Here are the shoeboxes for refugee children being prepared to be sent off. Thank you to all those who filled a box. If you didn’t manage to get yours back in time, then please keep it ready for next Christmas!

Twenty-eight of our young parishioners were confirmed by Bishop William Kenney, C.P. last Saturday.

Bishop Robert Byrne will be confirming some more in the Extraordinary Form this coming Saturday.

As well as looking forward to the visit of His Grace the Archbishop for the Immaculate Conception, we will also welcome Bishop Kenney again the following day for the canonical visitation of our parish.

CHRISTMAS 2017

CONFESSIONS:

Before every Mass – and on Saturday 23rd December from 10.00 am – 6.30 pm

Saturday 16th December

7.00 am – Advent Rorate Mass by candlelight

Wednesday 20th December

8.00 pm – Carol Service

Sunday 24th December, CHRISTMAS EVE

SUNDAY MASSES AS USUAL

5.30 pm – Vespers
6.00 pm – Benediction
6.30 pm – Vigil Mass with carols

The Church reopens at 11.00 pm                                                                          11.15 pm – Carols and Readings                                                                          Midnight Mass at midnight

Monday 25th December, CHRISTMAS DAY

8.00 am – Latin Mass (Extraordinary Form)                                                        9.30 am – Parish Mass, with Children’s Liturgy                                                 11.00 am – Solemn Mass                                                                                               5.30 pm – Solemn Benediction
NO EVENING MASS

Tuesday 26th December, ST STEPHEN’S DAY

Mass at 10.00 am only

Sunday 31st December – feast of the Holy Family

8.00 am – Latin Mass (Extraordinary Form)                                                           9.30 am – Parish Mass
11.00 am – Solemn Mass
6.00 pm Benediction (no Vespers)
6.30 pm – Evening Mass
11.00 pm Mass and Benediction for New Year

Monday 1st January, NEW YEAR’S DAY – Mary Mother of God

Mass at 10.00 am only

Saturday 6th January, SOLEMNITY OF THE EPIPHANY

11.00 am – Solemn Mass in the Extraordinary Form
3.00 pm Children’s Epiphany Procession and Benediction in the Crib

Sunday 7th January – TRANSFERRED SOLEMNITY OF THE EPIPHANY

8.00 am – Latin Mass (Extraordinary Form)                                                        9.30 am – Parish Mass, with Children’s Liturgy                                                  11.00 am – Solemn Mass
5.30 pm – Solemn Vespers
6.00 pm – Benediction
6.30 pm – Evening Mass

 

We begin the novena in preparation for the Solemnity of Our Lady’s Immaculate Conception on Tuesday 28th November. There will be novena and Benediction each evening (6.30pm on weekdays; 6pm on Saturday and Sunday).

On Thursday 7th December there will be Solemn First Vespers and Benediction at 6.30pm.

On 8th December itself, His Grace the Archbishop will celebrate a Solemn Pontifical Mass at 6pm.

Once again this year we are collecting shoe boxes with presents for refugee children, to ensure that they have gifts on Christmas Day. You can collect your box from the back of church and return it by 18th November, together with £5 for postage. There are full instructions as to what is suitable to put in the box. Last year we distributed 300 boxes; this year we hope to manage 400.

Here is Br Henry handing a box to a willing parishioner:

Our Forty Hours’ Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament began last night with a Solemn Mass, a vigil for Young Oratory and Gaeta, Compline sung by the Dominicans, and then watching all through the night until Matins and Lauds at five o’clock.

The Blessed Sacrament continues to be exposed until midnight tonight. At 5pm today there will be a Musical Oratory of hymns and readings: “Sweet Sacrament Divine”.

There will be a Mass for Peace at 6.30pm.

On Sunday the Blessed Sacrament will be placed once more on the throne after the Solemn Mass of the Sacred Heart at 11am, and there will be Solemn Vespers, Procession and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament at 5pm.

 

Monday was the feast of Blessed John Henry Newman, our Cardinal, and on Sunday night the traditional Night Walk to Littlemore took place, marking the arrival of Blessed Dominic Barberi to receive Newman into the “One Fold of the Redeemer” on 8th October 1845. We stopped and prayed on the way outside Trinity College, where Newman was an undergraduate, the University Church, where he was vicar, Oriel College, where he was a Fellow, St Alban Hall, where he was vice-Principal, the Angel Inn, where Blessed Dominic alighted the coach, two houses where Newman’s mother and sister lived on Rose Hill, in Littlemore at the church and school built by Blessed John Henry, and then finally at the College, where he lived and then was received into the Church.

Here, outside the church of SS Mary & Nicholas in Littlemore:

For the feast, Fr Richard Biggerstaff came to preach. He was for three years Director of the St Barnabas Society, which assists clergy who become Catholics. Fr Biggerstaff is now Parish Priest of Molesey and Hersham. Here is Fr Biggerstaff’s sermon:

When Blessed John Henry Newman left Littlemore he tenderly kissed his straw bed, the mantelpiece of his room and as he describes, ‘other parts of the house…..’

