The Oxford Oratory is a vibrant centre of Catholic life. Our church is open every day: join us for Mass, pop in for some quiet prayer, or come and discover more at one of our groups. Our historic church of St Aloysius has been a key feature in the lives of the city’s Catholics for 150 years, attracting people of all ages and from every walk of life. We use beauty to raise hearts and minds to God, faithful to the traditions of St Philip Neri and St John Henry Newman.

Wednesday 27 March 2024

O Friend, on what errand hast thou come?

On Palm Sunday we heard the Passion narrative once more: the sacred history of our salvation; of the betrayal of Christ, of his trial, of his Passion, of his death on the Cross — those “ancient words, newly spoken”; a tale so familiar to us and yet in which we always seem to be struck anew by the tragedy, the violence, the pity, the love… We may notice something that has never struck us before, or hear the passage that always seems to strike at our heart year after year. We will hear the Passion several times over in the next few days, in the liturgy, or in other places. St Philip, we are told, would constantly be reading the accounts of it, and a very profitable thing for us to do in this Holy Week would be to find a quiet place, switch off our telephones, take up a New Testament, and read the account of what God did for us in the Passion, as we find it in the Gospels: to read one the Passion narratives slowly, and to think on it.

We do all seem to have one passage or another which strikes us more than others. The Servant of God Jacques Fesch wrote as he was preparing for his own execution: “Nothing about the apostles does as much for my faith as their incredulity, their rationalism, their weakness, their boasting, and their pride. ‘Who is the greatest amongst us?’ said Simon Peter. And his denial, who does not almost rejoice in it, seeing it as a reflection of one’s own weakness? But how sweet the response is, and how consoling are these words: ‘Jesus having gone out, turned around and looked at Peter’. Who has not felt the gaze of Jesus fall upon themselves, full of love and forgiveness, and who has not wept like Peter?” It is certainly true that those words of the Gospels really do seem to speak directly to us sometimes: of our own lives, our sins, our struggles, and our redemption too.

One phrase from the Gospel which seems especially piercing is that from St Matthew, when Christ, having prayed in the Garden, beholds the rabble come to arrest him. Our Lord casts his eyes upon Judas, who comes to kiss him, to greet him, not in love, but as a sign to the soldiers, as a seal on his betrayal of his Friend. Our Lord beholds him and speaks: “O Friend, on what errand hast thou come?” Naturally there are other translations, but the point is the same. O Friend — underlining the full tragedy of the betrayal, but yet, even then, mercy is offered to Judas. Despite our sins, our betrayal of Christ, still his friendship is on offer to us. The door is not closed as long as we have life in us. Peter would betray him too of course — but Peter in his tears, in his realisation of what he had done to his Friend, he knew there was mercy for him. When Peter heard Our Lord had risen from the dead, he did not flee fearing retribution for his betrayal, but Peter ran, and rejoiced, met the Lord and was restored. How different our sacred history might have been if Peter in his tears had met Judas in his despair. If Judas on his way to destroy himself had met Peter and heard the promise of mercy and of forgiveness, the reassurance that Christ gave to every one of us, that even if after a lifetime of sin if we turn to him, acknowledge our Friend with a contrite heart, well then, even after all that, we can be with him in Paradise…

“On what errand hast thou come?” Our Lord asks this of us all. Every situation, every meeting, every time we go down on our knees to pray to him — what have we come for? He will ask it of each of us when we come to live his Passion with him over the Triduum. O Friend, on what errand have you come? O Friend, why have you come? Let us come acknowledging that often we are Judas, but praying always to be Peter — for seeing the greatness of God’s love displayed for us in all its reality over this Holy Week, we cannot fail to see and to know that there is always mercy, always forgiveness, always a chance to turn to him and begin anew, for there is always his love on offer to us, always our God wanting us to be his friend. Sometimes we need to be reminded of that. Always we need to pray for the grace to accept it.


These reflections are sent out each Wednesday to all those on our mailing list. Click here to sign up to our mailing list, and receive our Sunday E-newsletter and these reflections straight to your inbox.
Tuesday 26 March 2024

The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to Mark.

