THE REVD JONATHAN AITKEN’S TRIBUTE TO FATHER PHILIP CHESTER - Sunday 23 November 2025

Father Philip has just celebrated his final Sunday Mass at St Matthew’s Westminster. I can hardly believe I am saying these words. However, they are not an epitaph even if they are tinged with sadness.

This morning we are giving joyful thanks for Philip’s remarkable 30 year record of Godly service as our Vicar, Parish Priest, preacher, pastor, mentor, party giver par excelence, warm human being and friend.

This tribute is spoken from the heart. Not just my heart but from the hearts of everyone in what might be called in football terms: Philip’s home team! This is his church, his parish, his parishioners, his clergy team and his community all around and in St Matthew’s who love and admire him.

In this short tribute, I would like to offer one or two personal reminiscences of Fr Philip in the roles I have just mentioned.

I can vividly remember the first time I ever met Fr Philip. The date was 1974 – 51 years ago. I was a newly elected young MP. He was an even younger Priest and Hospital Chaplain.

I had wandered into St Margaret’s Westminster one Sunday morning because I had been told that new MPs should attend the parliamentary church as it was in those days.

Fr Philip was on duty that Sunday as a Priest-Vicar and he preached on the story of the Water into Wine Miracle at Cana in Galilee. He gave such a good sermon with light touches of humour, learned teachings of theology with such an inspirational spiritual message at its core, delivered with such charm and warmth that I did something unusual.

I went home, picked up my fountain pen (those were the days!) and wrote Fr Philip a letter of congratulations. I had never done such a thing before but it was immediate recognition that on his day - that day – today at his last Mass and on many other days here in this church Fr Philip can be a great preacher. That letter started a friendship which has endured and flourished for over half a century.

Early in this period, Fr Philip moved from Hospital Chaplaincy to St Matthew’s Westminster. It was not an easy move because St Matthew’s was a church on its last legs. Its congregation was down to single figures and it was riven with feuds and factions. The Bishop of London, Bishop David Hope, had decided to close it.

However, at the eleventh hour, his closure plans were delayed by entreaties from the young and rather pushy Fr Philip who begged to be given a chance to try and keep St Matthew’s open. So Bishop David Hope said, probably with some episcopal doubt: “Alright – I’ll give you a year.” And in that year, Fr Philip got rid of the infighting, trebled the size of the congregation, brought in new young blood such as Mary Brown who is still with us in her late 90s and who still loves to tell the story of how she and her husband carried Philip’s suitcases, his books and luggage - his entirely worldly goods-into St Matthew’s on the day when he moved here as the new incumbent.

After arriving here, he preached the Gospel and he faithfully honoured the old Anglo-Catholic traditions, while introducing a new tradition of warm hospitality and good parties.

This combination of the Holy Spirit and the Festive Spirit seemed to show that God was moving in mysterious ways his wonders to perform.

Today looking back after 30 years of his incumbency, we can say with certainty that St Matthew’s owes its survival in those difficult early days its steadiness and high standards of liturgy and music ever since and its continuing success today to Philip’s devoted Ministry here. The Biblical text which springs to mind is surely: “Well done thou good and faithful servant.”

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In his three decades at St Matthew’s, Fr Philip has often soared high in various offices such as being a Prebendary of St Paul’s Cathedral, the Area Dean of Westminster and across the Atlantic too in his regular August duties as Chaplain to the Hoover family on Hoover Island.

But here at home, perhaps we might highlight as Bishop Rowan Williams did on Friday the loving human inclusivity of Fr Philip’s Ministry. He has always encouraged St Matthew’s to be a church which in Cranmer’s phrase, welcomes “all sorts and conditions of men.”

Including and perhaps especially those going through hard times of trouble, sorrow, need, sickness or any other adversity.

As a personal example of this, I should mention that Fr Philip visited me in prison six times in seven months when I was serving my sentence for perjury. But I am only one of many parishioners who know what a profound and loving pastor Fr Philip is to those in any kind of personal difficulty.

