It was lovely to have a live congregation at the weekend.  Many people are naturally cautious as yet.  So far we still have plenty of room if you are thinking of coming back to Mass, but remember that the dispensation allowing us not go to Mass on Sunday  is still in place and that you should not come if you are nervous or vulnerable in any way.  We will continue to deliver the bulletin and to livestream the 10am Mass.

Homily by Fr Hugh

Who does Jesus think is in the Kingdom of Heaven?  We might say: Well, people who have discovered God through Jesus. Catholics certainly, or possibly our view is wider, all Christians.  We are often pretty sure we know who is not likely to be included, though we know that the boundaries may be a bit woolly at times, and we may find ourselves half in and half out at times.  But when Jesus is speaking about the Kingdom of God, he is not talking about creating a Church as a super-club of humans that get it, that is made up of those who are fertile ground for the seed of the gospel, as opposed to those who aren’t.  His starting point is that we are all God’s creation.  We begin as natural members of the Kingdom regardless of who we are or what faith we profess or none.  And he comes to help us realise that our happiness is ultimately found when we once more discover our God-given roots.  There was a discussion on the radio recently where African Americans had made connections through DNA-tracing with family in Africa.  Some of you might remember Kunta Kinte and the film ‘Roots’ back in 1976. This ongoing and successful search for roots, as all said on the radio, has brought them a real peace.  They had found where they came from….

Complete 15th Sunday Homily

Download Bulletin 12th July 2020

 

LIVESTREAM CONTINUES of the 10AM SUNDAY MASS.  There will be no further livestreaming of Wednesday Evening Prayer.

To watch the Livestream go to CLICK HERE FOR LIVESTREAM ON YOUTUBE at the top of this website. The parish YouTube channel will appear then click on the LIVE NOW video.

 

Readings for 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Daily Prayers Week 15

 

 

The Church will be reopening for Mass this weekend: Saturday 4th Vigil 6pm and Sunday 5th, 10am and 6pm.  There will be no Mass at Sedbergh this weekend.  Confessions are only as a matter of urgency for now.

Please have a read of the bulletin for further details.

Download Bulletin 5th July 2020

 

Fr Hugh’s Homily for 14th Sunday

When we hear the word ‘yoke’ these days we usually think of eggs (as in yolk) but for farmers it was, of course, what you used to bind the oxen or horses together so that they could plough as a unit, (and this is close to the original meaning of the word ‘religion’ which comes from the Latin word ‘to bind.’)   If you have never seen one, in Great Eccleston where I used to live near Blackpool, the owner of the West End Stores (an amazing hardware store) used to have a farming museum above his shop, I don’t know if it is still there.  It meant also the heavy wooden bar that milkmaids (if you are allowed to call them that these days) would carry milk pails around, or very early on binding slaves ( a good example can be seem in the film Taras Bulba where Tony Curtis spends a lot of his time in one.)  So a yoke means a burden too.  Both of these meanings Jesus could have had in mind in the gospel, whose words here only occur in Matthew’s gospel.  Matthew wrote from a very Jewish point of view, possibly for a very Jewish based community.  In their study of the Law, the Pharisees referred to the ‘yoke of the Torah,’ the ‘yoke of the Law.’  In the sense that the people of God were bound together by the Law.  Today even for many secular Jews the Law is important.  But Jesus turns this around here.  He can see that what should be uniting people to each other and to God, has become instead a burden, and to him our encounter with God should never be a burden, but exactly the opposite….

Complete Homily by Fr Hugh

 

LIVESTREAM CONTINUES…..

10AM SUNDAY MASS &  WEDNESDAY EVENING PRAYER, 8 – 8.30PM

To watch the Livestream go to CLICK HERE FOR LIVESTREAM ON YOUTUBE at the top of this website. The parish YouTube channel will appear then click on the LIVE NOW video.