#oxfordoratory

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Tuesday 26 March 2024

The beginning of Holy Week, and the Gospel of Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. #oxfordoratory

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Wednesday 20 March 2024

Our Restoration

“The painter's brush touched the inchoate face by ends of nimble bristles and, with that blush of first colour, rendered her lifeless cheek living.” So run the first lines of a relatively unknown poem. But there is truth in these words — by daubs of paint, even the most naive movement, emotion and life can be conjured. We’ve been thinking a lot about this as the layers of modern paint in our church’s sanctuary have been peeled away by the extraordinary skill of the team from Cliveden Conservation. Some came away easily, some by the painstaking application of a scalpel. Some cracks needed filling and re-colouring, some gilding needed a new touch of gold leaf and one whole section had to be repainted from fragmentary evidence. It was a labour of love, a slow and at times anxious process. The results speak for themselves.

Four roundels are framed by scrolling leaves and gilt flowers, each telling the story of a scene from our patron saint’s life. His first Holy Communion at the hands of St Charles Borromeo, the renunciation of his father’s wealth, his profession in the Society of Jesus and finally his all too early death. He is not alone in these scenes, those others — saints, parents, confreres — who played their part on Aloysius’ journey to sanctity are depicted too. There is an elegance and a simplicity to Gabriel Pippet’s work in the forms and shapes and the colours he chose. A fitting tribute to a life lived for God and others.

It makes one think. If my life were to be depicted in four or so scenes, either in the mind of others or on a church wall, which would be the defining moments? Perhaps we cannot choose, perhaps there are some which would make us blush to remember them, perhaps others are painful and challenging. We are all on a path to sainthood. In the last analysis our life will be weighed in that balance that only God, the just judge of our life, has an eye on. In the present we, by his grace, have the chance to form those crucial scenes. The choices we make now are always formative.

“You are God’s work of art,” St Paul writes to the Ephesians. We are a work in progress, perfected and helped along by the love and the mercy of our God who takes a keen and loving interest in our life. There is a process of restoration going on in us too — sometimes easy, sometimes by the painstaking application of a scalpel of repentance. Elsewhere, St Paul exhorts his readers to fill their minds with that which is “true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise.” St Aloysius, in his short life, sought these things with an intrepid and uncompromising zeal and put them to the service of others. This was his path to conversion, fulfilled in that final scene of our murals in which he spoke of going to heaven, “as if it were a walk out to Tivoli.” The time to seek heaven is now.

Conversion has been much on the minds of many of us during Lent. By our prayers and our sacrifices we seek to draw closer to the Lord, to rely more on him, to seek his help more. As we move into Passiontide, the reality of his sacrifice of love should dawn a little more clearly on our minds. That loveable saviour was cruelly treated, disfigured, beaten and killed on account of our sins, but the love that was at the heart of his sacrifice was also on account of our sins since he knows his love saves us from them. Our image may at times resemble him in his disfigured state, but as we dispose our selves more and more to the action of his grace, we will resemble him more and more in his risen glory. That heavenly glory has to be the guiding inspiration behind all the scenes that form the artwork of our lives.


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Monday 18 March 2024

The final scene shows St Aloysius on his death bed aged 23, having caught the plague from those he had been nursing.

As well as the stunning scenes from St Aloysius’s life, this work has unlocked some of the general patterns that continued in other parts of the sanctuary. Notice how the leaf and vine pattern actually continues the mouldings above the reredos statues. It also ties in with the gold decoration behind the tabernacle and crucifix, and the brass railings beside the lecterns, showing us how the original decoration of our sanctuary all came together.

This work enables us now to reconstruct the decoration of the rest of the sanctuary, which has not survived under the modern paint in the same way as these murals, suffering from damp and flaking plaster over the years.

It is astonishing how quickly @clivedenconservation were able to uncover these paintings that had been lost for 60 years. Thank you to all our generous benefactors who made it possible to begin this work so quickly.

#oxfordoratory #oratory150

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Monday 18 March 2024

The next scene show St Aloysius’ professing his vows as a member of the Society of Jesus.

When this scene first began to appear, we saw the haloed priest holding a Host and assumed it must have been St Charles giving Aloysius his first Communion. When we found that scene on the other side, we realised we were wrong!

