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Showing posts with the label Holy Souls

ACN Annual Memorial Mass

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Aid to the Church in Need will have their Annual Memorial Mass for our Departed Benefactors and Friends with a sung Latin Mass (1962 Missal) at 7pm on Thursday, 26 November. the Mass will be at the Little Oratory, Brompton Road, and the celebrant will be Father Martin Edwards.
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Friends of the Suffering Souls

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The Friends of the Suffering Souls is a Catholic Lay Association which conducts a perpetual novena of Masses for the Holy Souls in Purgatory. It was inspired by the 100 consecutive Masses offered for the Holy Souls by the Venerable Archdeacon Cavanagh, Parish Priest of Knock prior to the appearance there of Our Blessed Mother in 1879. The basic idea is that once a year, members ask a priest to say Mass for the Holy Souls. At the website you can read lots about why this is a good idea. If you are a lay person, I encourage you to join the Association. If you are a priest, you may be able to help in a particular way. The Association needs priests who will be happy to accept requests for Masses for the Holy Souls. Unfortunately, I cannot put my name down because I have so many Masses already requested in my parish that I am unable to invite more from elsewhere. However I know that many priests do not receive many requests for Mass intentions. You can put your name down for the ordinary or...
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Self-canonisation meme

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As it is holiday time, I will do a meme for which I have been tagged by Mulier Fortis "If you should pass from our presence, what picture of you shall we use for your saint's card, should you be so elevated, and of what do you want to be patron?" Well the santino would have to have this photo of me sitting in the Buckingham Arms and reading the Remnant : And I would like to be the patron saint of visiting seminary tutors, please. That way, the seminarians would be able to take all sorts of examples from my life and say "Ah, but St Timothy of Blackfen did x, y, and z..." rather as they talk about the Curé of Ars failing his exams. Unfortunately, in my case, the many xs, ys, and zs are not simply a limitation in human abilities and I am unlikely to do enough penance for them this side of purgatory so I'd actually like lots of prayers and Masses, please; like this one provided by those good people at the Holy Souls Crusade My Jesus, by the sorrows Thou didst su...
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Cemetery services

Yesterday afternoon, we had our annual cemetery services at some of the cemeteries in the deanery. I led the one at Sidcup cemetery which is where Fr Koch, the founding parish priest of Blackfen, is buried. (The Church of Our Lady of the Rosary in Blackfen was built in 1936 and operated as a chapel of ease for Welling parish but was made up to a parish in 1945.) First of all we said the prayers for the Pope's intentions after I reminded people of the indulgence . Then I said various other prayers for the dead and the traditional prayer for the mourners. The main part of the proceedings is then for me to go around to graves as requested, say a short prayer and sprinkle the graves with holy water - starting with Fr Koch's grave. This is an important function for local Catholics. As well as visiting the graves of people's relatives and friends, there are many others we remember whose family are no longer around or whose relatives cannot be there. There is a whole section of th...
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Popular posts from this blog

Saint Gabriel

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The angels call for our veneration and awe as part of God’s creation. Part of the destructive modernism of the 1970s included advice to Catholic school teachers that they should not talk to children about angels. This wrought lasting damage which continues to need rectifying. We should include in our prayers a heartfelt recourse to our own Guardian Angels. The Archangel Gabriel “God is my strength” would be terrifying were he to appear to any of us. Our Lady was “troubled” at the word of Saint Gabriel and wondered at the manner of the salutation. Immediately, according to his mission, the awesome messenger explained himself. Modern retelling of the event is often reduced to the jejune “Mary said Yes to God”. In fact, she said “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word”. This conveys more accurately the flawless faith and trust of the Immaculata. In the infinitely wise providence of the Father, we now know the structure of the event in even more detai...
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Our Easter Faith: Not a Pious Crème Fraiche

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In public life, some basically well-meaning figures have the graciousness to wish us well at Easter and to recognise the importance of the Christian feast day. Perhaps they might assure us that their thoughts are with us at this time. That is kind of them and in Christian charity we should thank them for their kindness, but Easter should be a great deal more than that for us. We must believe that Our Lord Jesus Christ is risen from the grave, in the flesh, and lives for eternity. We cannot treat Easter as a jolly holiday that heralds spring, or the remembrance of a significant event from the past. It must change us today and every day, change who we are and what we do. The Christian faith cannot be a mild custard or blancmange of religiosity. (I am showing my age. Nowadays, I should say that it cannot be reduced to a pious crème fraiche .) We bow down and adore the King of Kings, risen from the tomb, who, “[…] continues for ever,...
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Blessing of the New Painting of St Bede at Clapham Park

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This morning, the parish priest at Clapham Park, Fr Marcus Holden, blessed a new picture of the parish's patron, Saint Bede, painted by James Tildsley. It is sited over a recently installed side altar near the rear of the Church. The altar itself was acquired from Antique Church Furnishings . The website gives the information that the altar was built and carved by a nun in a convent near Liverpool. It is a beautiful piece of work and it is always a joy when such works of art find a suitable and dignified home. The inscription on the gradine is AMANS AMATUS AMOR. The sellers translate this as “Loving is the object of love” which is a reasonable stab at “dynamic equivalence”. Today the parish's relic of St Bede was exposed for veneration in its distinctive brightly-coloured reliquary. After the blessing, there was High Mass with Fr Holden as celebrant, Fr Littleton deacon, and myself subdeacon. That gave me the enjoyable task of chant...
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Plenary indulgences not impossible

Dilexit Prior in Letters from a Young Catholic asked some useful questions today about indulgences. I thought it would be best to do a post here especially to cover the controversial question of detachment from venial sin. But first the other questions: The conditions for gaining a plenary indulgence Pope Paul VI set down a number of norms relating to indulgences at the end of Indulgentiarum Doctrina . Norm 7 states: To acquire a plenary indulgence it is necessary to perform the work to which the indulgence is attached and to fulfil three conditions: sacramental confession, Eucharistic Communion and prayer for the intentions of the Supreme Pontiff. It is further required that all attachment to sin, even to venial sin, be absent. If this disposition is in any way less than complete, or if the prescribed three conditions are not fulfilled, the indulgence will be only partial, except for the provisions contained in n.11 for those who are “impeded.” It is worth reading the other norms bec...
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Portiuncula indulgence tomorrow (and indulgences generally)

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Tomorrow, 2 August, you can gain a plenary indulgence under the usual conditions ( see below ) by visiting a parish Church and there reciting the Our Father and the Creed . This is called the Portiuncula indulgence and goes back to St Francis of Assisi. Fr Z has the details . Don't forget that you can also gain a plenary indulgence by visiting a Church on the day of the titular feast, and there reciting the Our Father and the Creed . I made a list of other indulgences: please see the post Plenary indulgences for particular days which has a link to the list. The post has some background information which you may find helpful since indulgences are not well understood today - which is not surprising since indulgences are not included in most Catholic education curricula, and most priests never preach about them. Therefore many Catholics are left with whatever silly, half-baked, ill-informed nonsense about indulgences happens to be current. If you want to understand the theology...
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