Sacred Heart: Vella Family Intentions

St Joseph: Joseph Van den Berg’s health

St John Fisher / St Therese: Geoff Brand’s recovery

St Thomas More / St Anthony: Agnieszka Ptaszynska RIP

St Pius X: Vocations to the Priesthood, Permanent Diaconate & Religious Life

Additionally, we call all Readers at Sunday Mass to come to the weekly 8pm Tuesday Scripture Study Group (at least once a month) in the week immediately before their Sunday Reading, so that they are properly prepared by understanding & prayer for their ministry.

Similarly, those who teach in the Children’s Liturgy Groups, those who sing and play, and others with particular responsibilities in the Sacred Liturgy, will be best enabled for their roles by attending the Tuesday Scripture Study Group (upstairs in the Pastoral Centre) to which everyone is warmly encouraged to deepen their Faith.

Additionally, THIS WEEK you are invited to come to Monday’s occasional Mass with prayers for healing, followed by Eucharistic Adoration, and opportunity for the healing Sacrament of Confession.

Thursday night provides an international treat, as a follow-up to our Lenten Charity Projects, we join with Aid to the Church in Need to support persecuted Christians around the world. See page 3.

If you’ve never yet been to our monthly Parish Sunday Lunches do sign-up (and pay) by this Wednesday for next Sunday’s feast. It’s an excellent home-cooked meal, costs so little, saves you cooking, and helps build up friendship and support in our Parish Family.

Sunday also sees a DVD presentation helping us in our Parish’s pastoral care and awareness of those suffering Dementia. See back page.

NEXT Friday, 25th May, come to the 2nd session of Catholicism – an amazing presentation which was so highly-acclaimed as to be taken up by national television stations in America, transforming the lives of many Catholics, and bringing others to the fullness of the Faith.

Sacred Heart: Maureen Jones RIP

St Joseph: Geoff Brand’s recovery

St John Fisher / St Therese: Our First Communion Children & Confirmandi

St Thomas More / St Anthony: Alan Burgess, Kurt Barragan & others about to be Ordained to the Sacred Priesthood

St Pius X: Vocations to the Priesthood, Permanent Diaconate & Religious Life

Word on Fire Catholic Ministries

Catholicism

Adult Formation Parish Programme

Starting THIS FRIDAY, 11th May, 8pm to 9.30pm
“Amazed & Afraid” The Revelation of God Become Man.

Then Friday 25th May: ‘Happy are We’ The Teachings of Jesus
Friday 8th June: The Ineffable Mystery of God
Friday 22nd June: Mary, Mother of God
and Friday 6th July: Peter, Paul & the Missionary Adventure

Come to just one, or best, come to all five fortnightly Fridays!

Witness the most significant story ever told. In breathtaking high- definition cinematography, the beauty and truth of the Catholic Faith is illustrated in a rich, multimedia experience.

Journey with acclaimed author, speaker & theologian Fr Robert Barron to more than 50 locations in 15 countries.

Be illuminated by the spiritual and artistic treasures of Catholic global culture which claims more than one billion of the earth’s people.

We urge every Family in the Parish to send at least one member per session so that the entire Parish can experience this life-changing programme.
Don’t miss this chance to deepen your faith & understanding of Catholicism.

Sacred Heart: Nancy’s Intention

St Joseph: Geoff Brand’s recovery

St John Fisher / St Therese: Our First Communion Children

St Thomas More / St Anthony: Deacon Alan Burgess & other Ordinands

St Pius X: Vocations to the Priesthood & Religious life

Saints Philip & James, two of the Twelve Apostles who witnessed to the Resurrection of Jesus.

The English Martyrs who died for the Catholic Faith in this land during the 16th century.

The Fourth Sunday of Eastertide (29th April) is Vocations Sunday when we pray especially for Vocations to the Priesthood and Religious Life.

