Week beginning 18th July, 16th Sunday of the Year

St Apollinaris (Tuesday 20th) was Bishop of Ravenna in the late 2nd century and was martyred there. Devotion to him was widespread by the 7th century.

St Laurence of Brindisi (Wednesday 21st), a Capuchin Friar whose deep knowledge of the bible (and of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, French and German) made him a popular preacher not only to Catholics but to Protestants and Jews. He was also an able administrator and diplomat for the Church.

St Mary Magdalene (Thursday 22nd) ministered to Jesus in Galilee, was present at His Crucifixion, she was among the group of women who discovered His empty tomb, and it was to her that the Risen Lord first appeared.

St Bridget of Sweden (Friday 23rd / 1303 – 91) was married to a nobleman and had eight children. Her saintly husband died on pilgrimage to Compostela. Six years later St Bridget went to Rome and remained for the rest of her life, caring for the poor and sick. She had many mystical visions.

St Sharbel Makhluf (Saturday 24th / 1828 – 98) was born in the Lebanon and became a hermit who considered himself the servant of anyone who came to visit him.

16th Sunday of the Year

“For too long a time there has been a mistaken insistence on the supposed incompatibility between secular work and the interior life. Nevertheless, it is there in the midst of daily work and by means of it, not in spite of it, that God wants to call most Christians to lives of holiness. We are to sanctify the world and sanctify ourselves with a life of prayer that gives divine meaning to earthly tasks.

“Jesus does not pass sweeping judgement upon Martha or Mary. He responds to Martha’s question with profundity by pointing to what is most important in life, that being the presence of Christ in the house. How often might not the Lord make the same reproach to us?  Nothing can justify forgetting Jesus in our daily work, not even the most important concerns. We cannot put Him, who is the Lord of all things, aside for the sake of the things of the Lord. We certainly cannot minimize the importance of prayer with the excuse that we are too busy with activity.

“All worldly occupations, when engaged in with the right intention, allow us the opportunity to put into practice charity, mortification, a spirit of service to others, joy and optimism, understanding and an apostolate of friendship and confidence. We sanctify ourselves through our work. This is what really matters – to find Jesus in the midst of our daily concerns, not to forget about the Lord of all things… Otherwise we will end up doing what is, in fact, His work for ourselves, thereby neglecting the Master.

From In Conversation with God, by Francis Fernandez

Deacon John Sampson (aged 58)
died at 2pm on Friday 16th July – the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel,
fortified by the Rites of Holy Church.
His Funeral details will be announced within the next few days.

Deacon John (Ordained to the Permanent Diaconate on 10th June 2006) had been ill since February 2008, incapacitated for much of this year, and in a coma in Kingston Hospital for the past fortnight where he was well cared for, and with his Wife, Maureen, constantly at his side.  Maureen thanks the many Parishioners of St Joseph’s for their very practical and prayerful support – providing a rota of meals, shopping, dog-walking Juno, and visiting them at home and in hospital.

UPDATED!  19th July… Funeral Arrangements:

Thursday 29th July: 7.30pm, Reception of the Body and Requiem Mass
(Eucharistic Adoration will finish at 7pm on this Thursday only)
Friday 30th July:
- 7am, Requiem Mass (ad orientem)
- 10am, Funeral Mass and Commendation  (Bishop Paul Hendricks)
- 11.40am, Committal at Kingston Crematorium

Refreshments in St Joseph’s Pastoral Centre from 11.15am.

Week beginning 11th July, 15th Sunday of the Year

‘It’s been a testing time’, is a common expression, often used when life has been a bit tough, but not so bad, really.

One saint, for whom the above expression would not have been an exaggeration, was our own diocese’s St Mildred of Thanet (Tuesday 13th / obit ca 725). The name, Mildred, means
‘peaceful counsel’, a name she lived up to.

The daughter of the local Kentish king, she was sent to a French convent for studies, where the impious abbess foresaw the personal benefits of marrying the young Mildred to a local prince. Mildred would have none of this, desiring instead to offer herself to God as a nun.

