It is with great sadness and after much prayer, thought and discussion that the leadership team of Sisters of Charity of St. Paul have decided to withdraw the sisters from St. Joseph's parish. Clearly this news comes with great sadness to us all because the sisters have become so much part of the life of the parish, it is hard to imagine life without them.
The sisters first came to the parish at the request of Bishop Anthony Emery who knew them very well from his Birmingham days. They started work in September 1988. Sr. Eileen was one of the first sisters to come and has been here ever since. Other different sisters have joined her over the years. The role set out for the sisters when they came was two-fold - to develop catechesis and to help to get more lay people involved in the life of the church. We can now look around us and see how many catechists are involved in the life of the parish and from that we can see the influence of the sisters in the life of St. Josephs. Also the number of lay people involved in ministry, readers at Mass, special ministers of communion and many other things. It has been a long process to get people involved because so many of us resist change and prefer things to stay as they are. Life is not like that, things are always changing and if we want to live and grow we need to be open to change. We owe our sisters a great debt of gratitude for all the work that they have quietly done in our parish.
Sr. Eileen and Sr. Christina do not yet have a leaving date because that depends a bit on when they sell their house in Osney Road. Their hope is that they may be ready to leave around the end of July. I am sure that between now and then we as a parish will be able to arrange a proper event for the sisters where we can show our appreciation for all they have done in our parish and wish them well in their future work.
The great thing about the celebration of Easter is that it continues through the Easter season and right throughout our lives. The disciples did not expect Easter, they felt that it was all over on Good Friday. Christ had failed, they had been let down. They were now going to have to face the people at home and explain how they had been let down and even misled.
They were not so sure that they wanted to hear about Jesus rising from the dead on Easter morning because now what would they do? Would they go back home as they had decided or would they go back to find out about the risen Jesus and so risk making a fool of themselves again?
Our gospel today gives us the account of the first appearance of Jesus to His disciples. That appearance gives us the full picture in that there were the two groups of people: those present when Jesus appeared and so saw for themselves, and then there was Thomas who was not present and wanted physical proof that Jesus had risen. Of course, what he really wanted was to go his own way and forget all about Jesus. But of course, it was not as easy as that. He laid down conditions that he never expected to be fulfilled and then he was faced with the great challenge when everything was fulfilled - what was he going to do?
He was given the gift of faith and he was able to fall on his knees and profess Jesus as his Lord and God.
As for ourselves, we face the same question - do we believe in the risen Christ or not? Clearly, if we don't then we get on with our lives and forget all about the Christian story. But, if we do believe in the risen Christ then it is the most fantastic thing that has ever happened in our world and makes a difference to our whole outlook on life. If we believe in the risen Christ, then all our lives should be directed to following Him.
It was eerie in the windowless valuables vault. Once the door was closed, it was totally dark. My eyesight was as good as ever, but without light there was no way I could appreciate any of the treasures that were all around me. Eyesight without light was useless. For the believer, faith in Christ is the light that enables one to glimpse the greatness of the treasure God's call holds for us. Without faith, vision is blurred. Such faith is a gift freely offered, offered again and again each time we celebrate the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. This gift is not forced on anybody. On the contrary, it is strengthened and nurtured only by being accepted no matter how tentatively and hesitatingly. It is a light to which one grows accustomed which colours every aspect of life, which enables one to grow in appreciation of God's friendship, to grasp his call and to respond in total love.
The renewal of this faith is God's Easter gift to us. The light of Christ beckons us on the road to joy, the joy of being sure that we are loved by God and held safely in the palm of his hand. Christ once asked a blind man: 'What do you want me to do for you?' He replied: 'Lord, make me see again.' This Easter time, Lord, remove the short-sightedness of our anxious selfishness so that we may stride into tomorrow beaconed by the light of faith in the risen Christ.
