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We offer daily services and a cultural programme of talks, events and concerts. We seek to be a welcoming space for people to reflect, create and debate
From Sun 6 to 27 April
Breastplate will be displayed behind the altar of the Side Chapel and lit from below so that it glows from within, thereby revealing its feather-filled fragility and the talismanic contents of its pockets.
St James’s hosts inclusive services and a cultural programme. We seek to be a welcoming space for people to reflect, create and debate.
St James’s is a place to explore, reflect, pray, and support all who are in need. We are a Church of England parish in the Anglican Communion.
We host a year-round creative programme encompassing music, visual art and spoken word.
We offer hospitality to people going through homelessness and speak out on issues of injustice, especially concerning refugees, asylum, racial justice, and LGBTQ+ issues.
St James’s strives to advocate for earth justice and to develop deeper connections with nature.
We aspire to be a home where everyone can belong. We’re known locally and globally for our unique history and beauty, as well as faith in action, creativity and the arts, and a commitment to social and environmental justice.
We strive to be a Eucharist-centred, diverse and inclusive Christian community promoting life in abundance, wellbeing and dignity for all.
St James’s Piccadilly has been at the heart of its community since 1684. We invite you to play your part in securing this historic place for generations to come.
The work of St James’s, it costs us £5,000 per day to enable us to keep our doors open to all who need us.
A reimagined St James’s realised. A redesigned garden, courtyard and new building capacity—all fully accessible— will provide beautiful spaces for all as well as improving our environmental performance.
Whether shooting a blockbuster TV series or creating a unique corporate event, every hire at St James’s helps our works within the community.
St James's Church 197 Piccadilly London W1J 9LL
Directions on Google Maps
Ben Bloom reflects on Lent as an invitation to deepen our inner spiritual journey, shifting focus from ‘doing’ to ‘being,’ and embracing prayer, silence, and attentiveness to God’s presence for transformation and renewal.
As a trainee priest, now studying and living miles away from home at a theological college in a small West Yorkshire town, alongside a community of Anglican benedictine monks, I believe I know something about giving things up for God. Lent is for many Christians a time in which one might exercise self-restraint and self-denial for God, perhaps as some form of penance for a life well-lived. In a society where Dry-January, Veganuary, Sugar-Free September, intermittent fasting, and restriction diets and lifestyles are the norm for many people throughout the year, “giving things up” has arguably gone mainstream. Denying yourself chocolate, or another small luxury, as a Lenten penance no longer feels so radical an act of denial that I would question how it could possibly work to reinvigorate one’s personal spirituality.
As an alternative, I often hear people saying that instead of “giving something up” for Lent, they are instead going to “take something up”. They might start a new spiritual practice, or increase their scriptural or theological reading, or participate in some hands-on missional work or volunteering. These are all, of course, positive and enriching practices, and I think we would all benefit from engaging with the world more intentionally. They can be acts of worship and ministry that can eventually become vital ways to live out our baptismal vows. However, when framed as Lenten practices, I’m not sure they quite hit the mark either. To use Lent as a period in which we do ‘good’ works negates the call to do this in our lives every day.
So then, what do we “do” for lent? Well, I’d like to suggest that rather than focusing on our “doing”, we might instead focus on “being”. I believe that Lent is a call to an inner journey of transformation.
Something I have learnt from the wonderful brethren of the Community of the Resurrection is that we can all find ways to incorporate something of an embodied simplicity into our daily lives. From an outsider perspective, their rule of life and vows of Stability, Obedience, and Conversion of life seems to allow for a clearing away of some of the natural clutter of life so that they might better be able to discern and listen to the presence of God in their lives.
This is not to say that we should all join a monastic community or order our lives and households in such boundaried ways over Lent! However, I have been blessed by a focussed prayer life over the last two years that has opened up more space for God where I might otherwise have been rather distracted by all the shiny things in life. It’s a practice that I want to continually develop because I have (God willing) a few years of ministry ahead of me that will require a solid foundation of prayer to sustain me. I am a strong advocate of the power of personal prayer, and Lent reveals for us our NEED for time to deepen our attentiveness to God’s presence in our lives. Lent is an invitation for some super-charged interior work, not as an end unto itself, but as a means to an ever-deepening inner life.
Rowan Williams, in his brilliant tiny book Being Christian explains that through baptism, we begin a life led by the pursuit of Jesus:
“Baptism means being with Jesus ‘in the depths’: the depths of human need, including the depths of our own selves in their need – but also in the depths of God’s love, in the depths where the Spirit is re-creating and refreshing human life as God meant it to be.”
Lent, for me, is about pausing, taking a deep breath, and jumping into my relationship with the divine, and exploring all the majesty of its depths. In prayer, in silence, in intentional acts of devotion and self-care, we can wade through the chaos of our lives and bring it all to God. By being intentional with our time, we allow God the fulness of our attention to love us, to nurture our hearts, to heal our wounds. Lent is an invitation to go on a spiritual journey with God to mine the many layers of our interior worlds, that we might find freedom from that which burdens us, through an embracing of the love that never leaves us.
My prayer for us all this Lent is that we might embrace this invitation by giving ourselves the grace to go on this incredible journey with Christ. I know how busy we can all feel, and I know how easy it is to put ourselves and our spiritual nourishment at the bottom of our ‘to do’ list. But Lent is a call to slow down, listen deeply, and reconnect with the truth of who we are: loved and known by a God who wants to love and know us more.
May God bless you this Lent, and may your prayers be deep, rich, and transformational.
