Category Archives: Weekly newsletter

Are you preparing for Lent?

Do you know that Lent is less than two weeks away? Ash Wednesday falls on 14^th February this year. Let’s not wait until Shrove Tuesday to decide what we’re going to do for Lent! Now is the time to prepare ourselves.

A good preparation for Lent is to ask ourselves, “What in my life needs to change?” If you were to die today, what would happen when you had to stand before the Judgment Seat of JESUS Christ? We would all like Him to say to us, “Well done, good and faithful servant … enter into the joy of your master” (Matthew 24:21), but is that what He would say to us? It’s not enough to say, “I believe in JESUS.” Remember, even the devil believes in JESUS and knows Who He is, as we heard in last week’s Gospel (Mark 1:21-28). Our Lord told us, “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” (Matthew 7:13-14). Unfortunately we all want the easy way, but JESUS told us that is not the way that leads to life. And so that’s why over the next few days we really need to look at ourselves and see what we need to change in our own lives.

What is it I do all the time that offends God? What are the sins I bring up constantly in Confession? Take one of your main weaknesses and work on that. There’s no point in giving up chocolate and alcohol if I merrily carry on sinning! So we need to be serious. There are terrible things going on in the world today and we don’t know what the future may hold for us or our country. So we need to be ready, and not just with food stacked up in the cellar. We need to have our souls ready.

Increase your prayer life. This is most important. If you’re just saying an Our Father and Hail Mary each day, that’s not enough. We must all be seeking deeper union with JESUS. Spend time before Him in the Blessed Sacrament. The church is open a lot during the day, and there are two hours of Adoration every Saturday morning between 10.30am and 12.30pm concluding with Benediction. Read and meditate on the Scriptures, especially the Gospels. Say the Rosary devoutly thinking on the mysteries. And then through that growth in the spiritual life, it becomes much easier to address the other areas in your life that need attention, like anger or lack of faith, addictions and so on. Then God will give you the grace to improve on them. This is the hard road to sanctity we are all being called to. “If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me” (Luke 9:23). In other words, don’t think as the world thinks. Think as Christ thinks. Be faithful to Him. Keep the Commandments. Obey the moral law as the Church has always understood it. If we strive to do these things, even if we sometimes fall, we will be pleasing to God, and He will reward us for our labours with eternal life.

Fr Paul Gillham, IC

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The new Baptistery

Many of you will have noticed we have a newly installed octagonal stone Baptismal Font in the side chapel (at one time the sacristy) by the Sacred Heart altar. Feel free to have a look. The font itself is not new. It is Victorian and has been lying in the garage for almost thirty years. Moving its five parts from the garage to the church, even with machinery, was a herculean task. It is unbelievably heavy! The font was obtained by Fr Chris Fuse from Holy Trinity Anglican Church in Loughborough when it ceased functioning as a church in 1996. The font was damaged in places but has been repaired and cleaned, and a new oak lid made for it. The project and redecoration of the chapel has been financed by funds left specifically for this purpose by our well-known late parishioner, Vera Hurry. The chapel will still be used for the Altar of Repose during Holy Week.

The original Baptistery in St Mary’s was at the back of the church where the Repository now stands. I’m not sure what happened to the font, but you can see its shape marked clearly on the floor behind the kiosk. For several years I have been keen to have a permanent font in the church, and it is fitting that a Parish Church like St Mary’s should have one. I shall be doing the first Baptism in it this Sunday afternoon. Since the 1970s we have been using a wooden portable font made in memory of Eric and Elsie Hammond, dated December 21^st 1976. We will be hanging on to this font for historical reasons, and it may even be appropriate to retain its use on certain occasions, and many of you would have been baptised in it.

A Baptistery is traditionally placed near the entrance to the church, since it is through the Sacrament of Baptism that we enter the Church and become members of Christ’s Mystical Body. While it obviously wasn’t possible to position the new font at the entrance to the church as it is today, it is, however, at the entrance of what was the original St Mary’s Church. The outside doors in the new Baptistery would have been the main entrance to the church when it was first built in 1834, and what is now the Sanctuary area was basically the entire church. It was enlarged to what it is today in 1925. So next year we will celebrate the centenary of the present church.