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Through all the changing scenes of parish life, Fr Philip has always kept a good sense of humour.

Although we are a serious church, comedy does intervene here every so often. I won’t forget the moment when we had a chilly dawn Service on Easter Morning at about 5:30am in the front courtyard of the church featuring a bonfire in a brazier. Because the kindling on the bonfire seemed reluctant to ignite I think it was Fr Philip himself who tried to encourage the kindling in the brazier to ignite by pouring on some liquid firelighter rather too liberally. The flames shot several feet into the air and alarmed some nearby residents who, thinking that the whole church must be on fire, dialled 999.

We were only into the early stages of the Easter Liturgy when our small congregation was boosted by the arrival of two fire engines and several beefy firefighters.

This was an unexpected, hilarious and noisy bonus to our Easter celebrations.

***

Humour and humanity are part of Fr Philip’s DNA. This was shown during Friday night’s magnificent Christ the King service when the Eucharist was briefly delayed by the loss of the Vicar’s spectacles. Just as search parties were starting to go out to Philip, in the manner of an absent-minded Professor patted his robes and declared: “Oh here they are: They were in my pocket all the time!”

***

The young people who come to St Matthew’s enjoy such moments of humour. They have a special rapport with Fr Philip And he with them.

He has been a superb Chairman of the Governors of St Matthew’s School for many years.

The strong relationship between the Church and the School has been a source of strength to our community and a source of spiritual inspiration to many of the school’s pupils.

***

Moving a little higher up the age range, one of the little-known successes of Fr Philip’s Ministry is the way he has welcomed and nurtured a steady flow of Pastoral Assistants in St Matthew’s where they have been well trained and often sent on their way into ordained Ministry.

A month ago, we had a Service to celebrate the programme of former Pastoral Assistants of St Matthew’s. About 20 of them showed up from Cathedral Deans to associated Canons and Vicars.

It was calculated that 47 such Pastoral Assistants had been trained and given their spiritual formation here.

No other church in London -with the possible exception of Holy Trinity Brompton – and certainly no other Vicar has come close to guiding so many talented young servants of God (and one or two older servants as well) on the path to ordination. It is a major and unsung achievement of Fr Philip’s ministry here.

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However, as Bishop Rowan Williams so well reminded me in his sermon on Friday evening, it may well be that Fr Philip’s service here should not be measured by achievements or numbers but instead for creating a church with an atmosphere in which all comers are welcome whatever the chaos the sinfulness, the failures of our lives may be. And if this looks at times an unworldly approach today’s Gospel reminds us that the Lord himself said: “My Kingdom is not of this world.”

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It is also at times a sacrificial Kingdom as Fr Philip well knows having in recent times paid his own sacrifices in terms of health, loneliness, tiredness and bereavement. Yet it is also a Kingdom of great joy and continuing challenges.

Today we can skip the usual cliches about retirement for the very good reason that Fr Philip is not retiring. He likes to joke that he is “going north” but in fact he is moving 11 stops on the tube to Chalk Farm, to a charming octagonal house for duty and into a new church St Saviour’s Chalk Farm which truly needs a saviour.

I have seen this for myself because I have celebrated and preached at St Saviour’s three times in its two-year interregnum (let’s pray our own interregnum will be much shorter) and St Saviour’s is in much the same dire straits down to a single figure congregation - as St Matthew’s was in the 1980s.

But with that combination of the Holy Spirit, the Festive Spirit and Philip’s spirit may St Saviour’s survive and flourish as St Matthew’s has done and may we who remain here continue Philip’s high principles and priorities of loving inclusivity as we continue to build on the foundations he has created in the coming interregnum and beyond.

The only way to end a tribute to Fr Philip is simply to say thank you – for so much – with great love and gratitude.

And let’s do it in an imaginative yet deeply spiritual way by rising to our feet now and standing in Philip’s honour as we say together The General Thanks Giving.