Unusually for a scene from a saint’s life, it depicts Aloysius with his back to us. This highlights his turning his back on the world to serve Christ alone. Jesuits make their vows during Mass directly to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament just before Communion.

We‘re still not sure who the saintly priest is. The canonised superiors general of the Society St Ignatius and St Francis Borgia both died before 1587, when Aloysius made his vows. We think it is most likely to be St Robert Bellarmine.

A particular highlight of these murals can be seen in the beautiful detail of the acolyte’s candle, where the flame is depicted by a star in gold leaf.

#oxfordoratory #oratory150 @clivedenconservation

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Monday 18 March 2024

Here are the first two scenes from the life of St Aloysius in our newly restored murals. The first shows his first Holy Communion at the hands of St Charles Borromeo on the left. On the right, St Aloysius receives his father’s blessing to renounce his inheritance and join the Society of Jesus.

Around the scenes are IHS and SA monograms, representing the Holy Name of Jesus and “St Aloysius”.

Underneath the layers of grey paint, we discovered there was actually a pretty serious crack in the plaster on this side. It’s not even possible to see where it was now, thanks to the excellent work by @clivedenconservation

#oxfordoratory #oratory150

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Saturday 16 March 2024

The sanctuary murals are completely uncovered and restored. Thank you to all the donors who made this work possible. Close up photos of each side with explanations to follow.

#oxfordoratory #oratory150

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Wednesday 13 March 2024

A Week of Prayer

The Church requires all priests to make a spiritual retreat each year — a week away from pastoral work to give some attention to their own spiritual lives, to pray and to rest. Christ took the disciples away from their public ministry to rest (Mark 6:31), and often escaped himself to be alone with his Father (e.g. Matt. 14:23, Mark 1:35).

A week-long retreat in a monastery will not be possible for those who have work, studies or families to take care of. But the busier we are, the more essential it is that we take time in the course of the year to give our relationship with God some more than ordinary attention. In many ways, the Church builds this time into the year for us, by encouraging us not just to attend Mass on Sundays and major feast days, but also to rest from our usual activity on those days and devote the time we save to extra prayer, study and works of charity.

In the fourth century, when the Roman Empire became Christian, the emperors suspended all law courts and businesses from functioning during Holy Week so that all the faithful would be free to spend the week in church. That practice continued in Christian countries even into the nineteenth century. All Christians were given time off to devote the whole week leading up to Easter to more intense spiritual activity.

Lent is a time of preparation for Easter. That preparation takes the form not only of prayer, fasting and almsgiving but also of planning. Without a plan, Holy Week and Easter may pass us by like any other ordinary days. The thought of Easter rapidly approaching should remind us to make some more practical plans for the Sacred Triduum. The full schedule for the liturgies and other devotions taking place that week in church is now available on our website. Do we know what time we will spend in church? Do we know what else we will do in those days? Will we make sure in advance that the house is clean, the shopping is bought and the laundry is done so that we are free to focus on God during those days that he was so especially focused on us and our salvation?

Fr Walter Ciszek, in his book He Leadeth Me, speaks of the retreats he organised for his fellow prisoners in a Soviet prison camp. They managed to spend their days in prayer without any break from their work in some of the toughest conditions human beings have ever faced. Fr Ciszek and his fellow priests made this possible by the rigorous planning they put in ahead of each period of retreat, in order to make the most of the little time they had available to them. It is possible for all of us to grow in our love of God — but we need to plan how we are going to do it.


These reflections are sent out each Wednesday to all those on our mailing list. Click here to sign up to our mailing list, and receive our Sunday E-newsletter and these reflections straight to your inbox.
Tuesday 12 March 2024

Holy Week Schedule

Palm Sunday
24 March
Saturday Vigil Mass: 6:30pm
Sunday Masses: 8am* (EF), 9:30am* (Sung English)
Blessing of Palms & Solemn Mass at 11am*
Vespers & Benediction at 5pm*
Evening Mass: 6:30pm

Maundy Thursday
28 March
Solemn Mass of the Lord’s Supper at 8pm*
watching at the Altar of Repose until midnight

