Happy Birthday to our parish priest, Fr Mark, who celebrated a significant year…yes, difficult to believe it….70! The children of the parish made a wonderful card and refreshments were had in the parish centre to mark this special occasion.
Fr Mark has had a year of celebrations which include 50 years with the Spiritan’s and 45 years ordained priest. Congratulations Fr Mark.
Thanks to everyone for coming to our summer fayre. It was a great success and we were again very lucky with the weather.
We are pleased to let you know we raised almost £6,000 and with matched charity donations, increased the total to £8,200.
Along with the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (December 8), the Assumption is a principal feast of the Blessed Virgin and a Holy Day of Obligation – one of the most important feasts of the Church year.Though it was al-most universally believed for more than a thousand years, the Bible contains no mention of the assumption of Mary into heaven – we have no real knowledge of the day, year, and manner of Our Lady’s death. The first known Church writer to speak of Mary being taken up into heaven by God is St Gregory of Tours in 594. On November 1, 1950, Pope Pius XII declared as a dogma revealed by God that ‘Mary, the immaculate perpetually Virgin Mother of God, after the com-pletion of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into the glory of Heaven’. Likewise, the Second Vatican Council taught in the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium that ‘the Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all stain of original sin, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, when her earthly life was over, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things (n. 59)’.
No looking back
‘Once the hand is laid on the plough, no one who looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.’ This seemingly uncompromising position by Jesus is a call to set our eyes clearly on the establishment of the Kingdom. If we look back – if we have doubts and want to return to the world of comfort and injustice – then we are not yet ready for the difficulties of bringing about the Kingdom of God. It reminds us that although God invites us all to enter into the Kingdom, we have to make ourselves ready in our own hearts and minds to want to be part of the Kingdom.
Nurturing the Seeds of Faith
When we baptise our babies we are asking God our Father to plant seeds of Faith into their lives. As parents and as a community of faith (church) we are responsible for nurturing those seeds. On the first three Sundays of June the parish took one big step in meeting that responsibility. We now have a further 44 young people who are in communion with our church community.
Thank you to all those who brought these young people to that day: the Social Club for marking the occasion with a wonderful communion breakfast; the sacristans and the florists who embellished the church so beautifully; the catechists who taught the children the elements of what we believe and most of all the parents whose duty it is to hand on the faith. We pray that in the years to come these children will become the core of a renewed Catholic Community which will help evangelise a world crying out for spirituality that gives meaning and depth to peoples’ lives.
Who do you mean?
There are a couple of billion people in the world today who call themselves ‘Christians’ – followers of Jesus Christ. However, if you were to ask each of them, ‘Who do you say Jesus is?’ you would get thousands – even millions – of different answers. When I speak about Jesus, his teachings and values, I have certain characteristics and beliefs of and about Jesus in mind. I can’t be certain that the person listening has those same concepts. Just because we use the same language doesn’t mean we’re talking about the same thing!
Woman Supporters
The last few verses of today’s gospel provide a fascinating and often overlooked insight into the ministry of Jesus. It names the followers of Jesus as being the Twelve (the apostles), three named women – Mary the Magdalene, Joanna and Susanna – as well as several other women. Interestingly, it is the women who are identified as being the ‘financial backers’ of Jesus. They ‘provided for them out of their own re-sources’. It is not clear how these women came to be financially independent but they used their wealth to support the work of Jesus and his male apostles.
Past pupils are invited to Loreto School Reunion on Saturday 29th June, 2.30pm – 5.30pm.
Afternoon tea at 3.30pm. £5 contribution.
Restoring to life
We may not have the capacity to enact a miraculous ‘resurrection’ as Jesus did with the widow’s son, but we certainly have the capacity and frequent opportunity to restore someone to life in the manner that Jesus restored the life of the widow. Whenever we encounter someone who has been cast out by life circumstances or by the cruel actions of others, we have the capacity to restore them to a fuller life through our actions. We restore life when we restore dignity; when we refuse to participate in grinding someone down and instead ex-tend a hand to help them up.
