Fifteenth Sunday of the Year 15th July 2012

40 hours devotion and a Solemn Mass for our Patronal Feast

This coming Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday we will have 40 hours of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament in solemn exposition. It will bring great graces to our parish and we urge everyone to spend at least some time in adoration during this period.

Blessed Pope John Paul II wrote “The worship of the Eucharist outside of the Mass is of inestimable value for the life of the Church. … and becomes an inexhaustible source of holiness.” The Pope told us how often he had drawn ‘strength, consolation and support’ from periods of adoration. St Alphonsus Liguori, wrote: “Of all devotions, that of adoring Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament is the greatest after the sacraments, the one dearest to God and the one most helpful to us”
The ‘40 hours’ will be like a mini-retreat for the parish, where we can all come away from our busy and stressful lives and spend just a short time in the presence of Jesus. And Jesus can give us a peace that no one else can give.

As well as nourishing our own love of Our Lord, three special aspects have surrounded this devotion from its origins: the protection from evil and temptation; reparation for our own sins and for the Poor Souls in Purgatory; and deliverance from political, material, or spiritual calamities. We should ask our Lord to pour out His abundant graces not only on us, but on our neighbours, and those we see living lives far from God. Jesus told us to be persistent in prayer – well 40 hours of continuous prayer will surely bear great fruit.

And this period of intense prayer will then lead us into celebrating the Feast of St Mary Magdalen, our parish patron saint.


And then Our Special Mass to celebrate the Feast of St Mary Magdalen.

In the past we have celebrated our parish feast day with family fun days at the Willesden Sports Centre; this year it will be different and we will celebrate the Sunday Masses, which all will be of St Mary Magdalen, with greater solemnity. And this will be most noticeable at the 12:00 noon Mass which will be even more glorious as we will have a professional choir singing Mozart’s Coronation Mass. Great music has a way of lifting our hearts and many will certainly experience the Mass in a new way when we celebrate it with such awe inspiring music. Why not encourage someone who has been away from Mass to come with you? With the graces of the preceding 40 hours devotion still flowing, who knows what conversions might take place?
Deacon Michael

Fourteenth Sunday of the Year 8th July 2012

The Apostleship of the Sea.

Have you ever thought about the sailors working on the many cargo ships which carry the goods we buy daily? Do you realise that without them we could not use many of the items that we consider essential. A large number of the seafarers come from Catholic countries. Did you know that a sailor can be away from his home and family for up to 12 months at a time. During much of this time they will be at sea with no access to Mass or the Sacraments and life can be very lonely; and even when in port there are the pressures to unload and load the next cargo because a ship in port is not earning money. As you would expect the Church does care for these people through the organisation ‘Apostleship of the Sea’, the official maritime welfare agency of the Catholic Church. This is a worldwide agency with branches in each maritime country. The Apostleship is run by chaplains and volunteers and in the UK last year they visited 9,457 ships in 56 different ports, and gave direct assistance to 190,940 seafarers. Let us remember them in our prayers, but if you can they will gratefully receive donations to help in their work.

Jesus is rejected

Last week in the Gospel we heard how Jesus ordered a little girl to arise from the dead. But this week He seems to meet His match in His hometown of Nazareth - “He was not able to perform any mighty deed there” because of the people’s lack of faith. They acknowledged His wisdom and the power of His works. But they refused to recognize Him as someone sent by God. All they could see was how much “this man” was like them and grew up with them. As His disciples, we too face the mockery and contempt we hear of in today’s Psalm. And isn’t it often hardest to live our faith among those in our own families, those who think they really know us, who define us by the people we used to be – especially if we have changed and now chose to walk with Jesus? As Paul confides in today’s Epistle, insults and hardships are God’s way of teaching us to rely solely on His grace. An important lesson that we need to learn is that Jesus will not be able to work mighty deeds in our lives unless we abandon ourselves to Him in faith. That can be tough as our fallen human nature (as a result of original sin) keeps insisting that we must be in control of our lives. The reality is that we should trust in God and let Him control our lives.