THE church has the year broken up into different seasons. It starts with Advent. The word advent comes from the Latin verb advenio meaning I arrive. Ad meaning to and venio meaning I come. So advenio means I come to or I arrive.

It is a season (four weeks) anticipating the arrival of Christmas. Then we have Christmas, which celebrates the birth of Jesus, and then we remember Jesus’s younger years, when the Wise Men visited him. We are in Epiphany now.

We remember in Epiphany that the Archbishop of Canterbury and a key adviser to King Charles I, William Laud, was executed in 1645 for treason by Parliament on January 10 as his high church policies, emphasis on ritual and perceived closeness to Catholicism had long antagonised Puritans, leading to his imprisonment in 1640 and eventual beheading after a politically-motivated trial.

Then, on January 11, the baptism of Christ is celebrated. Just as during the baptism of Jesus, God declared him as his beloved son, so we become God’s beloved children through baptism. The Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus during his baptism, symbolising the gift of the Holy Spirit in our lives as a guide.

Between January 18 and 25 there is the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which is celebrated locally and internationally.

On January 25 we remember the conversion of Paul, originally Saul of Tarsus, which was a radical, miraculous transformation from a fierce persecutor of Christians to the foremost apostle to the gentiles. On January 26 we remember Timothy and Titus, companions of St Paul.

Lastly, on February 2, there is the presentation of Christ in the temple, where the aged Simeon and prophetess Anna recognised the baby as the promised messiah, blessing him and foretelling his role as salvation and light for all nations.

Alan Coode, reader in the Parish of St Austell