Do you know the date of your Baptism? If you don’t, try and find out, and then celebrate it. Most people don’t know when they were baptised, but we ought to, because it’s far more important than your birthday, because the day you were baptised was the moment you were born to eternity. You were born to eternal life by becoming a child of God.

So let us thank God for our own Baptism through which we became His adopted sons and daughters, and through which the gates of Heaven were opened to us, and we became heirs of Heaven. And let us pray for all those who in the future will be born of God through our new font at St Mary’s.

Fr Paul Gillham, IC

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Winning souls for Christ

In today’s Gospel (Mark 1:14-20) Our Lord began to call the Apostles, and He said to Simon and Andrew, “Follow Me and I will make you into fishers of men.” This call dramatically changed their lives, but it was not made only to the Apostles.  Our Lord is also calling us, and He is telling us that if we follow Him, we too will be fishers of men and bring other people to Him.

This coming Thursday, we will celebrate the Feast of the Conversion of St Paul. His conversion is one of the most dramatic events in the New Testament (Acts 9:1-9). Paul who hated Christians, was imprisoning them and even putting some to death. But then JESUS appeared to him on the road to Damascus, spoke a word to him and he was converted. He was baptised and his life changed for ever. A little earlier on in the Acts of the Apostles, we hear the story of the stoning of St Stephen (Acts 7:55-60). Saul or Paul as a younger man was standing there guarding their cloaks as the others stoned Stephen to death. In that moment Stephen prayed for him.

So when people persecute the Church today, do we pray for them? Do we pray for their conversion? Do we pray for their good, or do we pray for bad things for them? St Paul probably converted more people to the Christian Faith than any other person in history. But it was God’s plan to use him, a man who hated JESUS, who was convinced JESUS wasn’t the Messiah, and who was killing Christians, to convert the Gentiles and pagans to the Faith. So just after his encounter with JESUS, he went to the Damascus synagogue and preached to the Jews there that JESUS is the Messiah. And then he went to the pagans whom he had also hated and preached the Gospel to them. God works in mysterious ways!

Christians, and especially Catholics are hated by many in the world. Christians are the most persecuted group in the world today. We need to pray for our persecutors and for their conversion. It could be that God is going to use them to convert many people in our day. St Augustine (354-430) said that without the prayer of St Stephen there would have been no St Paul. In other words, without St Stephen’s prayer, Paul wouldn’t have received the grace of conversion. So are we willing to suffer for others, to accept the trials God deals to us and offer them to God for the conversion of our enemies? St Stephen had no idea that his death would bring about the conversion of the man who was responsible for it. And now they are great saints together in Heaven.

The Church is going through her own Passion right now, and many of you are upset and distraught about it. There is much confusion and we have people trying to change divinely revealed truth to fit with the secular agenda. But we must trust in God. He is permitting this to happen, and out of it He will bring a great good and purification of the Church. Ultimately the only thing that will matter is our fidelity to JESUS Christ. So whatever we have to face, just remain faithful. That means loving God and our neighbour. Very often our neighbour doesn’t love us, but you may be the one to touch their heart and bring about their conversion. This is the “new evangelisation”. Perhaps God wants you to be a part of it!

Fr Paul Gillham, IC

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The Holy Name of JESUS

January is the month dedicated to the Holy Name of JESUS. The name JESUS means “God saves” or “Saviour.” He saves us by reconciling us with God whom we have offended. Without JESUS, there is no reconciliation! And we know that this is a name given by God Himself, because at the Annunciation the Angel Gabriel said to Our Lady, “You will conceive in your womb and bear a Son, and you shall call His name JESUS” (Luke 1:31). The letters IHS which you often see on a stained glass window or on the back of a vestment is an ancient way of writing the name JESUS Christ. In the early Church it was often used as a secret symbol and could be found on the tombs of Christians.

Our Lord Himself tells us the great power of His Name. “Whatever you ask for in My name, I will do” (John 14:13). “Whatever!” And then in Matthew’s Gospel, He says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in My Name, He will give it to you” (John 16:23). So that’s an order from Our Lord, that we must ask, beg and invoke in His name, and then He promises everything. If God doesn’t always give us what we ask, it’s probably because in His infinite wisdom, He knows that in the long run, it’s not going to be good for us, but that’s a topic for another occasion.

