Christmas Carol Service
Southwark Cathedral 4th Decem ber 2025 7.30pm
Welcome to
The Dean’s Christmas Message
The world is a fragile and precarious place at the moment. Many are living through the traumas of war, hunger, bereavement, and displacement. Others are finding the speed of change in society, as well as its inequalities, an unwelcome challenge to their identity and sense of belonging. At such times the temptation is to listen to those who offer simplistic solutions and scapegoat blame onto various vulnerable groups.
What does Christmas have to offer at such a time of anxiety, frustration, and menace?
Christians believe that in the Christmas story – in the carols, readings and prayers – we are offered a different lens through which to look at the world. We encounter necessary truths for the human heart – caught up in a story of a couple seeking refuge, a new life coming into being, and people from different backgrounds drawn together by joy and kindness. The simplicity of the story, its belief that the earth is made for peace and friendship, not competition and hate, feels like a homecoming and a better compass from which we might navigate life. It is like a star in a dark night that wants to
Welcome
Dear friends, thank you for joining us this evening for our Carol Service.
As we gather to celebrate the birth of Jesus – our hope, our healer, our Emmanuel – we are reminded of the transforming power of love, compassion, and mercy.
This year, we hold in our hearts the story of Armella, a young girl in Madagascar born with a tumour that threatened her future. Without safe surgery, her condition would only worsen. She might never have gone to school.
No child should face such suffering. But in Madagascar, where most families can’t afford to pay for hospital care – this is a heartbreaking reality. Your support is changing this.
Through your prayers, your generosity, and your acts of service, you are helping to bring life-saving care to children like Armella. You are part of God’s healing work.
You’re also helping to bring lasting hope and sustainable change. Your support helps provide transformative training for medical professionals, so that more children like Armella will grow up with access to safe surgery, whenever they need it.
Thank you for walking with us. Together, we can create a more hopeful world for tomorrow’s children.
With every blessing,
Thank you Lord for your mercy and guidance.
As we approach a new year, we ask you Lord (in your name), that you will:
• Be close in spirit to the new Global CEO, Dr Michelle White, as she leads Mercy Ships in a new chapter. Grant her your divine wisdom.
• Guide diplomatic relationships as the Global Mercy prepares for a field service in Ghana, and direct Mercy Ships to those who need you most.
• Bless the hands of the medical teams and strengthen the volunteer crew with each new day, giving them a brand new mercy.
We lift up all the patients, their families, our partners and each community that Mercy Ships is privileged to serve, and ask you to inspire others to serve faithfully on our ships.
For what you are about to do, make us truly thankful…
In your name we pray. Amen.
Shelley Pigott Executive Director, Mercy Ships UK
We’d be grateful if you would pray for us.
Thank you Your support transforms lives
Southwark Cathedral Order of Service
Choir: The Girls’ Choir and Lay Clerks of Southwark Cathedral
Directed by: Helen Smee (Director of Music)
Cathedral Organist: Simon Hogan
Welcome and Bidding Prayer
The Rev'd Dr Mark Oakley, Dean of Southwark
Opening carol (please stand)
Once in Royal David’s City
Cecil Frances Alexander (1818-1895)
Once in Royal David's city stood a lowly cattle shed, where a mother laid her baby in a manger for his bed: Mary was that mother mild, Jesus Christ her little child. He came down to earth from heaven who is God and Lord of all, and his shelter was a stable, and his cradle was a stall: with the poor and mean and lowly, lived on earth our Saviour holy. And through all his wondrous childhood day by day like us he grew, he was little, weak, and helpless, tears and smiles like us he knew: and he feeleth for our sadness, and he shareth in our gladness. And our eyes at last shall see him through his own redeeming love, for that child so dear and gentle, is our Lord in heaven above: and he leads his children on to the place where he is gone.
Greeting by Shelley
Pigott
Executive Director, Mercy Ships UK
First reading
Isaiah 9:2, 6-7
Georgina Berry, Mercy Ships alumni volunteer Operating theatre nurse
Carol (please stand)
O Come, O Come Emmanuel
Latin Advent Antiphons, Translated by John Mason Neale
O come, O come, Emmanuel, redeem thy people Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here, until the Son of God appear: Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel.
O come, thou Rod of Jesse, free thine own from Satan’s tyranny; from depths of hell thy people save, and give them victory o’er the grave:
(Refrain)
O come, thou Dayspring, come and cheer our spirits by thine advent here; disperse the gloomy clouds of night, and death’s dark shadows put to flight:
(Refrain)
O come, O come, thou Lord of Might, who to thy tribes, on Sinai’s height, in ancient times didst give the law in cloud and majesty and awe:
(Refrain)
Second reading
Luke 2:8-20
Lizzie Chitty, Mercy Ships alumni volunteer Operating theatre nurse
Choir carol (please remain seated)
In Dulci Jubilo
Arranged by Robert Pearsall
Third reading
Matthew 2:1-12
Jon Patch, Mercy Ships alumni volunteer and speaker
Carol (please stand)
Silent Night
Joseph Mohr, translated by John Freeman Young
Silent night, holy night. All is calm, all is bright, round yon Virgin mother and child; holy infant, so tender and mild, sleep in heavenly peace, sleep in heavenly peace.
Silent night, holy night. Shepherds quake at the sight, glories stream from heaven afar, heav'nly hosts sing Alleluia: Christ the Saviour is born, Christ the Saviour is born.
