The Benefice of Little & Great Paxton with Diddington and Southoe

15/06/2026

10/06/2026

Is it STILL pouring?

Well, what a week for weather. After days of extraordinary heat that made many of us a little frantic, the rain arrived with a huge splash, and then the cold crept in behind it like it had no business being June at all. The garden doesn't know what to do with itself. Honestly, neither do we.

The wider world has been just as unsettled. Conflict continues in Lebanon and Gaza. Across parts of Africa, cuts to health funding are leaving people without care they desperately need. And yet, in the middle of all that, something rather wonderful happened in Madrid.

Pope Leo XIV celebrated a Corpus Christi Mass at the Plaza de Cibeles, and 1.2 million people turned out to be part of it.

In this benefice, we find that genuinely moving. We are from a different tradition, we do things differently, but when that many people gather around the same table with the same hope, something true is happening. The Pope used his visit to call on people to stop fanning the flames of polarisation. That is a message every tradition can say amen to.

The collect (a prayer said in church) for next Sunday asks God to pour love into our hearts. Not a vague, sentimental love. A love described as the bond of peace. St Paul, in Romans, says that hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. That word "poured" keeps coming up. It is not a drizzle. It is not rationed. It is generous, extravagant, almost reckless.

In a world that can feel very cold for many people right now, that kind of love is not nothing. It is the whole point.

Don't forget to check out the events and services in our churches this week. Everyone is welcome, just as you are.

07/06/2026

Little Paxton History Group
St James' Church, Little Paxton
Tuesday 9th June 2026 at 1.30pm
Do come along and join us.
All welcome

07/06/2026

Come along and join us. All welcome.

03/06/2026

Come and enjoy a lovely evening of music at Holy Trinity Church, Great Paxton

02/06/2026

June begins and we enter "Ordinary Time." The name might suggest something small or routine, but do not be fooled. In the church's year, the long stretch from now until Advent is called Ordinary Time not because it is dull, but because it is counted. These are the numbered Sundays, week by week, where we do not mark a great feast but simply live the faith. And living the faith, it turns out, is the whole point.

This is the season where we practise what we believe.

This month, that practice calls us toward some of the most important questions of our time. June is Pride Month, and we celebrate with joy and gratitude the courage of those who fought, and still fight, to be seen, accepted, and loved as they are. We believe that every person is made in the image of God. That image is not narrow. It does not come in one shape, one story, or one way of loving. The image of God comes in beautiful, astonishing variety, and the church is most fully itself when it reflects that variety back to the world. Pride is not at odds with faith. For many of us, it is an expression of it.

June also brings Refugee Week (15 to 21 June) and World Refugee Day (20 June). Scripture does not whisper about this. From Leviticus to the Gospels, the call to welcome the stranger is one of the most repeated instructions in the whole Bible. When we stand with refugees and displaced people, we are not making a political statement. We are obeying one of the oldest and clearest of all commands: love the stranger, for you were strangers once too.

And throughout the month we mark Gypsy, Roma and Traveller History Month. We remember communities that have too often been pushed to the edges, their stories untold, their presence unwelcome. The God we follow spent his life at the edges, with the people others passed by. So must we.

This is what Ordinary Time is for. Not waiting for something to happen, but becoming the people we are called to be, Sunday by Sunday, act by act, welcome by welcome.

The days are long. The light is generous. May we be generous too: generous in welcome, in compassion, and in the kind of love that leaves no one out.

Wishing everyone in our Benefice a warm and wonderful June.

28/05/2026

Trinity Sunday at Holy Trinity, Great Paxton
This Sunday is Trinity Sunday, and we are celebrating in the best possible way: with a Festival of History at one of the most remarkable buildings in Cambridgeshire.
Holy Trinity, Great Paxton has stood on this ground for about a thousand years. It has sheltered people through plague, war, revolution and loss. It has heard prayers in Latin and English, from the frightened and the grateful, from the grieving and the joyful. And this Sunday, it opens its doors again.
The service begins at 9 o'clock, and this week it is the only service across the benefice. So wherever you usually worship, you are warmly invited to join us as we explore 1000 years of history right on the doorstep.
Trinity Sunday asks us to sit with mystery: a God who is one and yet somehow also three, a love that overflows into relationship, into community, into the world. You do not need to have that fully worked out to be welcome here. None of us do.
And on a practical note: after a week of rather extraordinary heat, a thousand-year-old stone church is guaranteed to be the coolest place in Cambridgeshire. Come for the faith. Stay for the shade.

Everyone welcome. 9am, Sunday 31st May.

28/05/2026

Come along to Holy Trinity Church, Great Paxton to our 9am Celebration Service for Trinity, followed by the Festival of History.