Today as we celebrate the great entry of Jesus into Jerusalem for the last time, we begin our holy week, the most important week in the life of Jesus. It turned out to be His final week on this earth. On that week, He experienced the highs and lows of life. He was welcomed into Jerusalem with great joy and many people were ready to proclaim Him as their king. Very quickly that joy was turned into anger, betrayal and finally the call for crucifixion. Most of the followers of Jesus ran away. Even St Peter denied that he even knew who Jesus was. A small group, mainly women, stayed by Jesus and supported Him to the end. In spite of the suffering and the pain of Good Friday, Jesus had the final victory on Easter morning when he rose from the dead in full glory. Not only that, He promised that we would all rise with Him one day, and we too would share in His glory.
For us as Christians, Holy Week is not just about something that happened two thousand years ago. It is for us, through the liturgy, entering into that week with Christ and reliving what Christ went through. Our Holy Week liturgies are all unique in that they are only celebrated during this week and they all move on following each event in the life of Christ.
The central ceremony of Holy Week is the Easter Triduum that is made up of three elements. The Mass of the Last Supper on Holy Thursday night when Jesus gave us the Eucharist for the first time and asked us to do this in memory of Him. On Good Friday afternoon we follow the liturgy of the passion of Christ. On Holy Saturday night we gather in vigil to pray, listen and celebrate Christ's rising from the dead.
I would love to see large crowds taking part in the Triduum.
Sometimes things happen that open our eyes to the reality of the situation around us. Such an event took place for me on the occasion of our fundraising International Dinner last Saturday evening. At that event, we had five different nationalities - all parishioners - who prepared food from their native countries. We were able to see before us something of the diversity of our parish and the positive impact that different nationalities can have on a community. Recently someone said to me that we are an English parish. I rather like to think that we are a parish in England made up of many different races and nationalities as well as English, all congregating in St Joseph's to celebrate our common faith. I feel that there are consequences to our parish in how we do things, if we are able to make all the different groups in our parish feel included and accepted. I am sure that we should be able to give expression in our liturgy of our different backgrounds.
Recently, I have been at a few Diocesan meetings where people have talked about the great influx of new people in the different parishes. This number is going to increase even more. With the expansion of the E.U. more people will come to this country from Eastern Europe, many of whom will be Catholic. We need to be ready to welcome them and be willing to encourage their involvement in the lives of our parishes. We have to ask ourselves if we as a parish community, are prepared to make that welcome and to accept the changes that may come our way as a result.
People regularly tell me that they would like help in how to pray. I am therefore
very pleased to notify you of dates in April and May when Veronica Adnitt
will come and lead prayer workshops in the evenings and be available in the
afternoons to give individual guided time.
Dates are: Thursday 22 and 29 April and 6, 13 May and Wednesday 26 May.
I hope that we will have a good response as in the past the numbers have been very disappointing. Please try to set aside some time to attend as from my own experience, the only way that I have learned anything about prayer is by actually spending time in prayer. No one learns to ride a bike by reading books. We need to get on the bike and perhaps fall off, make many mistakes and gradually we learn the skill of balance and away we go. Prayer is no different. We may feel that we are not doing very well but if we stay with it we will, over a period of time, come to know what prayer is all about and so it will become a part of our lives.
We might ask "What is prayer?" There are many answers. It is about having a conversation with God. It is about being in the presence of God. It is about building a relationship with the God who loves us. There are as many ways of praying as there are people but we need to realise that if we don't give time to prayer, it is fair to say that nothing will happen. Hopefully none of us would want to leave prayer to those times in our lives when we are desperate and we reach to God as a last resort, as if God was in some way linked up with the fire service.
We are not going to be tested on how we pray, rather we listen, practice and gradually learn to be more confident about our prayer and want to spend more time at prayer.
Please look at the dates above and set the time aside. More information will be given later.
Since I came to the parish I have only heard the bell in St Joseph's Church rung on a few occasions. It does have a pleasant tone. I gather that in the past there were a few parishioners who rang the bell regularly.