 

Readings for 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Daily Prayers Week 14

 

Read the July Catholic Voice newspaper here

 

 

 

The new edition of the Parish Magazine is out now!

 

Download Parish Magazine Summer 2020

The Church is reopening for Private Prayer on Monday 29th June and Weekend Masses will begin 4th/5th July.  Please have a read of the bulletin for further details.

Download Bulletin 28th June 2020

 

Homily for the Feast of SS. Peter and Paul

We’ve got two very different men here.  Let’s look at the younger one first.  Saul.  Dead keen. Trained as a Pharisee, a strict Jew.  Been at the stoning of the first Christian to die, Stephen, and thoroughly approved of it as the Acts of the Apostles says.  He is an outsider in Jerusalem, coming from Tarsus, in what is now South East Turkey, but he is desperate to prove himself, he has got to be more Jewish than the Jerusalem guys.  A young zealot.  He goes of his own will, he is not asked or told, he goes to the religious leaders and gets letters to clear the Christians out of Damascus.  This is going to be the journey that is going to make his name.  And then Peter.  Also a Jew, of course, but probably not so fanatical.  I doubt Peter gave religion much of a thought, though he would have been a regular synagogue attender.  Religion was just a part of his life.  A quiet country bloke. Galilee was seen as a backwater and a lot less properly Jewish than Jerusalem.  But he was never going to travel anyway except for the big pilgrimages, and was probably dying to get home as soon as they set off (like many people, really glad to get back from holiday.)  He was married, we don’t know about children, and worked with others, partners in a way.  So his life is set, and Capharnaum and the Sea of Galilee are his horizon.  And probably pretty happy with all that.  There is absolutely no reason why these two men should become anything than what they set out to be….

Complete Homily for the Feast of SS Peter and Paul

 

10AM SUNDAY MASS &  WEDNESDAY EVENING PRAYER, 8 – 8.30PM

To watch the Livestream go to CLICK HERE FOR LIVESTREAM ON YOUTUBE at the top of this website. The parish YouTube channel will appear then click on the LIVE NOW video.

Readings for Saints Peter and Paul

Daily Prayers Week 13

 

Download Bulletin 21st June 2020

 

Homily by Fr Hugh

The Morecambe Bay Poverty Truth Commission is one of a number around the country.  (Our diocesan Faith and Justice Commission has some input into it.)  The idea is that it brings people who have local power together with those who have none.  So, local councillors, police officers, M.P.s perhaps, heads of the local NHS and Social Security offices and so on, those who run things, come together with all those who have little or no say usually, such as the unemployed, single-parents, those with disabilities, little education, so that one group can listen to the other.  One of the things the commission does is help the last group to express their opinions, train them to be able to speak, have the courage to get up in front of others, and the other is to get the first group to listen.  To hear those who have had training, and with it grown in the courage to speak, is very moving.  But both have to happen.  One side has to learn how to speak, the other to listen.  When we think about it, when we go into a discussion of any kind, we do so with our own preconceived ideas about what is right or possible, and we automatically filter, and judge, what the other says through this.  By now you might be asking what this has to do with today’s readings.  Well, the gospel is a set of sayings of Jesus, put together by the writer.  The central passage is about all our worth, value, self-esteem.  And what and who threatens that.  These can come in many kinds, they could be religious, military or social ones, those within us, mental ones, spiritual ones, our lack of courage. (The lion on the Wizard of Oz.) But one of the biggest is that we are ignored, or we feel we are. No- one listens to us…..

Complete Homily for 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time

 

LIVESTREAM is now on YouTube

10AM SUNDAY MASS

8 – 8.30PM WEDNESDAY EVENING PRAYER

To watch the Livestream go to CLICK HERE FOR LIVESTREAM ON YOUTUBE at the top of this website. The parish YouTube channel will appear then click on the LIVE NOW video.