Anger overwhelmed the abbess who tried burning Mildred alive in an oven, only to find after three hours, that not one hair of her head was singed. There followed beatings and assaults, but still Mildred remained resolute, that her vocation lay in the cloister.

She escaped, eventually returning to Kent and landed at Ebbsfleet, where she left, embedded in a rock, the mark of her saintly foot. (St Augustine had previously landed here in 597, when he brought his mission to the Anglo-Saxons, at the bidding of Pope St Gregory the Great.)

She joined the community at Minster-in-Thanet, where she eventually became Mother Abbess. Greatly loved and revered as a living saint, she led by example, even during her final years when she endured a painful and lingering death, which she gladly united with Christ’s suffering and Passion.

A ‘Mother Theresa’-figure of her time, her fame and popularity within Kent eclipsed even that of St Augustine’s cult at Canterbury.

She is often depicted holding a church, which is both a salient reminder of her love and support for the 8th Century Church, but also an encouragement for us, to discern our vocations as saints, fearless in our pursuit of holiness and the desire to do God’s will as obedient servants of the Church.

Minster Abbey was re-founded in 1937 as a house of Benedictine nuns. www.minsterabbeynuns.org

15th Sunday of the Year

If you’re anything like me, then you know how dangerous the sin of pride is. Examining my conscience, whether before Sacramental Confession, or at the end of each day, I am amazaed how the sin of pride has, somehow, been at the root of all my other faults.

In one sense, pride is a seemingly natural response to achievement; what’s wrong in that? Nevertheless, as Christians, we recognise that Chris is the Lord of our lives; thus, earthly glories, ultimately, must be credited to God. Just as He stands with us in our adversities and blesses us with His Spirit of Hope, so He directs our successes. (For this reason, St Paul urges us to boast only in teh Cross (Cf Gal. 6: 14).)

Sacred Scripture is replete with supportive passages in this regard, but a personal favourite may be found in Proverbs (16: 9): “A man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps.” Thomas a Kempis, in the ‘Imitation of Christ’, explains it, thus:

For the resolutions of the just depend rather on the grace of God than on their own wisdom; and in Him they always put their trust, whatever they take in hand. For man proposes, but God disposes; neither is the way of man in his own hands…

Archaic words, but just as vital for our own day.

Calling upon the Hebrew peoples to keep Covenant with God, Moses, in our first reading, knows that “…whoever listen to … [the Lord] will dwell safel, and will be secure, without fear of evil.” (Prov. 1: 33). Pride and a lack of hope will be the undoing of God’s people, causing them to break faith with God and break His Covenant. For this reason, and constant theme throughout the Old Testament is (the other ‘Three Rs’): Reflect, Repent, Return. The Jew who sought God’s forgiveness would often stand before the scrolls of Torah (the Law), on the elaborate covering of which would be embroidered the words: “Da’ah lifnei omdim” – Know before Whom you stand. The particular Hebrew verb, le’da’at, to know, implies a cache of intimacy; to have an intimate knowledge; and thus (for the Jew, and for us, too) the act of returning (teshuvah), of repenting, must be far more than simply an intellectual exercise, it must be emotional and spiritual.

The author of today’s psalm took Moses’ counsel. He is clearly in a state of personal strife, but still he hopes on the Lord and uses his distress to bring comfort to others: the Lord will not desert them, rather, He will “…revive their souls … [and] … gladden their hearts“. How often do we meet people, who in their humble love of God and their keeping of His Law! Truly, they know before whom they stand!

This need for an authentic and intimate knowledge of God is probably why St Paul, in our second reading, goes to great lengths to stamp out the heresy which he found in the Church at Colossae, and to promote the truth about Jesus Christ: that it is only through Him that God and humanity may be reconciled. “Know before Whom you stand”! The Colossians had come to a distorted understanding of who Jesus Christ was, and failed to note His universal Messiahship, from which would flow their salvation. They had become apathetic – relativistiv – just as may within (and without) the Church today see many ways of approaching God, but without the essentials of Christ and His Law of Life. Pope Benedict, echoing St Paul, is reviled by many for preaching this same, urgent message: “Christ Jesus is the image of the unseen God…“!

