newsletter 22nd July

Newsletter: 22nd July 2012

Newsletter are written well in advance – but if all goes well I hope to have returned safely from my visit to the hospital for a small operation.

Thank you for all your kind wishes, prayers and offers of help over these days.

This week Father Chris Willis from the English College in Rome will be celebrating most of the Masses and looking after the parish.

Wednesday of this week is the feast of the Apostle, St. James, the patron of Spain.

Olympics are almost here so a reminder that there will be an additional Mass at 7am next Sunday for the benefit of visitors and for those who will be attending the games.

I should be attending a meeting Canary Wharf on Tuesday. Father Chris will still be here so there will be a Mass in the Church at 10am as usual.

Thanks to all those who have returned the forms for First Communion and Confirmation classes. If there are any more, please let me have them back as soon as possible as I need to plan the classes and to purchase the books during the summer.

In recent weeks, I have been cutting back the roses. They were planted so that they would come into bloom in sequence and provide a display for the greater part of the summer. If I cut them back, some of them produce a further crop of flowers later in the year. A report on the basil: it still survives in its pot but does not seem to be making any major progress. I am leaving it for the time being and will not re-plant it in the herb garden.
The olive tree continues to survive, with minimum attention, which is good news.

It is almost the first birthday for the great-nephew. Already a great traveller: he was in New York recently for the second time. Not many words yet but quite strong and almost ready to walk. I will ask his parents to bring him across again one Sunday.

Some railway news: the contract for the refurbishment of our local trains has now been completed: it is hard to think that they are 20 years old and half way through their working life.
I still have found memories of the slam-door stock, with individual compartments for smokers. On a winter’s day, with a good fug, it was difficult to see one’s neighbour.

A recipe from Murcia in Spain. Soak some red beans overnight and cook them until they are tender. Add a cup of rice and some green means. Meanwhile cook an onion and some garlic in some oil and add some chopped and peeled tomatoes, cooking them until they are tender. Add this to the rice and beans and season as necessary, cooking for a few wore minutes. The rice should have absorbed nearly all the water from cooking the beans.

More from The Cloud of Unknowing:
Attend in humility to the unseeing movement of love in your heart. I don’t mean your physical heart but your spiritual one, that is, your will. Be careful not to interpret physically what is meant spiritually. The earthy and physical fancies of inventive imaginations are very fruitful of error.
(Now what does this mean?)

Here is a wonderful parody of Hopkins’ style, based on the text on a cereal packet:
Parenthesis-proud, bracket hold, happiest with hyphens
The writers stager intoxicated by terms, adjective-unsteadied-
Describing in graceless phrases fizzling like soda siphons
All things crisp, crunch, malted, tangy, sugared and shredded.

As it is the summer here is something from Catullus:
Odi et amo; quare id faciam, fortasse requires.
Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.
Which means –
I hate and love; you ask perhaps how can that be.
I do not know, yet I feel it happen; and I am in anguish.

After this, you will need a prayer: here is one from St. Anselm.
O Lord our God, grant us grace to desire thee with a whole heart, so that desiring thee we may seek and find thee; and so finding thee, may love three; and loving thee, may hate those sins which separate us from thee, for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Best wishes to you all

Monsignor Nicholas Rothon

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