does for you all of the above and, once you have paid for it, you can have it simultaneously on several devices. 

The Chapels Royal at the Tower of London are long-standing partners of the Tower Hamlets Food Bank, run by the First Love Foundation.  Members of the congregation, week by week, bring groceries and toiletries to relieve poverty in one of the most disadvantaged boroughs in the country.  First Love Foundation Food Bank (Tower Hamlets) is moving to a remote service because of the Coronavirus pandemic. This means that the crisis centres are closed for now but First Love Foundation are still receiving referrals and completing home deliveries of emergency food support. There is a need for assistance in the warehouse from next week, which some of our congregation hope to be able to provide.  While services are suspended, it is obviously not possible for us to maintain our usual weekly collection in the Chapel. Gill Howard, a member of our congregation who works with the Food Bank, has recorded a piece about it here.  If anyone would like to donate money directly to the First Love Foundation, please follow this link:  https://www.firstlovefoundation.org.uk.