Week beginning 30th May, Trinity Sunday

The Visitation of Our Lady (Monday 31st) celebrates Mary’s journey into the hill country to visit her Cousin Elizabeth, respectively to give birth to Jesus and St John the Baptist.

St Justin (Tuesday 1st June), martyr (100 – 165), born in Palestine of pagan parents and converted by reading the Bible and witnessing the heroism of the martyrs, he was beheaded in Rome with other Christians.

Ss Marcellinus and Peter (Wednesday 2nd / d. 304). Marcellinus was a priest, and Peter an exorcist, in Rome.

St Charles Lwanga (Thursday 3rd) was baptised in November 1885 and burnt alive the next June with 21 other youths of 13 – 30 years by orders of the despotic King of Uganda.

St Boniface (Saturday 5th / 680 – 754) a native of Crediton, Devon, and monk of Exeter, who evangelised Bavaria and neighbouring areas. Ordained Bishop of the Germanies, he founded many monasteries, bringing monks and nuns from England.

Corpus et Sanguis Christi (Sunday 6th) – the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ – gives thanks for the institution of the Eucharist as the source and summit of our faith.

We can speak to God because God has spoken to us – because He has come to us as a Word and because, in His inmost life in the TRINITY, He is a relationship.

The prayer of Jesus reveals that the heart of the TRINITY is a familial, filial relationship of love. God in His inner essence is a dialogue of love, and our prayer, both corporately in the liturgy and privately, is a participation in this filial and familial dialogue.

The family prayer that Jesus taught his followers, the Our Father, illuminates this point. Even when the believer prays the Our Father privately, he or she prays as a member of the family of God. It is never my Father. The prayer of Jesus is always personal and simultaneously the prayer of one who knows himself to be part of a family. Prayer is always praying with someone in the communion of the Church, in the Body of Christ, the family of God.

As our prayer is never alone, neither is it something we can do on our own initiative. Prayer and worship are our response to the God who has first spoken to us. God’s Word to us is a gift, the gift of Himself; it is the opportunity to participate in His familial dialogue of love. This has two implications. First, it implies that our worship is never the work of the Church, never our own invention. Worship is a response to an initiative coming from above, to a call and an act of love which is mystery.

We can respond to God’s words and deeds in prayer and worship because He calls us into the dialogue that He is. As Pope Benedict says, “God Himself is the content of Christian prayer”. In our prayer we ask for no less than the gift of God’s self. We have the audacity to ask for that gift because He has given Himself to us, in a most definitive way, on the Cross.

The prayer of the Church, the liturgy, becomes, then, a participation in Christ’s work of self-giving. Liturgy is the opus Dei, the work of God – God’s action in us and with us.

Covenant and Communion: The Biblical Theology of Pope Benedict XVI, by Scott Hann (DLT 2009). All quotations are the the Holy Father’s writings.

Week beginning 23rd May, Pentecost Sunday

This week sees the celebration of three Saints who are great influences upon the religious and civil life of England.

St Bede the Venerable (Tuesday 25th / 673 – 735), born at Wearmouth, spent his whole life “always writing, always praying, always reading, always teaching”. His “Ecclesiastical History of the English People” (still available from Pelican Books) was the first history of our land.

St Philip Neri (Wednesday 26th / 1515 – 1595) lived in poverty in Rome, gathered companions, noted for prayer, a great sense of humour, and a loving manner. He founded the Oratory (of which Cardinal John Henry Newman was later a member), and fully deserves the title given him of “Second Apostle of Rome”.

St Augustine of Canterbury (Thursday 27th / d. 604) was a prior of the Monastery from which Pope St Gregory the Great sent missionaries to England. Landing at Ebbsfleet near Ramsgate (597), he converted the King of Kent, established his See at Canterbury, and was hugely influential across this land and beyond.

Pentecost Sunday

Today’s feast of Pentecost is known as the Birthday of the Church.