The finance and maintenance committee have explored the possibility of bringing the bell into regular use. We could put an electronic system in so that the bell could be activated at the press of a button, then the bell could have the appropriate tone for our different ceremonies; weddings, funerals etc.
I am sure that I, like most of the parish, would be happy to hear the bell on regular occasions. The difficulty is the cost. To do some repairs to the bell to make it fully electronic would cost in the region of £7000. I have to say that it is a much larger figure than I thought it would be.
Today I am asking the people of the parish what you think. Do we leave things as they are or do we bring the bell into full use? If there is some interest from the parish we could hold an open meeting and explore the way ahead. The cost is high but we may feel that it is small in comparison to what it cost to build the bell tower in the first place. I will give people till Easter to hear your views and we will drop the idea if there is no support. If there is support, we will move forward to the next step.
Last Sunday we saw Jesus in the desert struggling with the devil. Jesus working out who He was and what His mission was all about. Today's gospel gives us a glimpse of the transfigured Jesus, of Jesus today in His risen state. It is moving from the low to the high in a very short space of time. The transfigured Christ is given to us to encourage us to cope through the difficult times. Jesus wanted to prepare His apostles for the difficult dark days ahead when they would have to see Him suffer and die. He knew that they would find that very difficult. They were expecting a great powerful leader, how would they cope with the suffering servant, the one who took upon Himself, the burdens of others. When things were bad they would remember the good times and the image of Christ transfigured.
For us the transfiguration is a source of encouragement where we can see Christ in glory. What He is, we shall one day be. We all go through bad times and through those bad times we need something to keep us going; something to give us sight of the final goal and the victory. The victory of Christ is also our victory because He wants us all to follow in His way.
We need to remember that Christ was transfigured through the time that He spent in prayer with His Father. As He prayed, He became more and more aware of His Father's love for Him. We too need to spend time in prayer in the presence of our loving Father so that we too can become aware of His love for us. As we become aware of that love we become more confident in our own lives so that we can face whatever difficulties come our way.
Our first Sunday of Lent begins with Jesus in the desert. He alone, without the support of either friends or material comforts. He wanted to prepare Himself for His work to come. He wanted time to be able to get strength from being with His beloved Father.
It was in this place on his own that He was tempted; he was offered possessions, honour and power - all of which He rejected. He was making it clear from the beginning that His leadership was going to be a different kind. He was going to be in service to mankind, that He would follow to His death on the cross.
There are many lessons for us as we begin our journey through Lent, beginning with Jesus in the desert. We too will be tempted to have more possessions, more honour and more power. How do we react? Do we take the easy route and follow the way of the world? Where does that lead us? Does it lead to happiness or to a lonely sad life and finally failure? Like Jesus we need to make a choice to go our own way or to go down the road of service to Jesus.
This week we put before you many different events that are taking place in the parish during Lent. I invite you all to take Lent seriously and get involved. Decide today what you are going to do and then make sure that you keep those dates free.
If we can make a good spiritual effort during Lent then I have no doubt that our Lenten Project will take care of itself because we will be motivated to get involved. We must not make the mistake in thinking that the motivation will come from the project itself, if we do that we are forgetting who we are and what we are about.
Next Wednesday is Ash Wednesday and so the first day of Lent. What are we going to do this Lent? If we don't make up our minds at the beginning of what we are going to do then we will probably do nothing. We need to plan our time and decide what the best thing is for us to be involved in this year. You can see from our Lent leaflet that we have lots of extra services on offer during Lent. Nobody need take part in them all but my hope is that these services will be well supported.
Above all we need to remember that Lent is about a spiritual journey. It is about a conversion experience, so before we start talking about projects or charities, we need to get the spiritual side in place otherwise the projects will have no meaning. We also have to remember that we do not judge our Lenten experience on the amount of money raised.
