After months of waiting for stone masons to finish repair work, a stone topped altar has been located in the chapel at ARK William Parker Academy.
The altar was originally in an Anglican monastery and was then passed to the Rev’d Colin Tolworthy, lately incumbent of Holy Trinity, Hastings. He used it in his home for weekday Eucharist until he retired and moved into more limited accommodation. He then entrusted the altar to the Rev’d Robert Featherstone of All Saints, Hastings Old Town. He used the altar in his church, where the Rev’d William Parker served in the early 1600s, until it was replaced by a more portable altar. Last summer Father Robert gave the altar to me as a personal gift with the understanding that it would used for Eucharist at the school.
At All Saints the stone was mysteriously, and seriously, damaged. It had been broken into several pieces and the fragile material was difficult to cement and required steel rods to keep it. But at last it arrived from the stone masons just in time for a brief visit paid to William Parker by the Rt Rev’d Martin Ward, Bishop of Chichester.
The edge of the stone is engraved in latin dating its dedication to Epiphany 1853. How appropriate that it should be placed in the school chapel in the first week of Epiphany. The top has four crosses in the corners symbolising the wounds of Christ in his hands and feet. In the centre there is a fifth cross. The stone is borne by a plain oak table. Such beautiful simplicity.
We have an altar of another kind too. It is even more beautiful. The writer to the Hebrews was probably addressing a situation in which Jewish converts were challenged by the taunt that as Jews they had an altar in the temple but as Christians they had nothing of the sort. But the writer protests, “We have an altar.” He was not thinking of any Eucharistic Table but of Calvary’s cross and all that happened there. Christ’s body was broken and his blood was shed. We have an altar with powerful significance for the human soul. We have an altar.
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