Download the 3 churches newsletter for Sunday 3 November 2019, the 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time (year C).
Category Archives: newsletter
Archbishop calls for urgent action
Archbishop Stack writes: The Welsh Government wants to take away the rights of parents to withdraw their children from both Religious Education (RE) and Relationships and Sex Education (RSE). They also want to dumb-down the subject of RE and force schools to teach children about worldviews instead.
The Church teaches that family is much more than just a unit in the culture or economy. Parents are the primary educators of their children and our schools aid them in that task. While parents may choose various modes of education for their children it remains the parents’ duty above anyone else’s to teach their children. This necessarily means remaining informed and involved in the education children are receiving and supplementing or moderating when the need arises. The proposals by the Welsh Government remove this fundamental basic right of parents.
Concern must also be taken when looking at the Religious Education provision for our children. For families who do not currently have the option of sending their children to a Catholic school, they must be allowed to retain the right to withdraw their child from RE in their own school. Also the proposed introduction of worldviews as a central focus for RE provision moves the subject away from a theological discipline into a more sociological model i.e. removing God who is at the centre of everything and replacing Him with secular ideology.
Archbishop George is asking parishioners to urgently contact their Assembly Members and demand that the State does not usurp parents’ rights to decide how to teach these sensitive topics to their children. To contact your AMs please visit the Catholic Education Service website – www.catholiceducation.org.uk.
Fr Matthew
3 churches newsletter, Sunday 27 October 2019
Download our 3 churches newsletter for Sunday 27 October 2019.
Into your hands…
Five years ago I wrote this front page piece for November and the Holy Souls. It contains one of my favourite prayers, so I make no apology for reprinting it this year…
After the Second Vatican Council, the various liturgical books were renewed and translated. The Missal for Mass, the words for the seven Sacraments – it was a long process. One of the very last texts to be renewed (appropriately) was the Rite of Christian Funerals. I’m not sure if lessons had been learned in the previous years, but many agree that it is one of the best post-Council rites.
Not only are there different prayers for every situation imaginable, but the quality of the translation was somewhat better than some previous efforts. The language is modern yet dignified, suitable for public speaking and not contorted.
One of my favourite liturgical prayers is the Prayer of Commendation at the end of a funeral. It is a key moment as we prepare to leave the church, the emotions of the bereaved are often strained by this point in the Mass, and something profound yet accessible is called for. And it certainly works – you can usually hear a pin drop as the much-loved person is handed back to the God who gave them to us…
It is a prayer for November:
Into your hands, Father of mercies,
we commend our brother/sister N,
in the sure and certain hope
that, together with all who have died in Christ,
he/she will rise with him on the last day.
We give you thanks for the blessings which you bestowed upon N. in this life:
they are signs to us of your goodness and of our fellowship with the saints in Christ.
Merciful Lord, turn toward us and listen to our prayers:
open the gates of paradise to your servant
and help us who remain
to comfort one another with assurances of faith,
until we all meet in Christ
and are with you and with our brother/sister for ever.
We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Fr Matthew
3 churches newsletter, 20 October 2019
Download the 3 churches newsletter for the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C), Sunday 20 October 2019.
Patsy and St Margaret Mary Feast 16th May
A highlight of our recent September Pilgrimage was a visit to Paray-le-Monial. Margaret Mary Alacoque was born in 1647 in Burgundy. From early childhood, she showed intense love for the Blessed Sacrament. Rheumatic fever confined her to bed for four years, but having made a vow to the Blessed Virgin to consecrate herself to religious life, she was instantly restored to perfect health. It seems she also had visions of Jesus Christ, which she thought were a normal part of human experience. The death of her father plunged her family into poverty, and her only consolation was visits to the Blessed Sacrament in the local church. When she was 17, however, the family regained their fortune and her mother encouraged her to socialise, in the hopes of finding a suitable husband.
One night, after returning home from a ball, Margaret Mary experienced a vision of Christ. He reproached her for her forgetfulness of him, yet he also reassured her by demonstrating that his Heart was filled with love for her, because of the childhood promise she had made. As a result, she determined to fulfil her vow, and when she was 23 she entered the Visitation Convent at Paray-le-Monial in 1671, making her profession as a nun the next year.
Over 18 months from 27 December 1673 she received several private revelations of the Sacred Heart. The visions revealed to her details of devotion to the Sacred Heart, such as reception of Holy Communion on the first Friday of each month, Eucharistic Holy Hours on Thursdays, and the celebration of the Feast of the Sacred Heart. Margaret Mary claimed that Jesus had permitted her to rest her head upon his heart, and disclosed to her the wonders of his love. He told her that he wanted to make them known to all, and that he had chosen her for this work. Initially discouraged in her efforts, she eventually received the support of Claude de la Colombière, S.J., the community’s confessor. The monastery observed the Feast of the Sacred Heart privately from 1686, and St Margaret Mary died in October 1690.
Later, the devotion to the Sacred Heart was fostered by the Jesuits, but the practice was not officially recognised until 75 years later. She was canonised by Pope Benedict V in 1920, and her body rests in the Chapel of the Apparitions.
Finally in an encyclical Miserentissimus Redemptor, Pope Pius XI affirmed the Church’s position regarding the credibility of her visions of Jesus Christ by speaking of Jesus as having “manifested Himself” to Saint Margaret
Mary.
Fr Matthew