Want to re-build the walls of Jerusalem? If you would like to learn to serve the traditional Mass, or to join our team at Christ the King Church, please contact Fr Mawdsley to ask about attending the altar server training from 2:30 – 4:30pm on Saturday 17 March at the church.
For practising the responses, there is a useful video here (also works well at 1.25 speed):
Plans are afoot for a delegation from the FSSP communities in Reading and Warrington to participate in the Chartres pilgrimage on Pentecost weekend. The theme of this year’s pilgrimage is “St Joseph, Pilgrim and Servant”.
We will be going with the Latin Mass Society. Departure is from London on Friday, 18 May 2018 at 7:30am. Arrival back in London about 8pm on the following Tuesday, 22 May 2018.
The pilgrimage consists of a walk from Notre-Dame Cathedral, Paris, to Notre-Dame Cathedral, Chartres, covering 70 miles in three days. This involves long hours of walking, early morning starts, arriving at the campsite late in the evenings and requires a reasonable level of fitness.
Payment in full by 25 March (Palm Sunday this year). Bursary may be available for young people to reduce costs.
Contact Fr O’Donohue for more information: fatherodonohue@gmail.com
Unfortunately due to the adverse weather conditions, Bishop Peter Doyle was unable to visit Christ the King, Bedford on the weekend of 3/4 March. The visit has now been rescheduled for 12/13 May. We are hoping that the sun will be out that weekend to welcome the Bishop, as well as a good congregation at the Latin Mass, at which he will preach.
UPDATE Saturday 3 March: Sadly Bishop Doyle will not be able to come to Bedford tomorrow morning for the Sunday Masses. God willing he will be with us on 12-13 May.
Bishop Peter Doyle will give the homily at the 8:30am Sung Mass this Sunday 4th March here at Christ the King Church.
This will follow the Family Catechism Day with Fatima devotions on Saturday 3rd March on the theme of the Incarnation. The programme can be found here.
Click here to open the 24-page pdf, or on the picture below.
(Dowry is the quarterly magazine of the FSSP in the UK & Ireland)
Forward the link to your acquaintances and post it on your own media.
This is a simple way to help us spread the Good News!
In this issue:
Editorial: Overlooked Migrants
Let This Not Be Your Last Dowry!
Should Priests Marry To Be Merry?
Thirsting for Truth
The Veil of Saint Veronica
Young Adults Fall for Old Rite
Filming God?
Prayers for a fruitful General Chapter
Forthcoming events
His + Hers = Heirs
Support our apostolate
The second of our Family Catechism Days with Fatima Devotions takes place at Christ the King, Bedford this coming Saturday 3 March. There will be Mass at 10 am, Rosary, Confessions and catechism for children and adults. The first one was very worthwhile and we hope even more people will come along to this one, which is on the theme of the Incarnation.
On Sunday 4 March the 8.30 am Mass will be sung, and the preacher will be Bishop Peter Doyle, Bishop of Northampton, who is paying a pastoral visit to the parish this weekend. He would very much like to meet the Latin Mass congregation in the hall afterwards, so do come over to welcome him.
Those brining children to the Family Catechism Day either on 3rd March (in Bedford) or 24th March (in Chesham Bois) are asked if possible to prepare your children by giving them a prayer card with an image of Jesus’ Holy Face on the Shroud of Turin and one of Our Lady of Guadalupe as miraculously produced and preserved on St Juan Diego’s tilma. If prayer cards cannot be found or brought along, then a few minutes studying the result of a Google search is another option.
How much God desires to be close to us, to give us everything we need, so that He has arranged most tenderly that we have to this day an image of His incarnate Face, and a true image too of His Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary! Both images show peace, humility, suffering, strength and an astonishing majesty–not the world’s version of power, but God’s.
As the theme for the Family Catechism Days on 3rd & 24th March will be the Incarnation, it is a perfect preparation for children or adults to gaze on these two beautiful faces of Jesus & Mary. The doctrines are very high, and the pictures very close; thought the greatest mind on earth cannot fathom them, even a child of five can love them.
“Ecce mater tua” (Jn 19:27)
“Qui videt me, videt et Patrem” (Jn 14:9)
“Behold thy mother” (Jn 19:27)
“Whoever has seen Me, has seen the Father” (Jn 14:9)
“Non relinquam vos orphanos” (Jn 14:18)
“I will not leave you orphans“
By concession of the Holy See, the Chair of St Peter (22 Feb) is a Feast of the First Class in FSSP apostolates. And by decree of the Sacred Apostolic Penitentiary, dated June 7, 2008, a plenary indulgence is granted under the usual conditions to the members of the Confraternity of St Peter on this feast (22 Feb). The conditions are:
– to have the intention of gaining the indulgence
– to make a Sacramental Confession (within several days before or after the feast)
– receive the Holy Eucharist (within several days before or after the feast)
– to pray for the intentions of the Holy Father, for example a Creed, Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be.
– to be free from all attachment to venial sin. This last is difficult, but if it can’t be fulfilled, a partial indulgence may be gained.
Members of the Confraternity can also gain plenary indulgences on the day of their admission into the CSP and on the Feast of SS Peter & Paul (29 June). To sign up, please visit the “Confraternity” tab above. And for information on indulgences click here.
