Dear Parishioner,

Holy Week.

Last Tuesday I celebrated a very happy Mass at the School.  It was the end of term Mass, but it was also a memorial Mass for young Jay Statham, who was killed along with his whole family in that tragic accident on the M6.  Jay was a pupil at the school at the time.

I was asked to bless during the Mass a beautiful teak bench which the school has bought in memory of Jay and his family and which is to sit outside in the grounds of the school.

So I talked to the children about the business of sitting down and just thinking, and about how important this is in our lives.  And about how important it is in our spiritual lives as well.

I told them that when they would sit on that bench they could remember Jay.  But they could also look about them at the wonders and beauty of nature, for the bench will be facing the Orme.  They could just stop for a brief moment and take in the wonderful works of God and praise Him for them.  Then they could remember Him.  They could remember Jesus and all that He has done for them, how he came into this world from God to be one of us; how he loved us so much as to die on the Cross for us; how he remembered each one of us by name as he lay dying there and offered himself for us; how he rose out of death and lives now in the glory of God.

I then suggested that they could do this not only on the bench but anywhere else at all and whenever they liked—perhaps for five minutes at a time, and call it their “Think Time”.

Now guess what?  I’m going to suggest the same to you!  And what better time to suggest it than Holy Week!

Remembering, as I pointed out in a recent Newsletter, is one of the major themes of the Bible, both in the Old Testament and the New.  The Psalms constantly recount the wonderful things God had done for his people, while the Prophets repeatedly instruct them to keep in mind the deeds of the lord.  But since then, Christ has come.  And can there be any comparison between the great deeds of God as recorded in the Old Testament and the great deeds of God as recorded in the New, when God came among us in person, experienced what it means to be as human as we are, to suffer as we do, to die as we do and to rise to new life as we surely will?

The very white hot centre of our Christianity is itself an act of remembering, when, in the Mass, God’s own remembering makes the past an actual reality in the present, enabling us to share in the Lord’s victorious death and glorious resurrection.  As a natural continuation of this, we ourselves should remember these deeds of the Lord.  So, just sit down for five minutes a day and remember.  Remember all that Lord has done for you and you will find yourself engaged in a profound and satisfying form of prayer, a prayer which will please the Lord greatly and bring you untold blessings.

Please try to attend all the ceremonies during Holy Week.  Don’t just pick and choose: be with the Lord throughout these mysteries which He celebrates with us.  It is not called “Holy Week” for nothing.

I have just been going on about the Mass.  You probably say that I am always going on about the Mass!  And the reason is because the Mass is the beginning and the end of our very Christianity; all that we believe is summed up there; all grace flows from it; but most of all, all that we love and hope for is present there, Jesus Christ Himself.  In the Catechumenate I give the new converts a thorough grounding in what the Mass is all about , and now I want to give our secondary school pupils the same. 

I invite all of them, from year 7 to top year, to a series of talks which will temporarily replace the Monday and Tuesday lessons at Stella Maris, and which will also be the immediate preparation for Confirmation.  Here are the dates: 

19 and 26 May; 2, 9 and 16 June.

There will be just one meeting with the Confirmation Parents and Sponsors—on Thursday 11 June at 730-m.  Confirmation itself is on Wednesday 17 June.

God bless you

          Fr Antony Jones