Download the 3 churches newsletter for the 23rd Sunday in Ordinary time (year B), issue 34/15 below.
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Our lady of tears
After marrying, Antonina and Angelo Jannuso went to live with his family in Syracuse, Sicily. One of their wedding presents was a mass-produced plaster plaque of Our Blessed Lady. When Antonia discovered that she was pregnant, she developed toxemia and convulsions, leading to temporary blindness. Confined to bed, she found her refuge in prayer, for which her husband mocked her. On the 29th of August 1953 she was suffering from very bad cramps. Suddenly she became calm, but then suffered a seizure that left her blind. At about 8:30, her sight was restored. In Antonina’s own words:
“I opened my eyes and stared at the image of the Madonna above the bedhead. To my great amazement I saw that the effigy was weeping. I called my sister-in-law Grazie and my aunt, Antonina Sgarlata, who came to my side, showing them the tears. At first they thought it was a hallucination due to my illness, but when I insisted, they went close up to the plaque and could well see that tears were really falling from the eyes of the Madonna, and that some tears ran down her cheeks onto the bedhead.”
The family and neighbours were called and witnessed the miracle. Antonia stayed watching for several hours, wiping away the tears with a handkerchief and cotton wool, and the weeping occurred on many occasions from August 29 to September 1. When a priest notified the Bishop’s office, an investigative commission was formed of distinguished clergymen, four scientists and three reputable witnesses. They studied the phenomenon, and chemical analysis found that a sample of the tears were of the same composition as human tears.
From the time Antonina saw the tears, she recovered completely from her toxemia and gave birth to a healthy son. The weeping image of Our Lady of Syracuse was approved the next year by Pope Pius XII. The tears were collected in a precious reliquary now in the modern sanctuary that also houses the plaque. It was consecrated by Pope St John Paul II in 1994, and welcomes about one million pilgrims a year from around the world. Next Sunday the September Pilgrims will celebrate Mass at the Sanctuary and we will remember you all.
Fr Matthew
3 churches newsletter, 30 August 2015
Download the 3 churches newsletter for the 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, issue 33/15 below.
A great Gregory
St Gregory the Great, was Pope from 590 to his death in 604. He was born in about 540 into a wealthy Rome family. His father served as a Senator and became Prefect, the highest civil office in the city, and his mother was Silvia, also honoured as a saint. It was a period of upheaval when the plague caused famine, panic, and rioting. In some parts, over 1/3 of the population was wiped out. Totila sacked Rome in 546, but an invasion of the Franks was defeated in 554. After that, there was peace, except that the central government now resided in Constantinople.
Gregory was well educated, and became a government official, advancing quickly to become, like his father, Prefect of Rome at 33 years old. Yet on his father’s death, Gregory converted his family villa into a monastery dedicated to St Andrew (but now rededicated to St Gregory himself). In 579 the Pope chose him as his unwilling ambassador to the imperial court in Constantinople.
He was elected Pope in 590, and re-energized the Church’s missionary work, especially among the non- Christian peoples of northern Europe. He is famous for sending a mission, under Augustine of Canterbury, prior of Saint Andrew’s, to evangelize the pagan Anglo-Saxons of England. He had never forgotten the English slaves whom he had once seen in the Roman Forum.
He made a revision of the liturgy of the Mass. For example, he established the nine “Lord have mercy” at the beginning of Mass, added material to the Eucharistic Prayer and moved the Our Father to its current position. Gregory is the only Pope between the fifth and the eleventh centuries to leave a large number of writings, including several books, many sermons and 854 letters. The main form of plainchant was attributed to him, so took the name of Gregorian chant, but was in fact only standardized in the late 9th century.
Gregory was the first to make use of the title “Servant of the Servants of God”. He is known for his charitable relief of the poor. He believed that the wealth belonged to the poor and the church was only its steward. These and other good deeds won the hearts and minds of the people, who started to look to the papacy for their government. Gregory is commonly credited with founding the medieval papacy, and many attribute the beginning of medieval spirituality to him. He was declared a saint immediately after his death by popular acclamation and we celebrate his feast on 3rd September.
Fr Matthew
3 churches newsletter, Sunday 23 August 2015
Download issue 32/15 of our newsletter for the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B) below.
If all the good things in the world…
St David Lewis was born in Abergavenny in 1616, the youngest of nine children of a Protestant father and Catholic mother. At 16, while visiting Paris, he converted to Catholicism, and went on to study in Rome, where in 1642 he was ordained priest. Three years later, he joined the Jesuits.
He was arrested on 17 November 1678, at St Michael’s Church, Llantarnam, and condemned at Monmouth in March 1679 on a charge of high treason – for having become a Catholic priest and then remaining in England, celebrating Catholic Masses. Like St John Kemble and other martyrs, he was then sent to London to be examined by Titus Oates (the originator of the so-called Popish Plot). In Newgate Prison he pleaded not guilty to the charge of being an accessory to the plot, and Oates and his fellow informers were unable to prove anything against him, but five or six witnesses claimed they had seen him say Mass and perform other priestly duties. For this Lewis was found guilty and sentenced to death. Lewis said in his dying speech, “discover the plot I could not, as I knew of none; and conform I would not, for it was against my conscience”.
He was brought back to Usk and hanged on 27 August 1679, and then posthumously disembowelled. It was a tribute to the great esteem in which he was held that the crowd, who were mainly Protestants, insisted that he be allowed to hang until he was dead, and that he receive a proper burial. The Sheriff too refused to attend the execution, which he had postponed for as long as he could.
After the Titus Oates affair, the remaining Welsh-speaking Catholic clergy were all either executed or exiled. David Lewis was canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. In November 2007, a plaque was erected on the spot where Lewis was arrested near Llantarnam Abbey.
From his last words: “My religion is Roman Catholic; in it I have lived above these forty years; in it now I die, and so fixedly die, that if all the good things in the world were offered to me to renounce it, all should not remove me one hair’s breadth from the Roman Catholic faith. A Roman Catholic I am; a Roman Catholic priest I am; a Roman Catholic priest of that order known as the Society of Jesus, I am.”
Fr Matthew