The Old Testament frequently refers to the Messiah as a good shepherd who must feed, rule and govern God’s people, often abandoned and scattered. The prophecies of the awaited Shepherd are fulfilled in Jesus, but in Him with new features. He is the Good Shepherd who gives His Life for His sheep and provides other shepherds to continue His mission. As opposed to those who seek their own interests and destroy the flock, Jesus is the door of salvation; whoever enters through Him will find abundant pasture. There is a tender relationship between Jesus the Good Shepherd and His sheep: He calls each by name, He leads them. The sheep follow because they know His Voice.

This Sunday’s Liturgy invites us to meditate on our Saviour’s merciful tenderness as the Good Shepherd, so that we recognize the rights He acquired over each one of us by His death. We are called to recognise His Voice, calling each one of us to the Vocation which He has prepared for us.

Today is also a good opportunity to consider, in our prayer, our love for the good shepherds whom He has left to guide us and keep us in His love.

From: In Conversation with God
by Fr Francis Fernandez.

Sacred Heart: Margaret McGeehin’s wellbeing

St Joseph: Geoff Brand’s recovery

St John Fisher / St Therese: Mrs M Maharaj

St Thomas More / St Anthony: Deacon Alan Burgess

St Pius X: Vocations to the religious life

Ss Justus (d 627) & Mellitus (d 624) (24th April) were among the Benedictine monks sent, by Pope St Gregory the Great, to accompany St Augustine. They became successive Archbishops of Canterbury.

St Mark the Evangelist was a cousin of Barnabas and accompanied the apostle Paul on his first missionary journey; later he followed him to Rome. He was a disciple of Peter, and his gospel is told from Peter’s point of view. He is credited with founding the Church in Alexandria. His body was stolen from Alexandria in 828 (though some say that the wrong bones were stolen) and taken to Venice, which adopted him as its patron saint.

St Peter Chanel was a priest of the Marist Order, born in 1803. He preached the Gospel in Oceania, and there he gave his life for the faith in 1841.

St Louis-Marie de Montfort (18th Century) preached missions throughout France, converting many souls to Jesus through the intercession of Our Lady.

When you leave church, do you sometimes wonder how relevant is the mass to your daily life and its struggles? Does church sometimes feel like something removed from the rest of your life? Do you feel isolated in your work place as a practising catholic? Do you have any difficulties accepting some of the Churchʼs teaching but have no way or place or means to express it? Do you even feel that you dare not give voice to these inner uncertainties? Perhaps sometimes you even feel angry with your priests or the institutional church or just life itself.

If so, OK, because what we offer at the Holy Sacrifice is all the above. We offer the whole of ourselves in faith, which includes our doubts and uncertainties, our good works and our failings which we confess at the beginning of the Mass. But at Mass there is no place to talk about what we are thinking or feeling and so you may have no place to share your religious experiences.

You donʼt have to hold it all in. You are not alone but ʻwith our darkened and unbelieving eyes, we often do not see how each and everyone has been created as a gift for us, and we as a gift for others. But it is so. And a mysterious bond of love links persons and things, guides history, orders the destiny of peoples and of individuals, while respecting their maximum freedomʼ (Chiara Lubich, founder of the Focolare Movement).

For nearly twenty years some of our parishioners have shared their journey of faith by regularly meeting in their homes. For them, coming together helps bring the harmony and unity of communion with Jesus at Sunday Mass into their daily lives. The groups have survived so long because their members support each other in lifeʼs ups and downs and the challenges we all face as christians who are also workers in the world, parents, husbands, wives, voting citizens and parishioners. The groups are social, but what brings them together is the Word of God. Part of each group meeting is an exploration of Holy Scripture with reflection on the Sunday readings and what Godʼs Word means and says to each one of us individually and as a community.

Like the Church herself, our cell groups are not closed circles. They are always open to new members and if a group ever got too big a new group can be formed.

If you would like to know more about cell groups, think you would like to join one or even form your own, then come and meet our cell groups at a special Mass on Friday, to which everyone is very welcome. Our guest preacher is Fr Frank Johnson, a priest of the Focolare Movement, one of the new movements in the Church.