PARISH LITURGY – MASS TIMES and INTENTIONS

Saturday 6.00 pm People of the Parish

Sunday 9.30 am Thomas Kennedy

Second Collection for the Priests’ Training Fund

Monday [Feria in Eastertide]

9.00 am Celebrant’s Intentions

Tuesday [Feria in Eastertide]

9.00 am Well-being of Tom Sullivan

Wednesday [Feria in Eastertide]

9.00 am Intentions of the Poor Clare Community

Thursday [St Catherine of Siena, virgin, doctor of the Church, patron of Europe]

9.00 am Nora McStraw

Friday [St Pius V, pope]

9.00 am Kevil and Noel Sullivan

Saturday [St Joseph the Worker]

9.00 am Tony Patterson

Confessions: Saturday, 4.30-5.00 pm

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Please pray for the sick in our parish and those who have died: Sr Brigid; Mary Kate O’Hara; Sr M. Veronica; William Barton; Alan John Edwards (anniversaries).

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Last Week’s Collection: £319.30. Thank you.

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May is traditionally a month of devotion to Our Lady. At the end of every Mass during the month we shall recite the following prayer, which dates from the third century and is the oldest-known prayer to the Blessed Virgin:-

We fly to thy patronage, O holy Mother of God. Despise not our prayers in our necessities, but deliver us from all dangers, O glorious and blessed Virgin.

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Catherine began to see how love itself begets love. Finding herself loved so generously by God, she wanted not only to love God in return, but also to love him with his own selflessness. Yet this is precisely what she could not do, since our love for God can be only a grateful response to love first received. “I love you without being loved and without any self-interest…. Because I love you without being loved by you, even before you existed … you cannot repay me.” As Catherine learned, however, we do have a way of loving God with the same unconditional love lavished upon us. “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 Jn 4:11). Finally, we can return selfless love to God by reaching out to others, “loving them without being loved by them,” and loving them precisely because God loves them.

“Where two or here are gathered in my name, I am in the midst of them” (Mt 18:20). Catherine’s own experience showed her that God is not “in the midst” of someone cut off from others through selfish isolation: “Those who are wrapped up in selfish love of themselves are alone, mere nothings, because they are cut off from my grace and from charity for their neighbour.”

Catherine grew to understand that the God who easily could have made us self-sufficient has chosen to create us in the image of the unspeakably rich triune communion. We are made to need one another, and without the love and gifts of our brothers and sisters, we literally cannot live. “I wanted to make you dependent on one another so that each of you would be my minister, dispensing the graces and gifts you have received from me.”

Our attempts to live isolated from others end by destroying our own identity, for we have been created to live in the very charity that inflames the heart of God: “The conformity between person and person is such that when they do not love each other they cut themselves off from their own nature.” But even more, the Lord has so identified himself with us that our love for one another truly binds us to him as well: “I have put you among your neighbours so that you can do for them what you cannot do for me … love them without any concern for thanks and without looking for any profit for yourself. And whatever you do for them I will consider done for me.”

Mary Ann Fatula, Catherine of Siena’s Way, pp. 137-139.