As always, Mrs Freddie Quartley has painted our Paschal Candle beautifully. The inscription at the top records that this is the Jubilee Year of Mercy, and the picture at the bottom of the candle shows the harrowing of Hell, when Our Lord pulled Adam, Eve, and those that followed them out of their prison.

We have been able to welcome different groups coming on pilgrimage to our church for the Year of Mercy and passing through the Holy Door. A fortnight ago, during 24 Hours for the Lord, a large number of people came to make their confession during the day. Among them were the girls of the Rose Round, who walked here from Marston.  

After Mass, confession and the procession through the Holy Door, the girls walked on to the College at Littlemore, which is also a place of pilgrimage for the Jubilee.

Today, St Joseph’s Day, saw Fr Nazarius Mgungwe, Parish Priest of the Sacred Heart, Blackbird Leys, come for Mass, confession and the procession through the Holy Door with his parishioners. Tomorrow, on Palm Sunday, we look forward to welcoming fifty Filipinos living in London, who form the United Kingdom Candelaria Quezon Association.

 

 

Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta will be canonized on 4th September, and the Missionaries of Charity and their friends are organizing an exhibition to take place in our library from 19th-30th April. The display will include some items belonging to Mother Teresa and an account of her life, witness and mission. Each day a film about her will be shown at 4pm in the Parish Centre. On Monday 18th April at 6pm there will be a special Mass to mark the opening of the exhibition.

 

 

His Grace the Archbishop has asked the whole diocese to make a novena for the canonization of Blessed Dominic of the Mother of God, the great Passionist missionary, who received Blessed John Henry Newman into the Church in 1845.

We are making this prayer at all Masses, leading up to Saturday, when the Archbishop will be celebrating Mass for this intention at SS Giovanni & Paolo, the Passionist Generalate Church in Rome.

On display in our Relic Chapel at the moment is an autograph letter of Blessed Dominic:

The letter came into our possession by the kindness of the Benedictine nuns of the Priory of Our Lady of the Angels, formerly at Fernham. It reads as follows:

A Letter from Blessed Dominic Barberi

J.X.P.                                          Poplar Lodge West End

Hampstead June 18 / 48

 

         My dear Child in Jesu Christ. This morning I had the honour of receiving your kind letter with the inclose bank note for £ 30 This sum will serve admirably to furnish this new lodge we are to establish here. May Almighty God give an eternal reward for your great great charity and give eternal rest to the soul of your dear mother. I shall offer the Holy sacrifice of Mass for a month for the rest of her soul or according to your in/tention in ye case she is not in need of our prayers, as I hope to be the case.

         And now my dear child, I pray to congratulate with you for your great happiness of having made your profession. You are now and for ever a spouse of Jesus Christ. Oh! what a happiness!! If everybody could penetrate it the world might be at an end: it would become a rarified firmament. Follow then, serve God with gladness and bear the cross that God will prepare for you: do not imagine to reach the religious protection without a cross. But this is the greatest hap/piness to bear company to our Lord in the way to the calvary as long as we live.

I beg of you to present my humble respects to the Lady Abbess, and all the community. Pray if you please very much for me, and for this new establishment, that is not made as yet.

         Since I saw you last I have lost two of my best companions, and now another is on the point of death. Pray for him and for yours sincerely in Xrt Dominic of the mother of God Passionist.

Probably the letter was written by Blessed Dominic to a recently-professed nun of Princethorpe (whence the community later moved to Fernham).

Blessed Dominic sends his humble respects to the “Lady Abbess” – but this is probably an instance of his well-known whimsical humour, since Our Lady, Queen of Peace was Abbess of Princethorpe. This was because in 1658, when the nuns were still at Montargis, near Orleans, in order to prevent King Louis XIV from imposing an absentee abbess, the Prioress assembled the community in chapter and suggested that Our Lady of Peace, to whom they had a special devotion, be elected as abbess in perpetuity. The vote was carried unanimously, and July 2nd was chosen as the day for the installation of Our Lady as Abbess. Hence, for the whole of its subsequent history, the community had Our Lady as the Abbess, and a statue of her in the first place in choir, holding a crosier. Therefore when Blessed Dominic says, “I beg of you to present my humble respects to the Lady Abbess”, he is probably  asking his spiritual child to say a Hail Mary for him.

 

Bishop Athanasius Schneider, auxiliary Bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan, celebrated Compline and gave Benediction yesterday evening, and preached the sermon which is reproduced below. Bishop Schneider greatly impressed us with the account of his youth, growing up in the clandestine Church in the Soviet Union, and with his zeal for the faith today.

Only in the Cross of Christ is salvation, only in the Cross of Christ is hope, only in the Cross of Christ is life

Blessed John Henry Newman speaks to us the greatness and the mystery of the Cross saying: “The doctrine of the Cross is not on the surface of the world. The surface of things is bright only, and the Cross is sorrowful; it is a hidden doctrine; it lies under a veil; it at first sight startles us, and we are tempted to revolt from it. Like St. Peter, we cry out, “Be it far from Thee, Lord; this shall not be unto Thee.” [Matt. xvi. 22.] And yet it is a true doctrine; for truth is not on the surface of things, but in the depths.”

Blessed John Henry continues to say, that the doctrine of the Cross of Christ is the heart of the Christian religion: “The sacred doctrine of Christ’s Atoning Sacrifice is the vital principle on which the Christian lives, and without which Christianity is not. Without it no other doctrine is held profitably; to believe in Christ’s divinity, or in His manhood, or in the Holy Trinity, or in a judgment to come, or in the resurrection of the dead, is an untrue belief, not Christian faith, unless we receive also the doctrine of Christ’s sacrifice.

