Sixty Years A Priest

The Holy Father celebrated 60 years of priesthood by doing what he has done every day of his priesthood, he celebrated Mass. This Mass on this feast and in St Peter's Basilica is the particular occasion when the pope gives the pallium to new archbishops. Archbishop Stack of Cardiff received his pallium. Philip Andrews, a follower of this modest blog, was spotted serving Mass. Philip is a seminarian for the archdiocese of Southwark. The seminarians of England & Wales are pictured with Pope Benedict at Oscott at the end of the Pope's visit to these shores last September. Today in Arundel & Brighton we had our own jubilee celebrations at the cathedral. My beloved predecessor, Canon Eric Flood, celebrates 50 years of priesthood this year although alas, he was too sick to join us. We looked forward to David King's ordination in a few weeks time. Three priests of the Ordininariate of Our Lady of Walsingham from this area were present. They spoke of the warmth of welcome they had received, which is heartening. It is an amazing gift to be in communion with Peter.

The newly confirmed

Jane Frances, Rose, David, George Preca be sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Peace be with you.

Preparing for the big day

Victoria & Pamela McNeill, daughter and mother in law, have been arranging the flowers in church for the First Holy Communion Mass tomorrow. Lovely blues, whites and greens. Meanwhile Kirsty, the catechist, has been organising the cake for the parish celebration after Mass. Last week the children made their second confession, this Saturday we made our final rehearsal. Fr Isidore will concelebrate the Mass with me. I will give the children the Body of Christ and Fr Isidore will give them the Precious Blood. Please say a little prayer tonight for Elodie, Sophie, Emma, Hannah, Kate, Luke, Bailey and Joseph.

St Pancras' ombrellino in use at Lanherne

We have three ombrellini (?) at St Pancras. One is in use at St Mary Magdalene's in Brighton, one we have kept for our own use and one has been given to the Franciscan sisters of the Immaculate at Lanherne. They use the traditional liturgy and calender so they celebrated Corpus Christi yesterday. This is a picture of their procession. The convent is in a beautiful spot in West Cornwall. Sister Maria Rosa Pia sent this picture today together with the community's thanks. It is lovely to think that we here at St Pancras Lewes have a place in the prayers of these sisters.  

Carpet of Flowers Arundel

This year the Arundel Corpus Christi carpet of flowers commemorates the Tenth anniversary of the episcopal ordination of Bishop Kieran and the Millennium anniversary of devotion to Our Lady of Walsingham. Even though we celebrate Corpus Christi on a Sunday in England and Wales, there is a Solemn Votive Mass of Corpus Christi t Arundel on the traditional Thursday followed by a procession of the Blessed Sacrament and Benediction in the grounds of Arundel Castle. At St Pancras the Mass at 12.30pm today will be of St Thomas Garnet, Jesuit priest and martyr. Our English Martyrs heroically gave their lives for love of the Mass and Holy Church, we are asked to give half an hour or so here and there. A humbling thought......... 

Mayfield

.

The Catholic secondary school I most regularly visit is St Leonard's Mayfield.

The staff and girls give a great welcome and I am delighted to have the opportunity to offer Mass in their lovely chapel. The school is the foundation of the Sisters of the Holy Child Jesus themselves founded by Cornelia Connelly.

Cornelia died on 18 April 1879, at St Leonards on Sea Sussex, where she had established the first St Leonards school. Today, the Sisters of the Holy Child Jesus are active in fourteen countries, striving to live the apostolic life as Cornelia did, seeking to meet the wants of the age through works of spiritual mercy.

They are engaged in education and related spiritual and pastoral ministries.

In 1992, the Church proclaimed Cornelia as Venerable.

This is her tomb in Mayfield where I said a prayer for her intercession.

 I bought a cake and some excellent bread from the local baker.

My only regret was that I did not have enough time to call on the parish priest, the splendid Fr Mario Sanderson.

