Tag Archives: newsletter

Into your hands

newsletter,

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 many 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

A seat for the Bishop

newsletter, ,

Today we celebrate an unusual feast – the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome. The Lateran Basilica, better known as St John Lateran, is the cathedral of the Bishop of Rome, better known as the Pope. So the feast is really one of the Pope, of the unity and catholicity of the Church gathered around our bishops who, in turn, gather around the Pope. But what is a cathedral?

It surprises visitors to Rome to discover that the great St Peter’s in the Vatican is not a cathedral. That is because many people have the mistaken idea that a cathedral is simply a big church. In fact, it takes its name from cathedra, a Latin word for a seat from the Greek kathedra. At his installation each bishop is seated on a special chair that becomes a symbol of his leadership and service to the Church. The chair is often decorated or on a rather grander scale than your usual sort of chair! So the cathedra gives its name to the building where it is located. So, on the whole, there is just one cathedral church in each bishop’s diocese or area. So, as Bishop of Rome, the Pope’s cathedral is St John Lateran.

Our archbishop has his cathedra in St David’s cathedral in Charles Street. That’s just behind Marks and Sparks for those who have never visited! Make a visit and you will see a grand oak chair located just to the right of the main altar. The use of this is reserved to the Archbishop, and so priests celebrating Mass use another, smaller one. You will see him on it at the Chrism Mass and other occasions when he presides there.

St John Lateran dates way back to the fourth century, but St David’s only to the 1880’s, and it became a cathedral in the early twentieth century. Naturally, the history of the Church in South Wales goes back much further than that – to the mists of the Celtic age, and for nigh on a thousand years the cathedral of the Bishop in our area was at Llandaff, where it still stands. It’s being looked after by our Anglican friends… but that’s another story.

Fr Matthew

Don’t wash that hand!

newsletter

One Saint and two Blesseds – that’s my tally of holy hands that I have shaken. Pope St John Paul II was canonised recently, and I shook his hand and exchanged a few words back in 1990 on our first September Pilgrimage. Blessed Mother Teresa was beatified a few years back – and I shook her hand in about 1977, when accompanying her to Rome airport in our seminary minibus. She threw me – as saints do – when I asked her to pray for me, by asking the same of me. And finally, Pope Blessed Paul VI was beatified a week or two ago – and I met him, shook his hand, received a book, had a little chat (and a few photos), just after I was ordained in 1978. So – one saintly hand and two blessed ones… so far.

On the Feast of All Saints we celebrate those people who have been “raised to the altar”. They have been proclaimed as certainly having lived a profoundly Christian life and now receiving their heavenly reward. But we also, of course, celebrate those many, many “unproclaimed” saints that I hope we all have met.

Our 3 Churches here bring to twelve the number of church communities where I have served as a priest. I could not begin to count the number of deeply holy people I have had the privilege to meet. From some of the so-called most deprived areas of Wales, to leafy English country towns, to cosmopolitan Ottawa, capital of Canada – and now to the leafy northern suburbs of Cardiff, the people of God often live out their Christian calling in a way which we can only call saintly. Coping with incredible adversity or simply living out marriage or family life, taking their faith into public life no matter the cost, or humbly serving others unnoticed and unacclaimed – it is going on all around us.

So on this Feast of All Saints, give thanks for the saints that you have known, and maybe you could find some way of affirming someone today who is following Jesus so clearly. If they are indeed doing that, they will probably be the last person to want attention – so be simple and brief. Saints don’t like attention!

Fr Matthew