While the Church was born from the side of Christ on the Cross, the Church was animated, filled with the life of God, at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit first came upon the Apostles.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 688) teaches us that:

The Church, a communion living in the faith of the apostles which she transmits, is the place where we know the Holy Spirit:

• in the Scriptures he inspired
• in the Tradition, to which the Church Fathers are always timely witnesses
• in the Church’s Magisterium (teaching office), which he assists
• in the sacramental liturgy, through its words and symbols, in which the Holy Spirit puts us into communion with Christ
• in prayer, wherein he intercedes for us
• in the charisms and ministries by which the Church is built up
• in the signs of apostolic and missionary life
• in the witness of saints through whom he manifests his holiness and continues the work of salvation

And the Compendium to the Catechism teaches:

139. What symbols are used to represent the Holy Spirit?

There are many symbols of the Holy Spirit: LIVING WATER which springs from the wounded Heart of Christ and which quenches the thirst of the baptised; ANOINTING with oil, which is the sacramental sign of Confirmation; FIRE which transforms what it touches; the CLOUD, dark or luminous, in which the divine glory is revealed; the IMPOSITION OF HANDS by which the Holy Spirit is given; the DOVE which descended on Christ at His baptism and remained with Him.

140. What happened at Pentecost?

Fifty days after the Resurrection (Easter Sunday), at Pentecost the glorified Jesus Christ poured out the Spirit in abundance and revealed Him as a Divine Person so that the Holy Trinity was fully manifest. The mission of Christ and of the Spirit became the mission of the Church which is sent to proclaim and spread the mystery of the communion of the Holy Trinity.

We have seen the true Light. We have received the heavenly Spirit. We have found the true Faith. We adore the indivisible Trinity, who has saved us. (Byzantine Liturgy, Troparion of Vespers of Pentecost)

Week beginning 16th May, Ascension Sunday

Pope St John I (Tuesday 18th), martyr, became Pope in 523 and was imprisoned by Theodoris, the heretic Arian king of the Ostro-Goths. He died in prison in 526.

St Dunstan (Wednesday 19th), bishop (909 – 988) was one of the great figures of English history – Benedictine abbot, of Glastonbury (the greatest centre of learning in England), bishop of Worcester (957) and Canterbury (961), statesman, exiled for having rebuked King Edwy.

St Bernadine of Sienna (Thursday 20th / 1380 – 1444) – Franciscan preacher, spreading devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus.

St Christopher of Magallanes (1869 – 1927) & Companions (Friday 21st). Government persecution of Catholics in Mexico caused St Christopher to be falsely accused of rebellion, and the executed without trial.

St Rita of Cascia (Saturday 22nd / 1381 – 1457) married a brutish husband who died violently. Her two sons had sworn vengeance against his murders, but died filled with the spirit of forgiveness as a result of their mother’s prayers.

Until very recently (and elsewhere still) kept last Thursday, 40 days after Easter, as “…for forth days He had continued to appear to them and tell them about the Kingdom of God…” (Acts 1: 3).

This nine days between the Ascension and Pentecost (next Sunday) gives us the original Novena (ie. 9 days of prayer) as the Biblical basis for the Novenas which often precede other feasts and celebrations, developed from this original Novena for Pentecost when we pray for the Gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Today – World Communications Day – is kept on this feast when Jesus, ascending to His Father in heaven, directed the Apostles to “Go out to the whole world: proclaim the good news” as He said: “Go, therefore, make disciples of all the nations; baptise them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to observe all the commands I gave you.” (Mt. 29: 20).

As we celebrate Our Lord’s Ascension into heaven it is therefore appropriate to ask ourselves the two most basic questions about communication:

1. How is the Faith communicated to me?
2. How do I communicate the Faith to others?

It is obvious that we cannot do one without the other. We have first to receive before we can give. We have first to be Disciples (ie. those who listen and receive) before we can be Apostles (ie. those who are sent). And we need assurance that this is authentic Catholic teaching (not dissenting from the Magisterium).

Our faithfulness at Sunday Mass is primary – in which we receive the Word of God, proclaimed in the Sacred Scripture and expounded in the homily; and in which we receive the Word made Flesh, whose Sacred Body transforms us into His likeness.

We, further, have responsibility to inform ourselves about the Faith by prayer, reading and reflection. There are many opportunities for this but, today, we suggest just three:

• News from the heart of Rome on the Zenit website – free sign-up at www.zenit.org
• Eternal Work Television Network (EWTN) – Channel 589 on Sky, and through Freesat, details on a poster in the Narthex
• Buy a weekly Catholic newspaper, e.g. The Catholic Herald