 

Readings for 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time_

Daily Prayers Week 12

 

Download Bulletin 14th June 2020

 

Corpus Christi Homily by Fr Hugh

We often have First Holy Communions about now, sadly not this year, when I take out a £5 note and tear it up to entertain the children.  Why? You might ask.  Well, on all our banknotes it says, ‘I promise to pay the bearer the sum of so many pounds,’ signed by the Chief Cashier, for the Governor and Company of the bank of England.  My point is that a piece of paper (or plastic now, not so easy to tear up) can really become £5 because we have an agreement, us and the Bank.  So when we go into a shop the seller does not say, ‘I don’t want that bit of plastic.’  Through the Bank’s agreement with the people, we can all trust that it has become £5.  From there I go on to say, bread and wine can become Jesus’ body and blood, change, because we and God have an agreement which Jesus gave us at the Last Supper so that when we come together for Mass we are sharing in his sacrifice.  I think the most that the children remember is the money being torn up.  However it does sort of make a point.  However for all we can discuss how the bread and wine change, the main point is that we have an agreement, or in church language a ‘covenant’ with God.  This is the ‘new covenant’ as we pray every Sunday at Mass.  So what I want to talk about is not St. Thomas and Transubstantiation, interesting as that is, but the wider context of our Mass, because taking it out of context can mean we lose sight of what we are truly about…..

Complete Corpus Christi Homily by Fr Hugh

 

LIVESTREAM is now on YouTube

10AM SUNDAY MASS

8 – 8.30PM WEDNESDAY EVENING PRAYER

To watch the Livestream go to CLICK HERE FOR LIVESTREAM ON YOUTUBE at the top of this website. The parish YouTube channel will appear then click on the LIVE NOW video.

 

Readings for Corpus Christi

Daily Prayers for Week 11 Ordinary Time

 

Download Bulletin 7th June 2020

 

Holy Trinity Homily by Fr Hugh

I think I say this every year on this feast, but for all the theology I have studied when I think of the Trinity what comes to mind is ‘Nuns on the Run’.  That scene where Robbie Coltrane and Eric Idle are hiding out as nuns in the convent and Reverend Mother tells Eric he has to take a girls’ class on the Trinity.  Panicking, Eric, who knows nothing about religion, is sitting in a cell, with Robbie, both dressed as nuns, and he asks Robbie, a lapsed Catholic, what the Trinity is.  Lighting a cigarette and pushing back his wimple Robbie says: ‘Hmm, the Trinity, well that is a bit of a…tough one.’  Not the actual words he uses.  And so it is.

When Moses meets God at the Burning Bush in Exodus he asks God who he is.  First God says: I am the God of your Fathers, of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.’  That is easy enough. God is the traditional God of the tribe.  It is what an ancient society would have expected.  But Moses pushes God further, ‘Who should I say you are, what is your name?’….

Complete Holy Trinity Homily by Fr Hugh

 

LIVESTREAM is now on YouTube

10AM SUNDAY MASS

8 – 8.30PM WEDNESDAY EVENING PRAYER

To watch the Livestream go to CLICK HERE FOR LIVESTREAM ON YOUTUBE at the top of this website. The parish YouTube channel will appear then click on the LIVE NOW video.

Readings for Most Holy Trinity

Daily Prayers Week 10

 

 

Download Bulletin 31st May 2020

 

Pentecost Homily by Fr Hugh

There was a very quiet volunteer at St. Martin in the Fields, Anne Nightingale, who chatted to the homeless men who came in, never made a big fuss, just got to know them.  One day, after she had been coming for a while, she gently suggested that as she knew some people at the National Gallery across the road, perhaps she could take some of the guys over there.  Some of the men who volunteered were a bit off-the-wall in certain ways but off she went with a bunch of them.  Over the next weeks she got tours of the paintings in the gallery for them with guides, she began art classes, and by the time she had finished there was a whole set of cards made out of the paintings the guys had done.  The National Gallery helped out and the pride those men had, seeing their cards on sale, was amazing.  The gifts we have can be very well buried.  All sorts of events in our lives can help bury them.  But one of the great messages the Holy Spirit has for us is that we are all gifted in a huge variety of ways……

Complete Pentecost Homily by Fr Hugh

 

LIVESTREAM is now on YouTube

10AM SUNDAY MASS

8 – 8.30PM WEDNESDAY EVENING PRAYER

To watch the Livestream go to CLICK HERE FOR LIVESTREAM ON YOUTUBE at the top of this website. The parish YouTube channel will appear then click on the LIVE NOW video.

