Some years ago on this day at Mass in St Edmund’s I commented in my homily that today’s saint reminded us of the Catholic Church’s commitment to European unity. A very faithful worshipper, who has now gone to his rest, was so offended by this remark that he asked to
Continue readingYesterday, and I am sorry I didn’t post a separate entry about the scripture readings, we broadened our coverage in the first readings at weekday Mass of the later parts of the New Testament, after only two readings from 2 Peter, to the Second Letter to Timothy. I will share
Continue readingToday’s gospel reading (Mark 12: 13-17) is well known, but at the same time a passage so often spectacularly misunderstood and distorted. The encounter between Jesus and the Pharisees and Herodians (two groups who loathed each other) about the payment of taxes to Caesar has always excited the imagination. In
Continue readingThe Easter season ended yesterday so our cycle of readings at Mass resumes as ‘Ordinary Time’, which we left ages ago on Shrove Tuesday (and it really does feel like a long time ago). The first readings this week are from the Second Letter of Peter (1:2-7). This composition reads
Continue readingToday is Whitsunday (the old English name), the feast of Pentecost. Again,I don’t want to repeat my homily at the livestreamed 9:30 Mass today (www.saintedmunds.net). I have also reposted a note from the Catholic Womens League reminding us that a large number of young people from our parish were due
Continue readingTomorrow, Whitsunday, is the last day of the Easter season. So this morning at Mass we conclude our weekday Mass cycle of readings from Acts and John, the final verses of each book. The final reading from Acts (28: 16-20, 30-31) shows us a picture of St Paul under what
Continue readingIn the calendar of the Church today is the feast day of Pope St Paul VI, pope from 1963 to 1978. Normally a feast day is the anniversary of a saint’s death: Pope Paul died on the feast of the Transfiguration (6 August) and after his canonisation his feast was
Continue readingSt Augustine’s day yesterday displaced the reading you would have heard at Mass from Acts 20, which contains the very emotional farewell St Paul makes to his friends before he leaves them. He then travels to Jerusalem where he is arrested, and speaks in today’s reading (part of chapters 22
Continue readingToday is the feast day of St Augustine of Canterbury, secondary patron of our archdiocese of Southwark, shown here in a panel in Westminster Cathedral alongside Pope St Gregory the Great, who sent him to England in 597 to re-evangelise the country. He had been a monk in Rome and
Continue reading Today is the feast of St Philip Neri, one of the best love saints of the Counter-Reformation period in the 16th century – the founder of the Oratory religious congregation which runs the Oratory school in Fulham which a number of boys from our parish have attended over the
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