Newsletter 8th September 2013
I have been here all the summer but this week – from Monday to Friday – I will be away for a few days. There will be no 7.30 Mass but I hope that the Bishop will be able to celebrate Mass at 10am on most of Tuesday and Wednesday and there will be a Eucharistic Service on the other days..
There is Coffee in the Angelus Room after the morning Masses today for the benefit of Cafod.
Thanks for those who have offered to become Eucharistic Ministers. The instructions will start shortly and I will let you know when they will be.
A reminder about the First Communion classes – there will be a meeting for parents – not the children – in the big hall on Tuesday 17th
September at 8pm. I will explain about the classes, give out the books and also give out the timetables. If at all possible it is important for parents to come along.
Today is the birthday of Our Blessed Lady but the feast is replaced by the Sunday Mass today. Next Saturday is the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.
Lots of baptisms at present – a request please – ensure that the day is possible before you book a date – life has become difficult of late with parents changing the date three or four times, sometimes at the last minute.
The day on the railway on the Bank Holiday was most enjoyable. “Tornado” was visiting for some repairs in the works. It snow painted in the Royal Blue used for express engines in the early days of British Railways – and looks splendid. My own journey was complex, with a train to Farnborough and a replacement bus by way of Aldershot and Farnham to Alton.
A prayer for today:
O Lord, who never failest to help and govern those whom thou dost bring up in thy steadfast fear and love: keep us, we beseech thee, under the protection of thy good providence, and make us to have a perpetual fear and love of thy Holy Name; through Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen.
A good old favourite is bread and butter pudding. Here is my recipe. Some buttered slices of bread with the crusts removed. Place in a dish and scatter raisins between each layer. Heat some milk and a little single cream gently and beat in three eggs and some caster sugar. Pass through a strainer and pour over the eggs. Make in a moderate oven until the top is crisply brown.
The statue in Greenwich Park reminds me of Cory’s poem:
Quebec was once a Frenchman’s town, but twenty years ago,
King George the Second sent a man call General Wolfe, you know
To clamber up a precipice and look into Quebec,
As you’d look down a hatchway when standing on the deck.
And do you know this by Lord Dunsany?
‘And were you pleased?’ they asked of Helen in hell.
‘Pleased?’ answered she ‘ when all Troy’s towers fell;
And dead were Priam’s sons, and lost his throne?
And such a war was fought as none had known;
And even the gods took part; and all because
Of me alone! Pleased?
I should say I was!’
I am trying hard this week, so here is something from Eliot:
Tennyson and Browning are poets, and they think; but they do not feel their thought as immediately as the odour of a rose. A thought for Donne was an experience; it modified his sensibility.
And I like this but from Merton:
One of the first signs of a saint may well be the fact that other people do not know what ot make of him. In fact they are not sure whether he is crazy or only proud: but it must at least be pride to be haunted by some individual ideal which nobody but God really comprehends. And he has inescapable difficulties in applying all the abstract norms of “perfection” to his own life. He cannot seem to make his life fit in with the books.
(Though not part of Merton, I am sure that this applies to women as well.)
Best wishes to you all,
Monsignor Nicholas Rothon