Peter Blog a few random thoughts

ommentary of the day  Saint Odilon of Cluny (961-1048), monk  2nd. Sermon for the Resurrection of the Lord; PL 142, 1005 "Go tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me" The Gospel pictures the disciples' joyful race: «They both ran, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter and arrived at the tomb first» (Jn 20,4). Which of us would not likewise want to look for Christ, sitting at the right hand of the Father? And which of us, when they joyfully call to mind those apostles' eager race, would not try to run in spirit so as to find him at the end of their search? To encourage us in this desire we should all eagerly repeat this verse of the Song of Songs: «Draw me after you; we will run in the fragrance of your perfume» (3,4 LXX). To run in the fragrance of perfume means to keep going without stopping towards our Creator using the footsteps of our spirit and strengthened by the holy fragrance of the virtues. This was exactly what the praiseworthy...

Easter Sunday Sometimes I try and place myself into the Gospel Story. And wonder  how I might be feeling as being one of his Disciples. First of all I have witnessed the last supper where this man washed my foot and said: Do this in memory of me, and then I walked with him to Calvary and wondered if they were after me too and so hid away. There must have been a great sadness and sense of loss on Saturday. I suppose there might have been an almost a feeling of wanting to get things back to normal. “ Well back to the day job” you might say and yet there would be a feeling and a thinking about all you had witnessed and heard even thinking about what was meant by Resurrection. With all this you can see why the confusion that when Mary went to the tomb she ran to Peter and expressed that they had taken our Lord away. We can be a little like the disciples not really believe that he has risen not really understanding what it is all about and so we run and we need to see for ourselves....

Holy Saturday The women saw  how his body was laid; and they prepared spices and ointments;  and rested the sabbath day according to the commandment.  Luke 23:55,56         Holy Saturday (in Latin, Sabbatum Sanctum ), the 'day of the entombed Christ,' is the Lord's day of rest, for on that day Christ's body lay in His tomb.            We recall the Apostle's Creed which says "He descended unto the dead."   It is a day of suspense between two worlds, that of darkness, sin and death, and that of the Resurrection and the restoration of the Light of the World.   For this reason no divine services are held until the Easter Vigil at night.            This day between Good Friday and Easter Day makes present to us the end of one world and the complete newness of the era of salvation inaugurated by the Resurrect...

 Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?  I wonder what our response is. Of course I wasn’t And yet still the nails are driven in…. ·           When people are humiliated,  for who they are or what they believe Christ is mocked again by the soldiers ·           When the poor of the developing world groan under the weight of unjust trading systems favouring those of us in the rich world, Christ stumbles again beneath the weight of the cross ·           When a woman is found in a   North London flat   dead for three years – living in a society which apparently neither missed nor found her for three years,   Christ cries again “My God my God, why have you forsaken me?” ·           When another person dies needlessly in Afghanistan, 9/11 or the Holocaust Christ again and again and again gi...

Holy Thursday In a letter to Priests on Holy Thursday Pope John Paul says: We were born from the Eucharist. If we can truly say that the whole Church lives from the Eucharist…we can say the same thing about the ministerial priesthood: it is born, lives, works and bears fruit “ de Eucharistia .” There can be no Eucharist without the priesthood, just as there can be no priesthood without the Eucharist. I think that this beautify sums up for us what tonight is all about. It is first of all about the Eucharist the Mass and what it means for so many people though out the Catholic tradition. We have been following the Lord’s command to: Do this is memory of me since that night when Jesus shared his Passover with his disciples. The Mass is central to whom we are and as Vatican II says it is the source and summit of our worship: And as we have seen though out History apart from being a sign of unity it has been a source of Diversity and controversy even to putting people to Death. In the...

As we draw closer to the 1st May. Here is a little thing that shows us why Pope John Paul was such a great man. Enjoy

T he Vatican has appointed a Westminster auxiliary bishop to head the Archdiocese of Cardiff. Bishop George Stack has been appointed to the Welsh archdiocese which was left empty for almost a year after Archbishop Peter Smith was moved to Southwark. The date for his installation is still to be confirmed. Bishop Stack, who served as a priest in Westminster for 29 years and an auxiliary bishop for 10 years under Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, said: “I look forward to serving the people and clergy of the Church in Cardiff with love and faithfulness in the years that lie ahead.” He added: “I am aware of the long and noble history of Christianity in Wales and the special gifts the Celtic people bring to the Universal Church. I hope to share in this rich tradition of faith.” Born in Cork, Ireland in 1946, Bishop Stack moved to London with his family in 1951. He was a seminarian at St Edmund’s College, Ware and was ordained a priest for Westminster in 1972. He has a B.Ed from St Mary’s Tw...

P ope Benedict XVI  Homily of  02/04/2007 on the second anniversary of the death of the Servant of God, the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II (trad. © Libreria Editrice Vaticana)  "And the house was filled with the fragrance of the ointment" The Gospel account impresses an intense paschal atmosphere on our meditation: the supper at Bethany is a prelude to Jesus' death in the sign of his anointing by Mary, a homage she pays to the Teacher which he accepts as foretelling his burial. However, it is also an announcement of the Resurrection through the very presence of Lazarus restored to life (cf Jn 11,44), an eloquent witness of Christ's power over death. Not only pregnant with Paschal significance, the narrative of the supper at Bethany is imbued with an anguishing resonance filled with love and devotion, a mixture of joy and pain... For us, gathered in prayer in memory of my Venerable Predecessor, the gesture of the anointing of Mary of Bethany is full of spiritu...