The fruits of the Spirit are Love, Joy and Peace (Cf Gal. 5: 22), but without that same Spirit, our fruits sour and become pride, arrogance and apathy. Today’s Gospel of the ‘Good Samaritan’ is a timeous reminder that we meet the righteous requirements of God’s Law, only by walking in His Spirit (Cf Romans 8: 4). The Samaritans were reviled by the Jews for being the remnants of the northern kingdom of Israel, which had succumbed to all manner of alien influences, making them impure. However, as we see in today’s Gospel, just as in the story of Jesus’ meeting with the Samaritan woman at the well (Cf John 4: 4 – 42), the Spirit of God knows no boundaries and will enter wherever invited and do great things, often to the shame (or lack, thereof) of those who should know better.

Like the young lawyer, we may feel pride in knowing how to quote the Law of God; but, do we know how to live that same Law in the Spirit?

“Know before Whom you stand”! With a humble and contrite heart, meet the Lord, intimately, in the Sacrament of Confession, for “The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord” (Psalm 37: 23).

During a January 2008 General Audience, the Holy Father explored what St Augustine of Hippo meant when he said, God is “more intimately present to me than my inmost being” (De vera religione):

Saint Augustine taught that by belonging to the Church, we are so closely united to Christ that we ‘become’ Christ, the head whose members we are. As our head, Christ prays in us, yet he also prays for us as our priest, and we pray to him as our God. If we ask what particular message Saint Augustine has for the men and women of today, it is perhaps his emphasis on our need for truth. Listen to the way he describes his own search for God’s truth: ‘You were within me and I sought you outside, in the beautiful things that you had made. You were with me, but I was not with you. You called me, you cried out and broke open my deafness. I tasted you, and now I hunger and thirst for you.’ Let us pray that we too may discover the joy of knowing God’s truth.

One of the largest crowds ever assembled for a canonization – 250,000 – symbolized the reaction of millions touched by the simple story of Maria Goretti (Tuesday 6th / 1890-1902).

She was the daughter of a poor Italian tenant farmer, had no chance to go to school, never learned to read or write. She made her First Communion not long before her death at age 12, but had struggled with catechesis.

On a hot afternoon in July, Maria was sitting at the top of the stairs of her house, mending a shirt. She was not quite 12-years-old, but physically mature. A cart stopped outside, and an 18-year-old neighbour, Alessandro, ran up the stairs. He seized her & pulled her into a bedroom. She struggled and tried to call for help. “No, God does not wish it,” she cried out. “It is a sin. You would go to hell for it.” Alessandro began striking at her blindly with a long dagger.

She was taken to a hospital. Her last hours were marked by the usual simple compassion of the good – concern about where her mother would sleep, forgiveness of her murderer (she had long been in fear of him, but said nothing, lest she cause trouble to his family) and her devout welcoming of Viaticum, her last Holy Communion. She died 24 hours after the attack.

Her murderer was sentenced to 30 years in prison. For a long time he was unrepentant and surly. One night he had a dream or vision of Maria, gathering flowers & offering them to him. His life changed. When he was released after 27 years, his first act was to beg the forgiveness of Maria’s mother.

Devotion to the young martyr grew, miracles were worked, and in less than half a century she was canonized. At her beatification in 1947, her mother (then 82), two sisters and a brother appeared with the Venerable Pope Pius XII on the balcony of S. Peter’s. Three years later, at her canonization, her attacker, 66-year-old Alessandro Serenelli, knelt among the quarter of a million people and cried tears of joy at her raising to the altars.

St Joseph’s is blessed to possess a relic of this remarkable saint.