For me, the key to Lent is the following of the readings each day. We need to get into those readings and allow them to become part of our lives. The readings give us the journeys of the chosen people from exile into the Promised Land. For Jesus, His journey to Jerusalem was through suffering and death to the glory of Easter morning where He rose from the dead. We can only rejoice on Easter day if we have purified our lives of all that has been keeping us from Christ.
So Lent for each one of us will be different because we are all starting from different positions. If we can open ourselves to God speaking to us in the scriptures then we will be able to see our own lives clearer and see our need of God's grace.
Our gospel today puts before us the beatitudes as given to us by St Luke. The beatitudes are the set of values that Christ puts before us to show how we should live our lives. All of us, no matter our position or station in life, want to be happy. I am sure that we also want to see other people being happy in their lives. The difference between us is the different things we choose to do in order to find happiness. What is very clear is that happiness is not to be found in acquiring more and more material goods. There is no question that each of us spends a great amount of energy in the search of happiness.
Perhaps today we would be wise to listen to Jesus and take on board what He sets before us. First of all, he is almost saying to us that the more we search the more elusive happiness becomes. We achieve happiness by being rather than by doing. This may be why we find it so difficult to follow Christ's way, because we all feel better if we are doing things. We forget that if we are busy doing things all the time, we give ourselves no time or space to listen or to allow God to enter our lives. For God to come in there must be space for Him to come into. Having come He must be made welcome and be given a role, otherwise we quickly forget His presence and gradually He will have no importance in the way we live our lives.
Today's gospel invites us to listen and take on board what Jesus has to offer to us
Today's gospel gives us some insight into the kind of people that Jesus calls to be His disciples and followers. We could say that Peter made a show of himself, he knew better than Jesus about fishing, he was not going to waste any more of his time. Then as things turned out, Jesus knew a lot more than Peter about fishing and a whole lot more as well.
In spite of Peter showing himself up, Jesus still calls him to go out and work with Jesus. Jesus does not hold a grudge but rather wants to help people to move on. With Peter of course this was not to be his last mistake or the last time that he was to let Jesus down. Yet Jesus stays with him and chose Peter to be the leader of His apostles.
I am sure that for me like many others, Peter is my favourite apostle. There is no side to him - you get what you see. In so many ways he was so ordinary. Prepared to jump in with both feet without thinking of saying the wrong thing, but able to go back and admit that he was wrong and ask forgiveness.
If Jesus employed recruiting agencies they would not give Peter a second look, he had too many weaknesses. I am sure that we are all pleased that it is Jesus who calls us because otherwise we would not stand a chance either. Jesus calls sinners to be His followers. All He asks of us is to recognise that we are sinners and that we have a need of the grace that Jesus brings us. If we think that we are already saved, Jesus can do nothing for us. As well as recognising that we are sinners who are in need, we also have to recognise that our fellow Christians are capable of sin and need the same forgiveness as we do.
Jesus is back in His own town bringing the gospel news to them. Far from being delighted to have one of their own speaking to them, they turn on Him and reject Him and what He had to say. The ministry of Jesus may well have been very different if His own people had listened to Him. He could possibly have set up a home base of faith among His own people and it could have been a life-giving place to return to. The people of His own town rejected Him because they knew where He came from and who His family were. They did not allow themselves to listen to what He said or what He was able to do. Their minds were closed and that caused their blindness.
So many of us are no different to the people at the time of Jesus. We too have closed minds and are unable to listen to what other people say or do. The big drawback to the building of community life is that so many of us are intolerant of each other. We do not show respect or tolerance to each other.
The people of Jesus' home town lost a great opportunity because of their closed minds. We need to be careful not to make the same mistake and miss the opportunities that are offered to us in our time.
St Luke in today's gospel tells us why he set out to write his gospel. He wanted to write an ordered account of the events that had taken place so that his friend Theophilius, could see how well founded the teaching was that he had received.
In our time we are fortunate that we have the gospels available to us so that we too can learn about the life of Jesus, about what He said and did. We are clearly interested in the gospels as history, just to get to know the facts. But our interest is far deeper than that because we want to read about and get to know the same Jesus who still is the person who guides and directs our lives.
