Newsletter- 5th Week of Eastertide

Dear Parishioners

‘Love One Another!’ As this year’s beautiful season of Easter starts to draw gently to a close, we are guided this weekend at Mass to remain focused upon Jesus’s central commandment to his followers: ‘Love’. We are all loved, forgiven and transformed sinners; called, commanded and commissioned to love others as we are loved by God himself; graced and grounded in the love that has been poured out for us a love which is unconditional and will never come to an end. Such is the love God has for us and for all of humanity.

This love inspired the Early Church to spread the Good News of Jesus’s life, death and resurrection throughout Asia Minor (present-day Turkey and Syria). St. Paul and St. Barnabas supported and appointed leaders to keep the flame of God’s love alive in these early church communities (First Reading). Beautiful prophetic visions attributed to St John, writing from the same area, describe how lovingly God is wedded to us. We are intimately connected to him and he to us. God has chosen to dwell amongst us and is making all things new in this love (Second Reading). Today’s Gospel proclaims a simple, joyful central message. Jesus gives his followers, just as he gives to us too his modern-day disciples, a ‘new commandment’‘Love one another, as I have loved you.’ The Responsorial Psalm for this Sunday joyfully celebrates life graced by the compassion and love and mercy of God our Father. God’s compassion is for all that he has created, and his everlasting kingdom is rooted in his unconditional love.

This overflowing banquet of love is the source and sustenance of our Christian hope as we journey onwards as Pilgrims of Hope in this Jubilee Year. It is the same love that our new Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV spoke off just after his election. Let us pray in this Jubilee Year that we will all be inspired to care for each other and for all of God’s creation with compassion, love, and mercy, as we reach outwards away from self to those who are in the greatest need of experiencing such love for themselves, and strengthened by the power of Jesus’s great love for us.

First Holy Communion Candidates: This Sunday at the 9.30 am Mass we welcome all our First Holy Communion candidates who will join us to experience the whole of Mass with our parish community. Please keep them in your prayers as they continue to prepare to make their First Holy Communion at a special Mass celebrated in the parish on Saturday 21st June at 11 am.

Change to Mass Times on Wednesday 21st May: We welcome Mary Beard into church in the afternoon of Tuesday 20th May at 4.30 pm. Our normal parish Liturgies will take place from 6 pm that evening as normal. However, Mary’s Requiem Funeral Mass, on Wednesday 21st May at 11 am will replace the normal 9.30 am celebration that morning in the parish. Mary’s husband Ted and their family warmly invite all parishioners to join with them at either or both the simple service of Reception into church and Mary’s Funeral Mass the next day.

May Procession and Crowning of Our Lady: This Friday, 23rd May at 2 pm parishioners are warmly invited to join the whole school in the grounds of St Marys Primary School, at 2pm, for the Marian May Procession and Crowning of Our Lady. If the weather is unkind to us that day we shall use the school hall.

With my prayers and best wishes for you and for your families during this coming week,

Your parish priest and friend,

Father Jonathan


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