Silent night, holy night. Son of God, love's pure light radiant beams from thy holy face, with the dawn of redeeming grace, Jesus, Lord at thy birth, Jesus, Lord at thy birth.
Choir carol (please sit)
I Wonder as I Wander
Arranged by John Rutter
Christmas Address
Carys Parker-White, Mercy Ships volunteer: Pastoral Associate and Hospital Chaplain
Carol (please stand)
Joy to the World!
Isaac Watts (1674-1748)
Joy to the world, the Lord is come! Let earth receive her King; let every heart prepare him room, and heaven and nature sing, and heaven and nature sing, and heaven, and heaven and nature sing.
Joy to the world, the Saviour reigns! Our voices we employ; while fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains repeat the sounding joy, repeat the sounding joy, repeat, repeat the sounding joy.
He rules the world with truth and grace, and makes the nations prove the glories of his righteousness and wonders of his love, and wonders of his love, and wonders, wonders of his love.
Choir carol (please sit)
Sussex
Carol
Arranged by Philip Ledger
Crew
Interview
Cassandra Maria, Presenter and Premier Gospel Radio Programme Manager interviews Paul Malgwi and Captain Ian Lawrence
Video Armella’s story
In the video, Armella’s mother Caessah says:
“My daughter Armella is sick, she has a tumour. It makes her life difficult. It’s so heavy for her. Sometimes it makes her cry. When people meet her, they stare at her.”
“Mercy Ships is truly a light for me and for the life of my child, it’s truly a blessing. She is no longer rejected by children now, unlike before. I hope she will have a good life.” Caessah
the wondrous gift is given! So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven. No ear may hear his coming; but in this world of sin, where meek souls will receive him, still the dear Christ enters in.
O holy child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray; cast out our sin, and enter in; be born in us today. We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell: O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel.
Thank you for any kind gift you can share during the offertory. You can also give online. Please scan the QR code:
Fourth reading
John 1:1-14
Angharad Milenkovic, Mercy Ships UK trustee
Blessing
The Dean of Southwark
Carol (please stand)
O Come All Ye Faithful
Latin 18th century; translated by Frederick Oakeley and others
O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant, O come ye, O come ye to Bethlehem; come and behold him born the King of Angels:
O come, let us adore him, O come, let us adore him, O come, let us adore him, Christ the Lord!
God of God, Light of Light, lo, he abhors not the Virgin's womb; very God, begotten, not created:
(Refrain)
Sing, choirs of angels, sing in exultation sing, all ye citizens of heaven above; glory to God in the Highest:
(Refrain)
Organ Voluntary
Toccata by Joseph Jongen
Thank you for your continued support. Wishing you a Christmas filled with hope.
Uplifted by love: Armella’s story
What matters most to you?
For one mum in Madagascar, the only thing that mattered was that her child survived.
Armella was born with a huge, heavy tumour behind her ear.
By the time she was two years old, the growth had grown too heavy for little Armella to bear. The mass pulled down heavily on her shoulders, made her body weak, and drew stares from other children.
Her mum was desperate for answers. But, like most families in Madagascar, the cost of surgery was far beyond reach.
(Images) After receiving free surgery with Mercy Ships, Armella is full of light and life.
A new future for Armella
Now fully recovered, Armella is back at home. Free from the burden of her tumour, Armella’s life has changed for good.
No one stares at her. She plays happily with her friends, giggling with carefree joy.
She picks up a pencil and writes in her older brother’s schoolbook. One day, she hopes to go to school.
Her mum will always be grateful:
Photos: Mercy Ships/Joshua Kiew Wing Chau
A mother’s prayer
Caessah shared this testimony at her church soon after her daughter’s surgery.
God, you sent Mercy Ships as a tool to save Armella. It was truly a grace and a blessing that we received. I truly thank you, God. I don’t have much money to offer you today, but today my heart truly thanks you God, because you’ve freed my child from her burdens that she has carried for the past two years, and now she is healed.
I pray you may bring us into the light of life. Amen.
making space for love with heart, mind, and soul
It is good to welcome you to Southwark Cathedral. Set on the south bank of the River Thames, in one of the most vibrant and diverse communities in London, this building has been a constant witness in a place of change.
The first church was built on this site around the year 606. First a convent, then a monastery, it became in 1106 the Augustinian Priory of St Mary Overie (‘over-the-river’). With Westminster Abbey and St Bartholomew the Great in Smithfield, it is one of the three remaining great monastic churches of London.
At the Reformation, the Priory became a parish church, and it remains so for the people of Bankside. In 1905, as south London was rapidly expanding, the church was consecrated as the Cathedral for the new Diocese of Southwark.
The Cathedral has a momentous and significant history and has had links with many famous and influential characters including St Thomas Becket, Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. It has also been a Cathedral for those who feel on the edges of faith or society, our welcome reaching out to all people in their beautiful God-given diversity.
Here, our Christian faith is captured in our vision to ‘make space for love: with heart, mind, and soul’. Faith requires our hearts to stand up for social justice, upholding integrity and kindness, and supporting the vulnerable and oppressed. It challenges our thinking, inviting our minds to be enquiring, honest, and generous. Faith also seeks to deepen our inner lives, with the arts and creativity, by sharing in the life of our community, and by learning the arts of prayer and attention. In Jesus Christ we see the human face of God, and our faith in him is our joy and our life. We really hope you enjoy being here with us today and that we will see you again very soon.
Southwark Cathedral, London Bridge, London SE1 9DA Tel: 020 7367 6700 Subscribe