Parish Priest – Father David B Barrett – email – olneyparishpriest@icloud.com
Parish Deacon – Rev Peter Griffin – Tel 07850499414 – email – pfgriffin@hotmail.co.uk
Parish
Administrator – Denise Wallinger Tel 01234 711212
email: ourladysolney@btconnect.com
SVP Contact – Tel 07925 125206
Parish Website: www.ourladysolney.co.uk
SOLEMNITY OF SAINTS PETER AND PAUL, APOSTLES
Saturday 27th June
6.30pm Vigil Mass For the people of the parish
Sunday 28th June
Sun 10.30am Mass Jean Griffin RIP
Monday 29th June: 13th Week of Ordinary Time
10.00am Mass Mary Cooney RIP
Tuesday30th June: First Martyrs of the Holy Roman Church
10.00am Mass Mary Diggin RIP
Wednesday 1st July: St Oliver Plunkett, Bishop & Martyr
10.00am Mass John Betts Int – in thanksgiving
Thursday 2nd July: 13th Week of Ordinary Time
10.00am Mass Bernie & Liz Wogan Int.
Friday 3rd July: ST THOMAS, APOSTLE
10.00am Mass Alexander Roberts RIP
5.00pm Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament with Rosary & Benediction
Saturday 4th July: Our Lady on Saturday
10.00am Mass Jean Griffin RIP
Sat 6.30pm Mass Caroline Saw RIP
Sunday 5th July: 14th SUNDAY OF THE YEAR (A)
Sun 10.30am Mass For the people of the parish
To watch the parish Liturgy on the internet, either ask Denise to email you the daily link, or go to our parish website and press the link button that reads TAKE ME THERE. Live Masses have the word LIVE printed on the picture on the screen: you click on that and you should be there. Just make sure that it is the correct Mass.
EXPOSITION, ROSARY AND BENEDICTION – every Friday at 5.00pm. We will continue to pray the Rosary after Mass each weekday.
RE-OPENING OUR CHURCH – Our church is open for private prayer from 11.00am to 1.00pm on Thursdays and from 4.00pm to 6.00pm on Sundays. Everything so far seems to be going well. It was lovely to see parishioners coming into the church to pray.
The Re-opening Guidelines for our Parishioners are now available on the parish website: they are a guide to what each parishioner needs to do when they visit the church – and we ask that each visitor will comply with them. The stewards will be present to give any assistance or guidance necessary.
I am very grateful to Denise and Deacon Peter for their hard work in getting this together. A big thank you to all who have volunteered for the cleaning and stewarding. So far, everyone is doing sterling work! If you have any questions, please contact Denise on the parish office email or Deacon Peter on pfgriffin@hotmail.co.uk
We may need some more volunteers to help with cleaning the church after public Masses. If you would like to be on a rota for cleaning, please contact Denise on: ourladysolney@btconnect.com
PUBLIC MASSES AND LITURGIES – The Government has said that churches can re-open for service from this coming Saturday 4th July. At present, we do not know what will be required of us and we are awaiting guidelines from Bishop’s House as to what the conditions for holding public Masses will be. There is no guarantee that we will start having public Masses immediately. I will let you know when and how through this newsletter, the parish website and at the live-streamed Masses. It looks like that it could take us time to bring back public celebration of the Mass – but we don’t know until we know! Thank you for your patience in this.
We may need your address details and your email address. Please do contact Denise to ensure that we have them on the system. Your details will only be used in connection with parish matters and will never be passed to any third party. We may have to use these details for organising public Masses.
If you know any parishioners who do not have internet access or have no email address, please could you let us know so that we can contact them by post. The email to contact us on is: ourladysolney@btconnect.com
ANGELUS – Now that we have returned to Ordinary Time after Eastertide, we return to praying the Angelus. Traditionally the prayer is said first thing in the morning, and then at midday and finally at 6.00pm. We will pray it at the end of Mass every day.