The world, the enemies of the Cross and even the enemies of the Cross amongst Catholic and Catholic clergy in our days say: The doctrine of the Cross makes us sad, that therefore the Gospel is a sad religion.” Blessed John Henry Newman answered already in those times with these words: “The Psalmist says, “They that sow in tears shall reap in joy;” and our Lord says, “They that mourn shall be comforted.” Let no one go away with the impression that the Gospel makes us take a gloomy view of the world and of life. It hinders us indeed from taking a superficial view, and finding a vain transitory joy in what we see. … That Cross will lead us to mourning, repentance, humiliation, prayer, fasting; we shall sorrow for our sins, we shall sorrow with Christ’s sufferings; but all this sorrow will only issue, nay, will be undergone in a happiness far greater than the enjoyment which the world gives. … They alone are able truly to enjoy this world, who begin with the world unseen. They alone can truly feast, who have first fasted; they alone are able to use the world, who have learned not to abuse it” (PPS VI, Sermon 7).

Saint John Maria Vianney left us very simple but profound words about the Cross and the meaning and the value of Christian suffering: “Our eternal happiness is the Cross of Christ. Thanks to the Cross of Christ we became children of God. On the Cross there came into existence the Christian religion. All the efficacy of the sacraments come from the Cross of Christ. When God sends us a cross, a true Christian should say to himself: Come, my soul, and bear the Cross. For, when we will be in heaven, we will understand the value of the sufferings. The Cross is indeed the ladder to heaven. The crosses in our life is similar to a beautiful stone bridge across a river.”

One has to love the Cross. Blessed him, to whom God sent a cross, because it is a path to holiness. We think when we love a little bit Our Lord, we should be free from all inconveniences. Have you been calumniated, my friends? Have you been loaded with insults? Have you been wronged? So much the better! That is a good sign; do not worry; you are on the road that leads to Heaven. Do you know when you ought to be really upset? When you have nothing to endure, when everyone esteems and respects you. Are you forgetting, then, that at your Baptism you accepted the Cross, which you must never abandon until death, and that it is the key that you will use to open the door of Heaven? Are you forgetting the words of our Saviour: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.” Not for a day, not for a week, not for a year, but all our life.

One has to expiate one’s sins either here on earth, or in the hereafter. When we would really love Our Lord, we would love the cross as well, for we would be happy to suffer for Him Who suffered for us. The Cross is always sent by God. We have to ask the grace to love our cross and then it will be easier for us. When we lack suffering, we are similar to an infertile soil. In the moments of suffering, the Christian should say: I am a friend of my Lord and God. He looks upon me. He consoles me! The cross emits a balsam, which fills the soul with happiness. Every morning we have to accept and to consecrate to the Lord all the sufferings and inconveniences which may occur during the day. And if the Lord hadn’t sent them to us on this day, the merits will nevertheless be credited to us. “We know that all things work together for good to those who love God” (Rom 8: 28). It is so consoling to lead the battle against the sin under the eyes of the Lord and to have the occasion to say at the end of a day: Here now, my soul, today for a while you were resembling the suffering Lord; like Him you have been persecuted, flagellated, you were bearing some physical pains etc. What a treasure is this for my last hour!”

With Saint John Vianney let us say: “O holy Cross, what great goods we have received from you. Thanks to you, the most pure Blood of Christ is shed every days in a sacramental manner in the sacrifice of our altars. On this Cross is sown the heavenly manna, which till the end of the time will nourish our souls. On this Cross began to grow that mysterious grape vine, by which juice is quenched the thirst of our souls in this exile. O holy and inestimable Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ!” Amen.

Our Lent project this year is the work of the Companions of the Order of Malta in Oxford. There will be a second collection on Sunday 13th March. Here is a copy of their most recent newsletter, so that you can see more about what they do:

 

COM Oxford newsletter January 2016

On Wednesday 24th February at 8pm, there will be sung Compline, Sermon and Benediction, as part of our Lenten exercises.

The preacher will be His Lordship Bishop Athanasius Schneider, of Astana, Kazakhstan.

 

“Mercy is the very foundation of the Church’s life”

In response to Pope Francis call to have “24 hours for the Lord” on Friday 4th March to Saturday 5th March during this Jubilee Year of Mercy, the Archbishop of Birmingham, Bernard Longley, invites all Catholics of the Archdiocese, including the baptized who feel estranged from the institutional church, to participate in a time of prayer, liturgies and reflection that will be held in the designated Jubilee Churches and Places of Pilgrimage, or to visit a local church during those twenty-four hours.

In our church, on Saturday 5th March, there will be the Pilgrimage Mass with Procession through the Holy Door and prayers to Our Lady of Oxford, Mother of Mercy, at 10am. After this, the Blessed Sacrament will be exposed (and on all Saturdays of Lent) until Benediction at 6pm.

Confessions will be heard continuously on 5th March from 9.40am – 6.30pm.

This “24 Hours with the Lord” is an opportunity for all to be experience a sense of belonging and welcome in the company of Jesus.

Sacramental Reconciliation is a way of “rediscovering a path back to the Lord, living a moment of intense prayer and finding meaning … (and it will be) for every penitent. …. a source of true interior peace” [Misericordiae Vultus n. 17]. Pope Francis said, “Mercy will always be greater than any sin”. [MV n. 3]