His set up there had been contentious. It was thought that he was instituting a high church monastery and the Bishop of Oxford, Dr Bagot called him to account. He assured Dr Bagot that this was a common house, shared between clergymen and others thinking of clerical life, and there was a school master too.

It was a house with a discipline: there was one joint meal, generally meat, often cold, taken at 5 in the afternoon.

The day began at 6 in the morning, but at 3 during Advent. How like the life of the Oratory here in Oxford!

By going to Littlemore, it is clear that John Henry Newman was embracing something new. He was not replicating collegiate life with an intense devotional twist, but rather embarking on a fervent time of prayerful reflection in good praying company. His home for four years, he was not to return for over twenty. And yet how significant Littlemore is in the story, for this was the place of his reception in to the full communion of the Catholic Church, for this reason his tenderness towards simple fixtures and furnishings.

And this is our reason for a pilgrimage to Littlemore. That place where he had asked Fr Dominic to do the deed. Warmed and willing, Blessed Dominic Barberi had arrived on 8 October, and now we mark the feast of Blessed John Henry Newman at the time of that great event, the reports of which were said to have rocked Protestant England.

At about the time Newman left Oxford for Littlemore subscriptions were being raised for the Martyrs’ memorial in the centre of the city. Newman’s opponents mischievously sought some contribution from our Beatus, together with others like Keble and Pusey. Pusey apparently gave reluctantly. Evangelicals, objecting to a cross, wanted a church.

Eventually Gilbert Scott won a competition and the memorial, in all its ambiguity stood as a sign of no popery. The slate honours board of the University Church tells the story and the Catholics have their cost of conscience fleshed out by a very helpful pink pamphlet from Blackfriars.

I have often stood near the pulpit in St Mary’s and, thinking of it as Newman’s with convert clergymen, said a prayer. On one occasion, Methodist preachers from Oklahoma were making a similar pilgrimage; although for them church and pulpit were Wesley’s.

For the last three years I have been at Wolvercote, spending privileged time with that movement of the heart which inspires a minister or a religious in another Christian community, to follow what Blessed John Henry Newman did on that October night in 1845.

Littlemore, that memorial, and the pulpit (or at least the site of the pulpit if not the original), have been part of the tour for our visitors. And in God’s providence Wolvercote has had its own Newman association, for although Blessed John Henry Newman would not have known the old vicarage (the base of the St Barnabas Society), he would have been a frequent visitor to the church.

A series of temporary curates served St Peter’s Wolvercote until the middle of the 19^th century. In 1834, on several visits, JHN was amongst that happy band. And this simple fact has delighted our converts’ aid visitors.

Amidst the richness of thoughtful theological thinking, in the faithfulness to prayer and the ascetic life, in the connections and the profile, it is consistently the moment of conversion which has been the Newman point of reference for those who come our way.

And whilst this is a journey (a pilgrimage and a coming home…) as they are fond of saying in parish instruction and preparation for the sacraments for adults, it is first and foremost a moment. A moment of sacramental grace in penance, confirmation, and Holy Communion through which a Christian of another confession becomes a Catholic.

For some, especially those who have been clergymen, this is the stage of the journey seems an illusive, a shaky, shadowy time, put off and agonised over; but for many it is a moment which is, yes painful, but gloriously inevitable.

And so there is much to kiss tenderly, as an act of farewell., of course there is, but at the heart of Blessed John Henry’s moment, which this feast marks, is the conviction of the One true fold, the fullness of faith at the heart of the Catholic Church.

And the religion of memorials and special pulpits and even medieval chancels and old vicarages will no longer do for those who allow the heart of John Henry, as well as his mind, to speak.

Along the path to the Sacrament of Holy Orders, two Ministries are conferred, the first of which is that of Lector. This gives a man the special task of meditating upon the Word of God, of proclaiming it in the Sacred Liturgy, and of teaching and catechizing others.

Br Benedict was made a lector on Saturday, the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. Please pray for him as he continues his priestly studies.

The candidate is addressed on the duties of a lector:

The new lector receives a blessing, before being presented with a Bible as a symbol of his new office:

Do note that the sling around Br Benedict’s neck is not a sign of his lectoral dignity, but because he has broken his arm. We pray for a swift recovery.

On Monday 9th October we shall celebrate the feast of Blessed John Henry Newman, our Cardinal.

From 6th-8th October there is a triduum of preparation each evening with Benediction. (6.30pm on Friday and 6pm on Saturday on Sunday)

On Sunday 8th October we have the traditional Night Walk from here to Littlemore – see below.

On Monday 9th October itself there will be a Solemn Mass at 6pm, at which Fr Richard Biggerstaff will preach.