SPIRITUAL COMMUNION – Even if you are not attending Mass, you can make a Spiritual Communion every day. It is an expressed heartfelt desire to receive Our Lord even when we are unable. In making the prayer, we receive the Lord spiritually. Here is one prayer to make a Spiritual Communion:
My Jesus, I believe that You are truly present in the Most Holy Sacrament. I love You above all things, and I desire to receive You into my soul. Since I cannot at this moment receive You sacramentally, come at least spiritually into my heart. I embrace You as being already there and unite myself wholly to You. Never permit me to be separated from You. Amen.
St Alphonsus Liguori
FOODBANK – Many thanks to all of you who have been supporting the Food Bank. They are very grateful for the support of people from Olney – Catholics, Anglicans and others. The donation box remains outside the presbytery door every day and is checked often. The Food Bank needs donations of goods such as
- Long Life Juice
- Long Life Milk
- Tinned Rice Pudding / Custard
- Tinned Meat
- Tinned Vegetables
- Tinned Tomatoes
- Pasta Sauce
- Spreads
CAFOD – Last week, CAFOD launched a National Assembly for schools. It can be used both in the school setting for collective worship, as well as at home. It is all about CAFOD’s ‘Summer of Hope’ and informs, inspires and encourages children, at a time when children may really need it. It is led by passionate youths and is a real must-watch https://cafod.org.uk/News/Events/Summer-hope-assembly
BEATIFICATION OF CARLO ACUTIS – CarloAcutis died of leukaemia in 2006 aged 15. He will be declared a Blessed of the Church in October this year. He had a remarkable spiritual life while at the same time growing up like most young people do – there was a love of computers, of sports, of friends. He considered Holy Communion to be “the highway to heaven”. He said, “To be close to Jesus – that’s my life’s plan.” If you want to find out more about Carlo, see the website: https://carloacutis-en.org/ Or have a look at this YouTube account of his life: https://youtu.be/yC_oZIY_f5w
PARISH SUPPORT – If
you would like to contribute, you can either put the offering through the door
of the Presbytery – if you didn’t collect your new envelopes, just put down
your old envelope number on an envelope with your initials. If you would prefer to set up a standing order
for donations to your parish using either your on-line bank account or in your
branch, please contact Denise for the relevant details. Any cheques should be made payable to Our
Lady Help of Christians.
MASS OFFERINGS (STIPENDS) – If you have any Mass intentions to be offered, please contact Fr David, Deacon Peter or Denise. Please do include the full name of the person for whom you want the Mass to be offered, whether they are alive or deceased.
REFLECTION FOR THE SOLEMNITY OF SS PETER & PAUL
This week I have taken the reflection from the beautiful homily of Pope Benedict XVI for the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul preached in 2005.
The Feast of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul is at the same time a grateful memorial of the great witnesses of Jesus Christ and a solemn confession for the Church: one, holy, catholic and apostolic. It is first and foremost a feast of catholicity. The sign of Pentecost – the new community that speaks all languages and unites all peoples into one people, in one family of God -, this sign has become a reality. Our liturgical assembly, at which Bishops are gathered from all parts of the world, people of many cultures and nations, is an image of the family of the Church distributed throughout the earth.
Strangers have
become friends; crossing every border, we recognize one another as brothers and
sisters. This brings to fulfilment the mission of St Paul, who knew that he was
the “minister of Christ Jesus among the Gentiles, with the priestly duty
of preaching the Gospel of God so that the Gentiles [might] be offered up as a
pleasing sacrifice, consecrated by the Holy Spirit” (Rom 15: 16).
The purpose of the mission is that humanity itself becomes a living
glorification of God, the true worship that God expects: this is the deepest
meaning of catholicity – a catholicity that
has already been given to us, towards which we must constantly start out
again. Catholicity does not only express a horizontal
dimension, the gathering of many people in unity, but also a vertical
dimension: it is only by raising our eyes to God, by opening ourselves to him,
that we can truly become one.
