As Autumn takes hold, the mood, the traditions, even the weather of the month of November often turn our thoughts to those whom we have lost. But death need not mean the loss of meaning – love and loss are forever inextricably linked. It is the month of All Saints and All Souls and when memories that bless and burn come back to haunt us. We sense anew the absence of the loves of our lives. But by now we have learned that love and loss go together. If you love, you are sure to suffer; if you do not love, you will suffer even more. But we cannot live without love and loss. And the more we love people and things, and the more attached we are to our dreams and hopes, the more deeply we will feel their loss. The impact of loss can suddenly ambush you, that aching sense of someone’s absence brought on by a spring morning, a summer pathway, an autumn sky, an empty chair, the first Christmas carol you must listen to alone. Loving someone wraps invisible blankets of blessing around both people.

We can discern no hidden grace in grief and loss. We are like a seed buried in the darkness, alone and waiting. It is only when the time is right, when the heart is ready, that loss, like a midwife, brings something very special and undreamt of into the emptiness of our lives. The moment of a new and slowly emerging reality will only come when we trust the possibility of such a resurrection, and open ourselves to it. Our life, we discover, has not lost its meaning. Something in our soul forever senses possibility. Loss is like a teacher. Its value lies in the space it makes for something new to grow. Where the loss is caused by the death of a dearly loved friend or relation, that sense of loss may now begin to open the slow door to another way of being with that person. Unrestricted by time and place, a new intimacy becomes possible.

There is a nourishing paradox in the way theologian, Karl Rahner, reflects on the unfilled gap. “There is no such thing in either the world or the heart as a vacuum,” he said, “And wherever space is really left by death, by renunciation, by parting, by apparent emptiness, provided that the emptiness is not filled by the world, or activity, or noise, or the deadly grief of the world – there is God.”

Those who have loved and lost, and grown through it all, have already tasted death and resurrection. They have followed their passion, they have risked for love; they have been devastated by loss. And because they loved and trusted life once, the final death will never be a fearful stranger.

Edited from “Learning Heart: Weekly Reflections”

We sometimes forget that the diocese and cathedral of Llandaff, now part of the Church in Wales, were Catholic for anything up to a thousand years. I hope that everyone has visited Llandaff Cathedral, which is one of the oldest Christian sites in Britain, right on our doorstep. It has had a varied history, rebuilt by the Normans, enduring the Reformation and then centuries of neglect. It had a kind of mini-cathedral built inside its semi- ruins, and then was restored by the Victorians. Finally of course it was bombed in the Second World War and restored again, to include the huge and famous Majestas statue by Jacob Epstein.

The coat of arms of Llandaff diocese includes three mitres, representing three saints from the earliest days of Christianity here in South Wales: Teilo, Euddogwy – and Dyfrig. St Dyfrig (feast day Thursday) was of royal stock, born around 465AD, probably in Madley, west of present day Belmont Abbey. In Latin he is known as Dubricius and in Norman French as Devereux.

Noted for his intelligence, Dyfrig soon became widely known as a scholar. Then, called to the Celtic monastic life, Dyfrig founded monasteries at Hentland and Moccas near Hereford. Later he was ordained Bishop and his diocese seems to have included all of Glamorgan and Gwent, an area that would later become the Catholic diocese of Llandaff. He became the teacher of well-known Welsh saints, including St Teilo and St Samson, and also was good friends with others like St Illtud. He is believed to have attended the famous Synod of Llanddewi Brefi, where he is said to have resigned his see in favour of Saint David. He was known to heal the sick of various disorders through the laying on of hands. Other versions of his life, even tell how it was Dyfrig/Dubricius who crowned King Arthur, and he appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, and much later in Tennyson’s Idylls of the King.

Eventually St Dyfrig retired to Bardsey Island off the Llyn peninsula in North Wales where he eventually died and was buried. When the Normans regularised the system of dioceses across most of England and Wales, they confirmed Llandaff as the see for Glamorgan and Gwent. In 1120 Dyfrig’s body was transferred to the cathedral there, where it probably still rests – somewhere. Churches dedicated to Saint Dyfrig/Dubricius can be found in various parts of Herefordshire and South Wales, including the Catholic parish church of Treforest and Pontypridd, St Dyfrig’s. St Dyfrig and saints of Wales, pray for us.

Fr Matthew

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