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From Canon Ann Easter, Chief Executive of a Charity and Chaplain to the Queen:

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Today’s the day we specially remember John Keble, a priest and poet who lived in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and he’s one of a little group that started what became known as the Oxford Movement in the Church of England.

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John and his friends thought that the worship of the day was a bit plain and they wanted to bring more powerful symbolism and energy into the services so they introduced movement, colour, candles and incense – smells and bells! I love it! – to show that God might be known through our whole selves, through all our senses. And because this new way of doing thingsÌý wasn’t particularly popular with the Bishops, the priests who thought it a good idea were often put into parishes in the slums as a sort of punishment. But I have to say that those priests not only offered lovely worship, they worked hard to alleviate poverty and injustice in those areas too.

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What a fantastic experience it must have been for those people in east London where I’m from, for example,Ìý to go into a fragrant, colourful church in the days when, even in the more respectable households, there wasn’t much in the way of gorgeousness and, outside, life was pretty dull and drab.

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God has made us sensual people; we are informed and enriched not only through hearing about the world but by seeing it, smelling it, tasting and feeling it too. If I think of hospitals, it’s the smell that transports me there immediately. Or what about favourite tastes – mine’s got to be a combination of a really ripe peach and some sharp blue cheese – my mouth’s watering already! And we so need that handshake or the hug that encourages and consoles us.

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I believe that God gives us the joy of our senses to make the most of the world here and now – and because when we do that, we get foretastes, previews, samples of the Heaven that is to come.