It seems to me that for far too long we as Catholics have made the excuse that we were not brought up with the bible. This may have been the case fifty years ago but it no longer holds today. Since Vatican II and earlier the church has been telling us of the importance of reading the bible. Of understanding the meaning behind the different styles of writing contained in the bible so that we can understand the message better. If we do not read the bible then we are ignoring such an important source of spiritual support.
We as a catholic community need to take the bible seriously and make it a regular part of our daily lives.
The first place to start is to have an up to date bible in our homes, and then to start to read it. What better place to start than with St Luke's gospel
The first and last books of the Bible - Genesis and Revelation - contain images of marriage. In Genesis, we have the wedding of our first parents, Adam and Eve and in the book of Revelation, we have the wedding feast of the Lamb. The Bible is peppered with passages that refer to Christ as the heavenly Bridegroom and His people, as the Bride. In today's Gospel, Jesus' first miracle is at a wedding feast. Is all this a co-incidence? Is it a co-incidence that this is the first time Jesus' disciples were enlightened and 'believed in Him'? There is something profound here. By performing His first miracle of turning the water into wine, Jesus revealed His true identity. As the Spirit enlightened them, the disciples recognized something of the significance of Jesus choosing to perform His first miracle at a wedding feast. He was pointing to a much deeper desire and reality. His desire to be united with us, in one flesh. We experience Christ in an even more intimate way than those who walked the dusty Palestinian roads with Him 2000 years ago. We share in His very life. When His Word is proclaimed it is Christ who is speaking to us, in a personal and powerful way. When we receive Holy Communion, we receive the most precious gift that God can give us - the gift of Himself. Jesus comes to us in the humble form of bread for our nourishment and sustains us on our journey - which is not without difficulties -so that we are never alone. Jesus, I'm sure, delighted to be in the company of the newly-weds, to share the joy of their commitment to each other but His greatest desire is to be united with us.
Just as Mary never doubted that Jesus would refuse to help the newly-weds in their potentially embarrassing situation (to run out of wine would have been a long-standing source of gossip) so she encourages us to do the same. Once again, Mary plays a pivotal role in our encounter with her son - 'do whatever He tells you' is her maternal counsel in every age.
Our liturgy today takes a huge leap forward in the life of Christ. He is now thirty years of age and is about to begin His public life. The gospels tell us very little about the early life of Jesus except that he lived with Mary and Joseph and that He was subject to them.
The Baptism of Jesus is different from any other baptism because He had no need of baptism as He is the author of baptism. He came not on His own behalf but on behalf of us. He was without sin but He did take on Himself the sins of the world - in other words our sins.
The first step on our Christian journey was our baptism. For most of us that meant that our parents decided that we should be baptised and they brought us to church for this sacrament. A few among us would have made the decision as adults, to come forward, be prepared and receive the sacrament of baptism. The way does not matter because all of us must make our own adult decision to make the baptism that we received our own. WE need to make the commitment to live our lives according to the call of our baptism.
I think it is true that for many in the lifetime of the church, baptism has not been taken seriously enough. It was just a question of being baptised without any follow-up. Many baptised Catholics have no understanding of either their baptism or the church into which they were baptised. This is a pity because baptism brings with it certain privileges but also brings obligations. In secular terms, no-one would join a club without first of all being aware of what was involved.
Today I would like us all to think about our baptism. We are privileged to have been given the opportunity of being baptised. We need to be aware of what receiving that sacrament involved. Parents need to be aware of their obligation to make sure that their children will have the opportunity of knowing the faith into which they are baptised.
For previous "Thoughts" click here
Contact Details
Parish Priest: Fr. Tom McGrath, Tel: 01628 783988
Parish Office: 01628 783988 Fax: 01628 776863 (Monday to Friday 9.am to 12 noon)
Parish Centre: 01628 636312 (Monday to Friday 9.30am to 12.30pm)