 

Pentecost Readings

Daily Prayers Week 9

 

Read the June Catholic Voice Newspaper here

 

 

 

 

 

Download Bulletin 24th May 2020

 

Homily by Fr Hugh

During the washing up, have you ever looked at a tray of greasy water, and when you drop into it the washing-up liquid, the grease shoots to the side, clearing a space in the middle.  That to me is the opening image of Creation in the Bible.  There is a chaotic mass, turbulent waters, and then the Spirit appears over it and a safe, protected space is suddenly created in which Creation can take place.  In the Israelite prayers they often refer to the danger of the waters just beyond Creation flowing back in if God fails to protect them.  After this the process of Creation begins, and in the early story, in a week.  But the time is not important, what the early story-tellers were trying to express is that it was a process, a development, but always with God present in some way, with God always enjoying it, seeing that it was good, as the Bible says repeatedly.  We would tell the story differently today.  With our modern scientific knowledge, which itself has been and is a developing understanding of the universe, we can say more about the physical start and in the 20th century began to know more about the complexity of time and space, which we could not have imagined before.  No doubt people in years to come will consider our efforts simplistic, but a useful stage.  Evolution goes on in the universe and our abilities are part of that growth…..

Complete Seventh Sunday of Easter Homily by Fr Hugh

 

LIVESTREAM is now on YouTube

10AM SUNDAY MASS

8 – 8.30PM WEDNESDAY EVENING PRAYER

To watch the Livestream go to CLICK HERE FOR LIVESTREAM ON YOUTUBE at the top of this website. The parish YouTube channel will appear then click on the LIVE NOW video.

 

Seventh Sunday of Easter Mass Readings

 

Daily Prayers Easter week 7

 

Ascension Day Homily by Fr Hugh

There are times we need to celebrate.  One of the things that the Lockdown has done, is to deprive us of that.  Some things can be postponed, open top bus rides through the city if your team have won the league for example.  But for others, like those ending Secondary School or University, getting your results or degree is obviously the main thing you are there for, but what we want to do is celebrate, the Grad Ball or the School Prom.  It is not the end of the world, not to be able to hold them, but psychologically it is a big loss.  It is that moment we come together with all those we have spent years with, and possibly for some, we will not see them again for some time or ever.  It is a rite of passage.  (I remember my University career ended in 1977, a hot summer, not as hot as 76, it was the Queen’s Silver Jubilee and pubs in Lancaster were selling beer at 1952 prices, and discos, I do mean discos, Saturday Night Fever came out that year, who can doubt the 70s had the best music?, ended with Brown Sugar.)  Now the Ascension, moving from the ridiculous to the sublime, is the end of Jesus’ time on earth.  It appears at the end of Luke’s gospel and at the beginning of his next book, The Acts of the Apostles.  It is the hinge between the two books.  As the gospel comes to an end, and Jesus rises to heaven, the Apostles rush down to the Temple to celebrate…..

Complete Ascension Day Homily by Fr Hugh

 

MASS FOR THE ASCENSION OF THE LORD WILL BE LIVESTREAMED FROM CHURCH THIS EVENING AT 7PM (THURSDAY 21ST MAY)

To watch the Livestream go to CLICK HERE FOR LIVESTREAM ON YOUTUBE at the top of this website. The parish YouTube channel will appear then click on the LIVE NOW video.

Click here for Ascension Day Readings