It’s wonderful to be with you today as we celebrate the Patronal Festival of this church. A Patronal Festival is a bit like a birthday and like any birthday, it’s a chance to look back, give thanks, and ask what the future might look like. And what a gift we have in St Teilo. When we hear his name, it’s easy to picture a saint frozen in stained glass - serene, still, and safely tucked away in the past. But from what we know, the real Teilo was anything but static. He was a man on the move, a man whose life says something urgent and hopeful about God. Teilo lived in a world that felt fragile - a world of sickness, conflict, and uncertainty. It might sound strangely familiar perhaps? And yet, instead of hiding away, he stepped out. He travelled across Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany, planting communities of faith wherever he went. He didn’t build an empire; he built belonging. He created places where people discovered hope, healing, and purpose. And one of those places is right her...
Acts 9:1–22 & Matthew 19:27–30 The Feast of the Conversion of St Paul, which we commemorate today, is one of the most dramatic and perhaps even most important parts of the Bible. Saul, as he was then known, was going about offering threats and violence, and travelling presumably with a desire to continue his persecution of people who followed Jesus, and he is stopped in his tracks. There was a light from heaven, a voice that he could not ignore and a question that stunned him: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” It is dramatic, yes — but it is also deeply personal. Saul is not given a lecture. He is not handed a list of doctrines. He is confronted with a person. He meets Jesus. And that is at the heart of today’s readings. Saul had, in an incredible way that he would never have expected, met Jesus, and I think the Conversion of St Paul also perhaps challenges us to say, “We want to see Jesus.” Not an idea, not a theory, not a distant memory, not a tradition — but Je...