Maximilian Kolbe  (January 8, 1894–August 14, 1941), also known as  Maksymilian  or  Massimiliano Maria Kolbe  and “Apostle of Consecration to Mary,” born as  Rajmund Kolbe , was a Polish Conventual Franciscan friar who volunteered to die in place of a stranger in the Nazi  concentration camp  of  Auschwitz  in  Poland . He was canonized by the Catholic Church as Saint Maximilian Kolbe on October 10, 1982 by  Pope John Paul II , and declared a martyr of charity. He is the patron saint of drug addicts, political prisoners, families, journalists, prisoners and the pro-life movement. Pope John Paul II declared him the “The Patron Saint of Our Difficult Century”. Maximilian Kolbe was born in January 1894 in Zduńska Wola, which was at that time part of Russian Empire. Maximilian was the second son of Julius Kolbe and Maria Dabrowska. His father was an ethnic German and his mother of Polish origins. He had four brothers, Francis,...

I just want to quote the Pope in his new book as a form of Meditation . “No; violent revolution, killing others in God’s name, was not his way. His Zeal for the Kingdom of God took quite a different form. We do not know exactly what the pilgrims had in mind when they spoke, while enthroning Jesus of the coming kingdom of our father David. But what Jesus himself thought and intended he made very clear by his gestures and by the prophetic words that formed the context for his actions. At the time of David,, the donkey had been a sign of kingship, and so Zechariah, basing himself on this tradition, depicts the new king of peace riding into the Holy City on a donkey. But even in Zechariah’s day and still more by the time of Jesus, it was the horse that had come to signify the might of the mighty, while the donkey had become the animal of the poor, and so served to express an entirely different image of Kingship. It is true that Zechariah proclaims a Kingdom that extends from sea to s...

Blessed Hugh Faringdon From the  Catholic Encyclopedia ( Vere  COOK). English martyr; b. probably at Faringdon, Berkshire, date unknown; d. at Reading, 15 November, 1539. The name of his probable birthplace is also the surname by which he is generally known, but he bore the arms of Cook of Kent. He was elected Abbot of Reading in July, and confirmed, 26 Sept., 1520. Henry VIII was his guest on 30 January, 1521, and he later became one of the royal chaplains. Among Henry's New Year gifts in 1532 was £20 in a white leather purse to the Abbot of Reading. Faringdon sat in Parliament from 1523 to 1539. In 1536 he signed the articles of faith passed by Convocation at the king's desire, which virtually acknowledge the royal supremacy. On Sunday, 4 November, 1537, he sang the requiem and dirge for Queen Jane Seymour, and was present at the burial on 12 Nov. As late as March, 1538, he was in favour, being placed in the commission of the peace for Berkshire; but in 1539, as he declined...

Hi, I had a great Retreat and am ready for Holy Week and this is where I was on the IOW Just to say that I have made it back to Bognor from being a Quarr and I have placed the Website so that you can have a look yourself of where I was http://www.quarrabbey.co.uk/

Fifth Sunday of Lent We can look at this Gospel on so many different levels. What we see is the deep love that Jesus had for his friends. It is a story of looking at the deep humility of Jesus and also the glory of God shining through to rise from the dead. We see this man Lazarus who was sick the translation from the Greek presupposes that he was feeble and if we were to translate it into literal English it would say “ Who was disabled” He is deeply loved by both his sisters and Jesus. IT is the first time that we hear in the Gospel of John that Jesus had love for individual people. It is not the first time that we meet this family. In Luke’s Gospel Jesus visits the family and we meet these two unmarried women looking after Lazarus.   When Jesus learns and arrives at their family house we see this deep emotion of Jesus. He shows us quite clearly the deep emotion that we all have when someone who we love dearly dies. There seems to be a deep void that encounters our Lord. He is u...

Here is another Blessed in my season of looking at Saints that we might not Know Blessed Lindalva Justo de Oliveira  Martyr, Religious Sister of the Society of the  Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul  (1953-1993)         Lindalva Justo de Oliveira was born on 20 October 1953 at Sitio Malhada da Areia, in a very poor area of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. Lindalva's father, João Justo da Fé, a farmer, was a widower. His second marriage was to Maria Lúcia de Oliveira. Little Lindalva was the sixth of 13 children born to the couple. Lindalva was baptized on 7 January 1954.         Her family was not well-off, but rich in the Christian faith. João moved his family to Açu so his children could attend school, and after many sacrifices he was able to buy a house where the family still resides today.         Besides following her mother's good example, Lindalva demonst...

I thought that I would through the Blog introduce you all to some of the new saints and Blessed's as Pope John Paul will be beatified on the 1st May this year Contardo Ferrini was born on 5 April 1859 in Milan to Rinaldo Ferrini and Luigia Buccellati. He was baptized at the font where  Frédéric Ozanam , also a native of Milan, had been baptized 46 years before. After receiving his First Communion at age 12, he joined a Blessed Sacrament Confraternity. Contardo's father, a professor of mathematics and science, taught his son at an early age. By the time he was a young man, he spoke several languages. His apparent love for his faith caused friends to call him by the nickname St. Aloysius (St. Aloysius Gonzaga). He entered University of Pavia at age 17 and, two years later, was appointed Dean of Students. At age 21 he became a doctor of the law at the University. His doctoral thesis, which related penal law to Homeric poetry, was the basis of his being awarded a scholarship to...