Like Paul, Peter also came to Rome, to the city that was a centre where all the nations converged and, for this very reason, could become, before any other, the expression of the universal outreach of the Gospel. As he started out on his journey from Jerusalem to Rome, he must certainly have felt guided by the voices of the prophets, by faith and by the prayer of Israel.
Catholicity means universality – a multiplicity that becomes unity; a unity that nevertheless remains multiplicity. From Paul’s words on the Church’s universality we have already seen that the ability of nations to get the better of themselves in order to look towards the one God, is part of this unity. In the second century, the founder of Catholic theology, St Irenaeus of Lyons, described very beautifully this bond between catholicity and unity and I quote him. He says: “The Church spread across the world diligently safeguards this doctrine and this faith, forming as it were one family: the same faith, with one mind and one heart, the same preaching, teaching and tradition as if she had but one mouth. Languages abound according to the region but the power of our tradition is one and the same. The Churches in Germany do not differ in faith or tradition, neither do those in Spain, Gaul, Egypt, Libya, the Orient, the centre of the earth; just as the sun, God’s creature, is one alone and identical throughout the world, so the light of true preaching shines everywhere and illuminates all who desire to attain knowledge of the truth” (Adv. Haer. I 10, 2). The unity of men and women in their multiplicity has become possible because God, this one God of heaven and earth, has shown himself to us; because the essential truth about our lives, our “where from?” and “where to?” became visible when he revealed himself to us and enabled us to see his face, himself, in Jesus Christ. This truth about the essence of our being, living and dying, a truth that God made visible, unites us and makes us brothers and sisters. Catholicity and unity go hand in hand. And unity has a content: the faith that the Apostles passed on to us in Christ’s name.
We have said that the catholicity of the Church and the unity of the Church go together. The fact that both dimensions become visible to us in the figures of the holy Apostles already shows us the consequent characteristic of the Church: she is apostolic. What does this mean?
The Lord established Twelve Apostles just as the sons of Jacob were 12. By so doing he was presenting them as leaders of the People of God which, henceforth universal, from that time has included all the peoples. St Mark tells us that Jesus called the Apostles so “to be with him, and to be sent out” (Mk 3: 14). This seems almost a contradiction in terms. We would say: “Either they stayed with him or they were sent forth and set out on their travels”. Pope St Gregory the Great says a word about angels that helps us resolve this contradiction. He says that angels are always sent out and at the same time are always in God’s presence, and continues, “Wherever they are sent, wherever they go, they always journey on in God’s heart” (Homily, 34, 13). The Book of Revelation described Bishops as “angels” in their Church, so we can state: the Apostles and their successors must always be with the Lord and precisely in this way – wherever they may go – they must always be in communion with him and live by this communion.
The Church is apostolic, because she professes the faith of the Apostles and attempts to live it. There is a unity that marks the Twelve called by the Lord, but there is also continuity in the apostolic mission. St Peter, in his First Letter, described himself as “a fellow elder” of the presbyters to whom he writes (5: 1). And with this he expressed the principle of apostolic succession: the same ministry which he had received from the Lord now continues in the Church through priestly ordination. The Word of God is not only written but, thanks to the testimonies that the Lord in the sacrament has inscribed in the apostolic ministry, it remains a living word.
The Church is not holy by herself; in fact, she is made up of sinners – we all know this and it is plain for all to see. Rather, she is made holy ever anew by the Holy One of God, by the purifying love of Christ. God did not only speak, but loved us very realistically; he loved us to the point of the death of his own Son. It is precisely here that we are shown the full grandeur of revelation that has, as it were, inflicted the wounds in the heart of God himself. Then each one of us can say personally, together with St Paul, I live “a life of faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2: 20).
May Our Lady, Help of Christians, St Joseph, Ss Peter and Paul, St Lawrence, and St Rita pray for us all.
With my love and prayers,
Fr David B Barrett
Parish Priest