Good Friday
29 March
Tenebrae 9am
Children’s Stations of the Cross at 11am
Solemn Liturgy of the Passion at 3pm*
Stations of the Cross at 7pm
Confessions 10–11am, and after the end of the 3pm Solemn Liturgy

Holy Saturday
30 March
Tenebrae 9am
Confessions 10am–1pm
Children’s Prayers at the Tomb at 12noon
Solemn Vigil of Easter at 9pm*

Easter Sunday
31 March
Masses at 8am* (EF), 9:30am* (Sung English), 11am* (Solemn Latin), 6:30pm
Choral Vespers at 5pm*

Easter Monday
1 April
Mass at 10am* only, after which the church will be closed.

Services marked with * will also be streamed online.

Friday 8 March 2024

The altar of Our Lady of Oxford came originally from the private chapel of Hartwell de la Garde Grissell on the High Street. Grissell’s chapel became the place where many entered the Catholic Church, and these new Catholics all received their First Communion from this altar. Today, this same altar served as a fitting place to continue a 150 year old tradition. Many congratulations to Edward, who was baptised today, and was confirmed and received his First Holy Communion at Grissell’s altar. #oxfordoratory

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Wednesday 6 March 2024

How’s your Lent going so far?

We are not quite half-way through Lent, the penitential season, and by now it is not unusual to hear the complaint: “I’ve broken every one of my resolutions.” If that is the case, never mind, just pick up where you left off and start off all over again. It’s the intention that counts.

Naturally, we want to do as well as we can, to be as perfect as can be. However, experience shows us that we are a long way off perfection. But will eating a biscuit in Lent really bar us from Heaven? Of course not. But that is not why we make those Lenten sacrifices — or because eating or drinking less may be good for us for health reasons. We do so because we are disciples of Christ and are seeking to learn from his teaching and to imitate his example.

On the First Sunday of Lent, we read, as we do every year, the account of the Temptation of the Lord in the desert. This year, we heard Mark’s somewhat pared back version of the incident, mentioned, it almost seems, as if in passing. But our minds went back, I’m sure, to the fuller stories in Luke and Matthew’s Gospels, which tell us how Jesus was tempted. It’s not necessary to rehearse them here. All that is necessary is to recall that he was tempted. We learn from his example how to deal with those temptations, and to learn that it is essential and indeed possible to say say “No” to ourselves and not simply to give in to our every whim and desire.

If we have an uncontrolled habit of snacking between meals, or spending hours on social media or endlessly checking our mobile phones, or pouring ourselves a drink (just the one?), we may find ourselves enslaved, unable, or so we think, to free ourselves from whatever addiction it is we are subject to. Lent is a good time to seek our freedom again, and to re-evaluate our relationship with our phones, with food and drink, or Ebay and Amazon. It can be a struggle, and present a real test of our love for God and our self-control. God allows us to be tested not because he does not know how strong we are, but because we do not know. We are all of us tested, tried, by the stresses and pains of life, by the burdens others lay on us, by the ceaseless challenge to respond with love to those whom we find difficult to love. When we succeed in overcoming this or that temptation, we are doing so in his strength, not ours. When we suffer some temptation, we must see it as an opportunity to grow, in holiness and in virtue. Only when we are tempted do we have the chance to triumph. When we choose to try to resist temptation, standing firm, having recourse to the grace of the Sacraments, then every temptation becomes an occasion of virtue.

Every temptation is an opportunity — to be faithful or not. The saintly Curé of Ars, John Vianney, told someone who was struggling with some temptation to imagine Our Lord standing beside him, neither judging nor condemning him as he struggled, but saying, “Ah, so you do love me.” There can be no virtue without temptation. “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” (I Cor. 10:13) As we continue our Lenten journey, let’s keep in mind that in our weakness, the Lord will show himself to be strong and will hear our prayer “lead us not into temptation.”

The prayer of surrender which many use each day, can be a great help: O Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything. A simple enough prayer to make. Worth trying.