Red Shirts

The Red Shirts are a young peoples' group in our diocese. They make pilgrimage to Lourdes with the diocesan pilgrimage and make a significant contribution to the workings of the pilgrimage. They are not quite old enough to be helpers but many of them will become helpers; they are too old to be part of the regular family groups.
Ray Mooney, a long standing Lourdes friend of mine and our lead diocesan youth worker, pioneered this group. On Saturday the Red Shirt Group Leaders attended the Vigil Mass at St Pancras with Ray (pictured far right) and stayed on to supper in the Presbytery. We ate a meaty lasagne, green salad and stawberries and cream.
The preparation Ray and the leaders undertake is crucial for the success of the group. The excellent Fr Rob Esdaile is the group's chaplain.
Ray talked about 'a top of the mountain experience' for young people. Like Moses in today's Trinity Sunday first reading they descend with shining faces and make a real diiference, in the grace of Almighty God, to their families, parishes and schools.
My godson George is next to Ray in the picture. He was a red shirt two years ago. This year his younger brother Henry (another godson- I am very proud of them both) is called to shine in Lourdes with some 120 others.

Our Lady of Lourdes, Pray for us

St Bernadette, Pray for us 

Pastor juventus

Fr Dominic Allain and I were at university together. London the university, Kings the college, from 1984-87. Fr Dominic read English. He has always had a way with words but their power come from a deep interior  life. He speaks with the wisdom of the man who prays and not the cleverness of the man who got a good degree (which he did!). The Catholic Herald publish his column every week. He said recently of the Angelus: 'Herein is the drama of what it is to be human. First, God is not remote, nor man abandoned to some existential search for him, but rather God seeks man out. God is not the watchmaker; he reveals himself as one among us....'

This week, as we returned to the recitation of the Angelus (Regina caeli during Eastertide), the pace of the church bell in Lewes changed. We ring it automatically at St Pancras. A slower toll for a longer prayer. Some people, including our freinds and neighbours,  have noticed! Tonight I dined with Fr Dominic and a new seminarian, Andrew Penson, who begins at Valladolid in Spetember. There was a little wisdom, a lorra laughs and some golden silence.

Pray for us O holy Mother of God,

That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

Feast of St Richard of Chichester, Secondary Patron of the diocese of Arundel & Brighton

St Richard's Prayer

Thanks be to you, our Lord Jesus Christ,
for all the benefits which you have given us,
for all the pains and insults which you have borne for us.
Most merciful Redeemer, Friend and Brother,
may we know you more clearly,
love you more dearly,
and follow you more nearly,
Amen.

Please pray for those to be ordained priest in Arundel Cathedral by Bishop Kieran Conry on Friday 17th June

for the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham.

Jan Biggerstaff RIP

Today is the Second Anniversary of the death of our darling Ma.

This photo was taken just a few months before she died.

Lord for your faithful people life is changed, not ended.

Il Santo, l'amico

Today is the feast of St Anthony of Padua. I was privileged to celebrate the Mass of the feast at the Church of St Francis & St Anthony, Crawley. I was ordained on the Solemnity of Pentecost and celebrated my first Mass the following day fifteen years ago in that church, so today was especially significant. This picture is at the altar of St Anthony. This is an excerpt from the homily at Mass.
How can I tell you about this saint? He was born in Lisbon and became an Augustinian before entering the friars minor. He yearned for mission in Africa but ended up preaching in Italy. But these are simple facts about the saint who is our friend. And a friend both famaliar and attractive. For the people of this parish this saint-friend has shared our tears and joined our happiness. We know his face and have seen him weep with us and laugh with us.  But his attraction is so that we, with our patron, might be attracted to Our Lord himself who springs from Anthony's very life so that: 'It is not I who live, but Christ who lives within me....' Anthony's attractiveness to us becomes our attractiveness to others, in Christ and for Christ.
If you haven't been to Crawley recently do go; the shops and eateries are plentiful, the welcome is warm, the Friary church is beautiful and there is also the lovely, attractive shrine of Anthony of Padua, saint and friend.

Fathers & Sons of encouragement

Today is the feast of St Barnabas. It is also my father's 67th birthday. I thank God for my father and the gift of fatherhood  from which my brother and I have benefited in ways too deep for words. St Barnabas was a good man, filled with the Holy Spirit and with faith. I consider that my father has a very suitable patron. Yesterday we took him out to a jolly good lunch in London. I wont name the restaurant as they may be inundated with punters and it will be impossible for their regulars to get tables! I understand that in the aftemath of the royal wedding waiting time for a table at The Goring is about 3 months. Please say a prayer for Bill seen here receiving Holy Communion at Holy Mass in Rome. 