Then in the Acts of the Apostles (3:6), Peter tells the paralytic, “In the name of JESUS Christ, the Nazarene, walk!” So what Our Lord had promised worked, because the man got up and walked. If there is one main theme of the Apostolic Church it is the power of JESUS’ name – to work miracles, both physical and spiritual.

The second commandment instructs us to reverence the name of God, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” and since JESUS is the name of the incarnate God, we reverence His name. But as we know today, people use the Holy Name recklessly, in anger and even as a curse. We see this often on TV and in films. This is very displeasing to God and is a sin.

The early Christians had profound reverence for the Holy Name of JESUS. In one of the early Christian hymns, which we find in St Paul’s letter to the Philippians (2:10-11) we hear: “that at the Name of JESUS every knee should bow; in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that JESUS Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

Liturgically speaking, the bending of the knee has been replaced by the bow of the head. This is really for practical reasons. So when the priest celebrates Mass, when he says the name of JESUS he should bow his head. There was a time when many people did this, but like many of our Catholic traditions, it’s fallen by the wayside. But it is a good devotion for all of us to practice, because other people do notice and they may start to imitate you.

But in all dangers and temptations we should call upon the names of JESUS and Mary. And we should pray for the grace to do this especially at the hour of death. St Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787) said that to pronounce Our Lord’s name or Our Lady’s name at the hour of death is a special grace God gives only to those He intends to save. What a great sign this is of predestination and of salvation.

So let us pray that we will always use the Holy Name of JESUS with love, devotion and reverence. As St Peter himself preached, “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under Heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

Fr Paul Gillham, IC

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“We have Seen His Star in the East”

With this being the first newsletter of 2024, on behalf of Fr David and myself, may I wish you a very happy New Year! Today is the Solemnity of the Epiphany when we celebrate the three wise men from the East coming to worship the Child JESUS, bringing Him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. This is a continuation of our celebration of the birth of our Divine Saviour, God made man. Up until this point His birth had been revealed only to Israel. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and the shepherds tending their flocks in the field had been told by the Angel of Our Lord’s birth and that they should seek Him out. They were all Jews of course. But God didn’t only come for the people of Israel. He came for the whole of mankind. This truth is represented today by the coming of the Magi.

So who were the Magi? They were pagan kings and astrologers who could never have come to know the True God without what we call the divine condescension (God becoming man). We might wonder how they could have known of the birth of our Saviour by means of a star. St John Chrysostom (ca 349-407) gives us an answer in his Sermon for the Epiphany:

“We read in the books of Moses that there was a certain prophet of the Gentiles, Balaam, who foretold in definite words the coming of Christ and His incarnation from a virgin. For among other things he said: A star shall rise out of Jacob, and a sceptre shall spring up from Israel (Numbers 24:17). The Wise men, who saw the new star in the East, are said to be descendants of this Balaam, a prophet from the Gentiles. And seeing the sign of the new star they accordingly believed, knowing that the prophecy of their ancestor was fulfilled.”

However, this was no normal star. It was something entirely supernatural. It appeared on the night of Our Lord’s birth and then promptly disappeared again after the arrival of the Magi. It moved with them and rested exactly over the house where the newborn Child was. Normal stars do not do this. The star was also extraordinarily bright, and although smaller than a normal star, it appeared bigger as it was closer to the earth. These peculiarities are all in the Gospel account. Therefore it seems attempts to explain the star scientifically are rather pointless, since God put it there simply so as the Magi would know the location of the newborn King. The closest parallel we have, according to St Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), is the pillar of fire and cloud which led Israel out of Egypt in the Old Testament. Just as God had liberated His people Israel from slavery in Egypt through the pillar of fire and cloud, He has now liberated the Gentiles from slavery to sin by the guidance of this star. As we sing in the well known Christmas carol: “Oh, star of wonder, star of might. Star with royal beauty bright. Westward leading, still proceeding, Guide us to thy perfect light.”

Fr Paul Gillham, IC

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