These reflections are sent out each Wednesday to all those on our mailing list. Click here to sign up to our mailing list, and receive our Sunday E-newsletter and these reflections straight to your inbox.
Tuesday 5 March 2024

Charlie was received into the Church today, confirmed with the name “Aloysius” and received his first Holy Communion. In the background, another Aloysius can be seen receiving his own first Communion. #oxfordoratory

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Saturday 2 March 2024

Today we celebrated the reception of Kevin and Melanie into full Communion with the Catholic Church.

Christians who are already baptised are “received” into the Church (and are not technically “converts”) because baptism joins a person to Christ’s Body — the Church — wherever it may take place. The fullness of Communion with the Church comes about by receiving Christ’s Body for the first time in the Eucharist.

Please pray for all those we have baptised or received into the Church recently, and carry on praying for those who are still on their way!

“We entreat you, brothers, as earnestly as we are able, to have charity, not only for one another, but also for those who are outside the Church. Of these some are still pagans, who have not yet made an act of faith in Christ. Others are separated, insofar as they are joined with us in professing faith in Christ, our head, but are yet divided from the unity of his body. My friends, we must grieve over these as over our brothers. Whether they like it or not, they are our brothers; and they will only cease to be so when they no longer say ‘Our Father’.” — St Augustine

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Friday 1 March 2024

March Music

Sunday 3 March Solemn Mass 11:00
3rd Sunday of Lent
Missa Inter vestibulum  Guerrero
Rex autem David Ribera
Tristis est anima mea Kuhnau

Sunday 10 March Solemn Mass 11:00
4th Sunday of Lent (‘Lætare’)
Mass in the Dorian Mode Howells
Laetatus sum Vaet
Manus tuae Morales

Sunday 17 March Solemn Mass 11:00
Passion Sunday
Missa Quarti toni Victoria
Voce mea Porta
Ave verum Byrd

Sunday 24 March Solemn Mass 11:00
Palm Sunday
Pueri Hebræorum Victoria
Ingrediente Domino Malcolm
Missa brevis Palestrina
Christus factus est Anerio
Improperium Palestrina
Vadam et circuibo Victoria

Thursday 28 March Solemn Mass 20:00
Maundy Thursday
Missa Vinum bonum Lassus
Ubi caritas Duruflé
Dominus Jesus in qua nocte Palestrina
Pange lingua Victoria

Friday 29 March Solemn Liturgy 15:00
Good Friday
Christus factus est Bruckner
St John Passion Victoria
Popule meus Victoria
Crucifixus a8 Lotti
Versa est in luctum Lobo
O suavitas et dulcedo de Monte
Crux fidelis King John IV of Portugal
Lamentations I Tallis

Saturday 30 March Easter Vigil 21:00
Holy Saturday
Missa Tulerunt dominum meum Praetorius
Aurora lucis rutilat Lassus
Dum transisset Taverner
Chorale Improvisation sur ‘Victimae Paschali Laudes’ Tournemire

Sunday 31 March Solemn Mass 11:00
Easter Sunday
Coronation Mass Mozart
Christus resurgens Allegri
Surrexit a mortuis Widor
Hallelujah Handel
Prelude and Fugue in G BWV541 Bach

Solemn Vespers 17:00
Deus in adjutorium Croce
Haec dies Sheppard
Magnificat tertii toni Vivanco
Ecce vicit leo Philips
O salutaris hostia Howells
Tantum ergo Howells
Regina Caeli Howells
Finale from Symphony 6 Widor

Friday 1 March 2024

We pray the Stations of the Cross at 5:30pm every Friday during Lent. At the end, there is a blessing with a relic of the Holy Cross.

#oxfordoratory

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Wednesday 28 February 2024

The Lenten Fast

On Ash Wednesday we asked the Lord to grant “that we may begin with holy fasting this campaign of Christian service, so that, as we take up battle against spiritual evils, we may be armed with weapons of self-restraint”. We were told to give alms, and pray, and fast. Self-discipline, penance, works of charity and, particularly, fasting will be demanded of us in the liturgy for these forty days. The ancient preface of Lent is all about fasting, by means of which God restrains our faults, raises up our minds, and bestows virtue and its rewards. We speak of the Solemn Lenten Fast — in fact, the Dutch and Afrikaans word for Lent is Die Vaste or Vastyd, “The Fast” or “The time of fasting”.

