27TH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR— 7TH OCTOBER 2012

Year of Faith This morning at all the Masses you will hear Archbishop Vincent’s Pastoral letter telling us all about the ‘Year of Faith’ and how the Pope hopes that all of us make the best use of this year, to deepen our understanding of our faith. The reality is that for many of us we have had little formation in our faith and maybe we remember little of what we learned when we prepared for our First Holy Communion and Confirmation. At work many if not most professions now have ‘continuing professional development’ or ‘lifelong learning’ where people are kept up to date with new developments and reminded of skills and practices that they may have forgotten, especially if not used often. Our faith is no different. It is a lifelong journey where hopefully we progress and improve each week/month/year. The Pope has stressed that an area he wishes people to focus on is proper knowledge of what the Church taught during the Second Vatican Council (which was held 50 years ago). The Second Vatican Council was called by Pope John XXIII specifically to address how the Church needed to present its unchanging faith to the modern world. Unfortunately after the Council many people did and taught things ‘in the spirit of Vatican II’ which were completely opposed to what the Council had said, and were the personal ideas of individuals promoting their cause. Sadly many believed this was the official teaching of the Church. To correct these errors which had crept into people’s understanding of their faith, Pope John Paul II commissioned the production of the Catechism of the Catholic Church which was published in 1992 (20 years ago) The Catechism is structured in 4 related parts – the Four Pillars of our Faith. (1) What we believe (the Creed); (2) how we respond to that belief by our celebration of the Liturgy and Sacraments – especially the Mass, and (3) how then in turn we live our lives in accordance with our belief – our moral life based around the 10 Commandments and Beatitudes, and finally (4) our personal communion with God in prayer. As our Archbishop explains in his pastoral letter, we will divide the year into 4 seasons – each one concentrating on one of the four pillars of our faith. We are all different, and there can be no ‘one size fits all’ solution to how we deepen our faith. So in this parish we are going to provide several different modes of delivery of information about our faith. One method is that for the next 60 weeks we will be providing a leaflet explaining some aspect of our faith – following the 4 seasons. Please take these leaflets home and study them. Pass them onto others, especially if they have fallen away from the practice of the faith. Keep them and build up your own ‘mini-catechism’ to refer to if you have questions in the future. Deacon Michael