Wonderful Women

Today I called by, with Fr Jonathan Martin, to see the Fransican sisters of Littlehampton in their mother house. I can't think why I do not go more often. These religious women are holy, great fun, wise and hospitable. I had bumped into Sr Savio & Sr Dolores with Tony the dog on the sea front. This Tony is Tony IV, his fortunate forbears have all been Tonys. Sr Bonaventure reminded us that when Tony is called, if Mgr Tony Barry is in ear shot it is the monsignor who jumps to heel! Sr Peter, Sr Damien, Sr Anastasia and Sr Augustine joined us for tea. My own special pal and spiritual powerhouse is Sr Dominic. These wonderful women ask nothing and seem to give everything. Last weekend they celebrated the Centenary of their congregation with Bishop Kieran.

Resurrection Promise

At the end of the 1980s I returned from a year in Nice and took up a place at the College of the Resurrection, Mirfield. I began preparation for ordination in the Church of England. Growth in holiness, growth in wisdom and growth in pastoral effectiveness were the three pillars, as it were, of our formation. Key to all of this was the Principal, Denys Lloyd, himself a member of the Community of the Resurrection, the largest community of religious men in Anglicanism. The community and college history and ethos and the strong sense of common life was imbued by us all. In 1990 Denys left Mirfield and was received into the Catholic Church, he was eventually ordained a priest for the diocese of East Anglia. This made a great impact on us all. From my Mirfield year alone five of us have become Catholic priests.
Last night Fr Denys came to celebrate Mass and stayed to dinner. It was a great joy to see him and talk over old times with a great deal of humour and perhaps some important insights. I didn't relate this story to the people at Mass, the liturgy is not for that, and anyway, what is important is that Denys and I are now Catholic priests.

Oxfordshire countryside

My friends Ric and Val Morton Jack live in the Oxfordshire village of Swerford, near Chipping Norton. At noon today I baptised their first born, Arthur John. I celebrated Ric and Val's wedding at the Oxford  Oratory a couple of years ago, so today was particularly special. Unusally the baptism took place in the old church in Swerford with the agreement of the parish priest, Bishop Mark Jabele and the kind permission of the rector and his lovely assistant, Wendy Cunningham. I have been pondering at Eastertide baptisms a thought I had for the Easter Sunday 10.30am Mass; simply that in a human face, the face of the risen Christ, we see our God. In the faces of those who become Christ's through baptism we are privileged to understand in such an initmate way that baptism is the sacrament of eternal life. Through our baptism 'we shall go out to meet Christ with the all the saints in the heavenly Kingdom.'    
Arthur was very happy throughout and only flagged a little towards the end. He is the first Morton Jack grandson and the third of four for the Sloane family whom I know from my Camberley days.The splendid standard of Sloane hospitality was maintained by Val Morton Jack's excellent duck ragu.  

Coffee after First Friday Mass

On the first Friday of the month we generally celebrate a votive Mass of the Sacred Heart at St Pancras. During the great seasons of the Church votive Masses are not usually celebrated and anyway, today was the commmemoration of St Charles Lwanga and his companions, the Ugandan martyrs. The Easter weekday reading from the Acts of the Apostles reminds us of a vow St Paul took which led him to cut off his hair! I love HV Morton's A Traveller in Rome. In the book HVM speaks about the tradition in apostolic iconography which depicts St Peter with  a full head of hair and St Paul  as almost bald. The tradition is believed to go back to the days of Nero and to those who knew the Apostles by sight. How could this be? HVM offers us this explanation:

I was reminded of a story which the late Monsignor Stapylton Barnes was fond of telling to illustrate the length of human memory. His mother, who died in 1927 at a great age, could clearly remember, as a small girl, hearing Victoria proclaimed queen in 1837. When a child she was often taken to see a very old lady who remembered the French Revolution and the execution of Marie Antoinette in 1793. This old lady had spent her childhood in Philadelphia and had known Benjamin Franklin, who was born in 1706. Thus it would have been possible for Franklin to have described some event in his early childhood-perhaps the great fire of Boston in 1711-to the little girl, who could have told it in her old age to another little girl, Mrs Barnes, who could pass on the story to her son in the twentieth century.
In his book The Martyrdom of St Peter and St Paul, Monsignor Barnes refers to the great sweep of human events commanded by such lives, and says 'it would have been possible for a Christian child in Rome in the year 67 to have been actually present at St Peter's martyrdom and to have seen him nailed to the cross, and still to have been alive and able to tell the tale in 150. And the child to whom he told it then could have told the story again in his extreme old age to one who lived to see the peace of the Church in 312 under Constantine.' 

After Mass Jill & Avril made us a superior cup of coffee together with those lovely fig biscuits which take me right back to my childhood.