Masses this week
Monday 12th May – Our Lady of the Divine Shepherd – Mass at 6.00pm
Tuesday 13th May – Our Lady of Fatima – Solemn Mass at 6.00pm
Wednesday 14th May – St Boniface, Martyr – Mass at 6.00pm
Thursday 15th May – St John Baptiste De La Salle – Mass at 6.00pm
Friday 16th May – St Simon Stock O.Carm, Confessor & Martyr – Mass at 6.00pm followed by recitation of the Holy Rosary
Saturday 17th May – St Pascal Baylon, Confessor – Mass at 9.00am: Requiem Mass In Anniversario Defunctorum for Rose Margaret Davies RIP (2012)
Sunday 18th May – Sunday IV of Easter – Solemn Mass at 6.00pm
All Masses are celebrated using the 1962 Missale Romanum
Special Request
Your charitable prayers are requested for the repose of the soul of Rose Margaret Davies (my late mother) who’s anniversary falls on Saturday 17th May.
I was with her when she passed from this earthly life to her eternal life with our Almighty Father, just as I had finished praying the office of Compline on the evening of the Feast of The Ascension of OLJC on Thursday 17th May 2012.
Requiem aeternam dona ei Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ei. Anima ei et animae omnium fidelium per misericordiam Dei requiescant in pace. Amen.
Please pray the following with me on Saturday, as Our Blessed Lady requested we pray for all the faithful departed:
Five times the Apostles Creed
One Salve Regina
One Pater Noster
One Ave Maria
One Gloria Patri
One Requiem Aeternam
And, as a personal request, the five Joyful Mysteries of the Most Holy Rosary.
In other news:
I am in the process of opening discussions with the Churches Conservation Trust in order to negotiate access to a “redundant” church building within the Bedfordshire area where it might be possible for Masses to be celebrated on a frequent basis. Please watch this space, but in the meantime please do pray that the negotiations might be successful.
Fr Simon is scheduled to pay a visit to the Parish over the weekend of Trinity Sunday, 14th/15th June. There will be an additional Mass celebrated that Sunday which Fr Simon will celebrate in English using the 2003 translation of the Roman Missal (the current Novus Ordo).
There is no homily this week: but instead may I leave you with some thoughts of Blessed John Henry Newman:
God has created me to do Him some definite service: He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission – I may never know it in this life but I shall be told it in the next.
I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good, I shall do His work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place while not intending it – if I do but keep His Commandments.
Therefore I will trust Him. Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him; if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends, He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me – still He knows what He is about.
You want to know what faith is? Those three brief paragraphs sum it up in the best way possible. Why are we here? Quite simply to do God’s work. But to do that we need to reject sin and accept His grace, which is infinite, ie – keep His Commandments, or as I am very fond of saying, you “love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul, and YOU LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOUR AS YOURSELF” (Jesus Christ, about three days before He was crucified, 33AD or thereabouts)
Don’t understand that? Well sit down, unplug the iPod from your ears and think about it. How do you want other people to treat you?
Not exactly rocket science is it?
++Archbishop Peter
NCC Bedford | St Alban's 