Newsletter- 7th Week of Ordinary Time
Emergency CAFOD Syria-Turkey Earthquake Appeal: CAFOD is responding with support of provision of food, water, shelter, medical assistance, and winter kits for survivors. As a parish we join CAFOD in praying for our sisters and brothers affected by the earthquakes and the winter weather. If you would like to donate to help support the victims of the recent earthquakes in Syria and Turkey, please visit CAFOD’S Syria-Turkey Emergency Appeal online: at: https://cafod.org.uk/give.
Reception into the Catholic Church: This Tuesday, 21st February during our evening Mass in the Parish at 7 pm, I will receive, with the bishop’s special permission, Lyndi – Ann Turner, nee Mallon, into full communion with the Catholic Church. Please keep her in your prayers as she prepares now to take this important next step in her faith journey and as we prepare to welcome her into full communion with the Church this Tuesday.
Lent begins this week on Ash Wednesday 22nd February. During these next 40 days we are remembering the 40 days that Jesus spent in the desert, the temptations he experienced there and his time of prayer and fasting. Lent is a time for each of us to become more deeply aware of our faith and a time to deepen that faith by practical actions. During this coming penitential season, as we journey with Christ, so we embrace a period of penance, prayer and works of charity, as we seek to make our way with Christ towards Holy Week and then journey onwards towards the great joy of the Resurrection and all that Easter brings.
We should all try to choose in the next few days before Lent begins some practical and spiritual ways to help us to walk more fully in the footsteps of Christ as we seek collectively as a community of faith and as individual Christians to recommit ourselves during these next 40 days to living as Christ lived and as we seek to love God and our brothers and sisters more deeply. We do this through the three ancient remedies of Fasting, Almsgiving and Penance. Ancient remedies which can be life enhancing and that can help us to live out more authentically our Christian witness and discipleship. Let us ask for God’s grace at Mass this weekend to help us in our Lenten disciplines, in our Christian discipleship and in our Christian witness in the world in which we live. Let us pray too that our faith may be strengthened during this coming penitential season and that our Lenten resolutions may remain clear and firm. I pray that each of us may experience during Lent this year a real awakening to the Love that is God and the place of Christ in our lives, that we may follow our Lord Jesus Christ more fully day by day and come to know him more completely as our brother and our friend.
Ash Wednesday Liturgies: On Wednesday 22nd February we shall offer two Masses at St Mary’s. In the morning at our Parish Mass celebrated at 10 am we shall welcome St Marys School to Mass. Parishioners are warmly welcomed to attend, and the school will be helping to lead the Liturgy that morning. In the evening we shall offer a Parish Mass at 7 pm in church at which we shall be joined by our First Holy Communion Candidates and their families. At both Masses there will be Imposition of Ashes. Weekdays in Lent: You will see in the Bulletin the times of the scheduled extra periods of Confession, Exposition and Stations of the Cross taking place in the parish during Lent. Stations of the Cross will begin this week on the Friday after Ash Wednesday, 24th February, whilst the other extra Lenten Observances begin from Tuesday 28th February in the 1st Week of Lent. The Holy Week Liturgies can also be found in this weeks Bulletin.
Walk With Me: A Journey of Prayer for Lent 2023: This year the Diocese of Nottingham are not publishing their own bespoke copies of this popular Lenten prayer resource, but to help each of us reflect and pray more fully each day during Lent I have arranged for copies of Walk with Me – Lent 2023 to be made available in our parish for purchase at just £1 a copy. They will be available on the table as you come into church from Ash Wednesday. In the front of the booklet, you will find a Preface written by Cardinal Vincent Nicholls. This year’s Lenten Walk with Me invites each of us to rediscover the Psalms, just as the disciples did as they walked together on the road to Emmaus. The Risen Lord said: ‘Everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets, and the Psalms must be fulfilled. Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures’ (Luke 24:44). I hope you will find these of use as we journey together as individuals and as a parish community during the coming 40 days of Lent.
CAFOD – Family Fast Day – 3rd March: Envelopes for making donations to the Family Fast Day will be available from Ash Wednesday as you come into church and donations can be put into the envelopes provided and placed in the Mass collection plate at all our Sunday Masses celebrated over the weekend of 25th /26th February and 4th /5th March. The theme for this year is: Growing in Strength rooted in Love.
With prayer for you and your families as we prepare this week to begin our Lenten journey together,
Your parish priest and friend,
Father Jonathan
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2023 19th February– Newsletter – Download