The chaplains for this year’s Summer Camps will be the by then newly ordained Fr Phipps, FSSP (Summer Camp St Peter) and Fr Verrier, FSSP (Summer Camp St Petronilla). The venue for the camps is a Salesian house, whose founder St John Bosco, shortly after his ordination in 1841, wrote of his convictions in rescuing street children:
“The young, who form the most cherished and attractive portion of human society, and in whom are centred all our hopes for a happy future, are by no means intrinsically perverse or inclined to wickedness. Once you have counteracted the carelessness of some parents, the effects of idleness and of evil companions, it becomes the easiest thing imaginable to instil into their young hearts the principles of order, of good behaviour, of respect towards others, and to accustom them to the practice of religion; and if you should meet any who are already spoiled at that tender age, it is the result of neglect rather than of downright wickedness. These are the ones who especially need a helping hand; the difficulty lies in finding the means of gathering them together in order to speak to them and control them. This was the mission the Son of God took upon Himself; this can be done by His Holy Religion alone, which is eternal and unchangeable in itself, which was and always will be the teacher of mankind, which contains a doctrine so perfect that it is suited to all times, and adapted to the different characters of all men.”
From where did the inspiration come to try and pull children of Victorian-era England out of the mire? Surely from Jesus through His Saints. St John Bosco, pray for us.
Details of the camps, and how to book places, can be found here.
Here is a beautiful reflection on an aspect of Our Lady which I had never previously considered. It is to be found in Catholicism Pure and Simple: https://catholicismpure.wordpress.com/2018/02/17/marys-martyrdom-lifelong/
The Passion of Jesus, as St. Bernard says, began with His Birth, so did Mary’s Martyrdom endure throughout her whole life. Wherefore well might Mary say: My life is wasted with grief and my years in sighs. My sorrow is continually before me.
I.
The Passion of Jesus, as St. Bernard says, began with His Birth. So also did Mary, in all things like unto her Son, endure her Martyrdom throughout her life. Amongst other significations of the name of Mary, as Blessed Albert the Great asserts, is that of “bitter sea.” Mare amarum. Hence to her is applicable the text of Jeremias: Great as the sea is thy destruction. (Lam. ii. 13). For as the sea is all bitter and salt, so also was the life of Mary always full of bitterness at the sight of the Passion of the Redeemer, which was ever present to her mind. There can be no doubt, that, enlightened by the Holy Ghost in a far higher degree than all the Prophets, she, far better than they, understood the predictions recorded by them in the sacred Scriptures concerning the Messias. This is what the Angel revealed to St. Bridget, and he also added: “that the Blessed Virgin, even before she became His Mother, knowing how much the Incarnate Word was to suffer for the salvation of men, and compassionating this innocent Saviour Who was to be so cruelly put to death for crimes not His own, even then began her great Martyrdom.” Mary’s grief was immeasurably increased when she became the Mother of this Saviour; so that at the sad sight of the many torments that were to be endured by her poor Son, she indeed suffered a long Martyrdom, a Martyrdom which lasted her whole life. This was signified with great exactitude to St. Bridget in a vision which she had in Rome in the church of St. Mary Major, where the Blessed Virgin with St. Simeon, and an Angel bearing a very long sword, reddened with blood, appeared to her, denoting thereby the long and bitter grief which transpierced the heart of Mary during her whole life. Whence Rupert supposes Mary thus speaking: “Redeemed souls, and my beloved children, do not pity me only for the hour in which I beheld my dear Jesus expiring before my eyes; for the Sword of Sorrow predicted by Simeon pierced my soul during my whole life. When I was giving suck to my Son, when I was warming Him in my arms, I already foresaw the bitter death that awaited Him. Consider, then, what long and bitter sorrows I must have endured.”
II.
Wherefore, well might Mary say, in the words of David: My life is wasted with grief, and my years in sighs. (Ps. xxx. 11). My sorrow is continually before me. (Ps. xxxvii. 18). “My whole life was spent in sorrow and in tears; for my sorrow, which was compassion for my beloved Son, never departed from before my eyes, as I always foresaw the sufferings and death which He was one day to endure.” The Divine Mother herself revealed to St. Bridget, that even after the Death and Ascension of her Son, whether she ate, or worked, the remembrance of His Passion was ever deeply fixed in her heart, and ever fresh in her memory. Hence Tauler says that the most Blessed Virgin spent her whole life in continual sorrow; for her heart was always occupied with sadness and suffering.
Therefore time, which usually mitigates the sorrows of the afflicted, did not relieve Mary; nay, it even increased her sorrows; for, as Jesus, on the one hand, advanced in age, and always appeared more and more beautiful and amiable; so also, on the other hand, the time of His death ever drew nearer, and grief always increased in the heart of Mary, at the thought of having to lose Him on earth. In the words addressed by the holy Angel to St. Bridget: “As the rose grows up amongst thorns, so the Mother of God advanced in years in the midst of suffering: and as the thorns increase with the growth of the rose, so also did the thorns of her sorrow increase in Mary, the chosen rose of the Lord, as she advanced in age; and so much the more deeply did they pierce her heart.”