Fasting has always held a special place in Jewish and Christian religious thought and practice. Both Elijah and Moses fasted for forty days before seeing God. St John the Baptist and his followers fasted. The Lord himself fasted in the desert, not for his own needs, says Dom Guéranger, but to serve as an example for us. The Church has sanctified, encouraged, and sometimes mandated the practice of fasting. Why? According to St Thomas Aquinas, to “bridle the lusts of the flesh, to raise the mind more freely to the contemplation of heavenly things, and to satisfy for sins”. He quotes St Augustine who says, “Fasting cleanses the soul, raises the mind, subjects one’s flesh to the spirit, renders the heart contrite and humble, scatters the clouds of concupiscence, quenches the fire of lust, kindles the true light of chastity.”

For more than a thousand years, the Lenten fast was of the strictest kind. Abstinence from meat, eggs and dairy products was required of all Catholics for the entirety of Lent, and every day except Sunday was a day of fasting — with only a single meal allowed, and only after sunset. In more recent centuries this fast was mitigated, and by the middle of the twentieth century eggs and dairy were permitted and abstinence from meat only required on a couple of days each week. Fasting was still obligatory, but a small breakfast and an evening snack were permitted. Today, the only days of obligatory fasting for us are Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, and even then we are allowed one meal and two small snacks (which is what many of us would eat ordinarily anyway). So what are we to make of the liturgy’s assumption that we are all engaged in a prolonged and difficult fast from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday?

Some people have said that fasting means to give up doing something, so in Lent we should give up all sorts of bad behaviour: refraining from hurtful words, sadness, anger, worry, bitterness, selfishness, and so on. But surely we should be trying not to act in these ways throughout the year? Fasting has never been seen as giving up what is bad — that goes without saying. Rather, to fast is to deny ourselves something that is good for the sake of a greater good. We reduce our eating not because it is bad — or because we want to lose weight or be healthier — but because in denying ourselves we show the Lord that we are sorry for our sins, for all those times when we have indulged ourselves and let our appetites lead us away from God. We take our attention away from food and drink to focus it on repentance and prayer. We give up something good for the sake of him who gave up his life for us.

St John Henry explains how we should keep Lent, especially at a time when the rules of fasting have been mitigated, in a sermon he gave in 1848 (when, despite several relaxations, Lenten fasting was still much stricter than today). He says:

…fasting is only one branch of a large and momentous duty, the subdual of ourselves to Christ. We must surrender to Him all we have, all we are. We must keep nothing back. We must present to Him as captive prisoners with whom He may do what He will, our soul and body, our reason, our judgement, our affections, our imagination, our tastes, our appetite.

The great thing is to subdue ourselves; but as to the particular form in which the great precept of self-conquest and self-surrender is to be expressed, that depends on the person himself, and on the time or place. What is good for one age or person, is not good for another.

Newman teaches that fasting from food is appropriate in people or places where the struggle against sin is a bodily struggle: against lust, greed, gluttony, drunkenness, and violence. But when fasting rules are relaxed, it is a reminder to us that there are other sins and weaknesses to mortify in us — sins of the intellect, the affections, the will, sins of pride — which need subduing even more than our bodies. He suggests that we mortify our curiosity for news and information (how necessary this is today, with constant exposure to media and social media), and mortify our reason (taking time to hear the opinions of others, and getting into the habit of mistrusting our own views in order to properly try them and purify them). None of these involve giving up that which is objectively bad, but all will involve some effort and renunciation on our part — a real “fasting”.

Lent is a sacred time in which we double our efforts to reject sin, to amend our behaviour, and move from darkness to light. But it is also a time when we offer to the Lord true sacrifices: denying ourselves in little ways and big ones to tell him — and to show our selves — that we love him above all things and repent with our whole heart for having offended him.


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Saturday 24 February 2024

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Saturday 24 February 2024

Fr Dominic spoke on St Philip’s life of prayer this morning. #oxfordoratory

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Friday 23 February 2024

Today we discovered a section of mural depicting St Aloysius’ First Holy Communion at the hands of St Charles Borromeo.
#oxfordoratory #oratory150

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